Wayne Brady: On ‘poopie,”Second City’ and Drew Carey

Wayne Brady got a Vegas-y welcome to the Venetian when he began performing there last year. Instead of using an alias for his hotel room, his real name was listed in the hotel directory. So tourists would call the operator, ask for Brady and get his voice mail.

“I would get these calls,” he says. “I would get: Beep, ‘Hey, oh my God! Is this Wayne Brady (giggle giggle)? Oh my God, it’s me, Britney, oh my God, I saw your show downstairs, we’re so … drunk right now! UFC! Hey, we’re gonna be at Tao!’ Puke. Beep.”

A year later, Brady is celebrating his first anniversary for the comedy-improvisation show “Making %@it Up.” Publications and the hotel usually call the show “Making It Up,” even though the official middle name is "%@it."

I ask Brady if the title is supposed to mean “Making S--- Up.” Of course, he says.

“It really would be an interesting day if the Venetian actually every printed ‘S---’ on [the marquee], but that’s what is meant” by the percentage and ampersand signs.

He’s not trying to be vulgar. He considers himself a man of "a certain class.” But by putting a curse word in the title, he’s giving show-goers a head’s-up that there will be “a little language” and “there might be a little sexual humor.”

“It’s not done on purpose to show, ‘Hey, look what I can say.’ It’s so that we don’t have any boundaries. So if something's funny, it’s just funny and you do it.”

Besides, “%@it” is just a word that’s been given shock power.

“It would be an amazing day if, one day, the word ‘poopie’ became a horrible word, and you couldn’t say that, because then you’re just giving the word ‘poopie’ power. That’s kind of stupid,” Brady says.

I tell him that hopefully his show won’t get renamed “Making Poopie Up.”

“Yeah, that’s the day that I probably will not do it, and you’ll end up seeing whatshisname, Tony Danza: ‘Hey, it’s me, Tony Danza — Making Poopie Up!’”

Brady says he makes his Vegas show enjoyable for himself, unlike some other performers.

“When I’m having fun, the audience is having a good time. Because — I’m not naming names — but I’ve seen quite a few stand-ups and other people that have showrooms [perform on stage like this]: ‘Oh God, I’m here. Hey, everybody.’ Canned applause. ‘Nice to see you folks. Here’s my thing. Blah blah blah. Thanks for the cash. Gotta go.’ That sucks. Don’t do that.”

Elsewhere on the Strip, another improvisation-based show, the sketch of “Second City,” was closed at the Tropicana. Brady says “Second City” might have run longer if more people knew the brand name, “Second City.”

“Second City” has produced great improvisational and sketch actors, he says, “but the average person, I don’t think, is feeling ‘Second City’” as a title.

I ask: Would it have run longer if it had been named “Saturday Night Live?”

“Absolutely,” he says. “If there was a ‘Saturday Night Live’ show [on the Strip], folks would go, ‘Oh, that’s the thing I done seen on the TV,’ and they’d be there in a minute.”

Then again, he says, it’s very hard for any Vegas show to run for as long as “Second City” did. It’s fairly notable when a new show makes it through year No. 1, since there’s so much competition for dollars on the Strip.

“Being here for a year is the TV equivalent of getting your 100th episode,” Brady says.

Speaking of TV, Brady’s game show, Fox’s “Don’t Forget the Lyrics,” returns for a new season in the fall. He says it’s just a coincidence he and Drew Carey moved on from ABC’s “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” to hosting game shows.

“There are ‘X’ amount of jobs in the entertainment business,” he says. “So it doesn’t really surprise me.”

But Carey’s “The Price is Right” is “radically, universally different” from Brady’s “Don’t Forget the Lyrics!”

“They really don’t exist in the same milieu,” Brady says. “The only thing they have in common is they’re game shows, and they tapped Drew to do [‘Price is Right’], and the other is a fun karaoke show where you see people look incredibly stupid or walk away with an incredible amount of money.”

Just as Brady had an odd experience starting in Vegas, he had a weird moment when he began hosting “Don’t Forget The Lyrics!” last year. He wanted to give losers money out of his own pocket, you know, as a parting gift. Then he thought better of it.

“I did that in the beginning,” he says. “And then I realized that so many people would be losing, I didn’t want to give them my check. I said, ‘Hey, you know what? I could give you some — oh, no, I won’t.’”

(Photo by Isaac Brekken)