Each Room Is a Stage, Every Day Is a Show

By DAVE ITZKOFF
Published: October 28, 2008

THE chef at Benihana was struggling to entertain the customers around his table, but Tracy Morgan wouldn’t surrender the spotlight. On a recent Thursday afternoon, Mr. Morgan, the comedian and “30 Rock” star, was putting on a show for the gathering crowd — tourists, office workers, restaurant staff and a pair of NBC publicists sent to keep an eye on him — his voice booming like thunder amid the clanging of knives and the sizzling of the grill.

Presiding over a dining room he visits two or three times a week, Mr. Morgan, 39, mocked the chef for his gold-capped tooth (“You from down South or something?” he asked) and chided him for fumbling an egg (“You got girl problems?”); he wished happy birthday to a woman at an adjacent table and updated the staff on his exploits (“Still makin’ them babies”); he accused King Kong of racism (“All these black women in the jungle, and he went all that way for one white woman?”), then began to tell a story about his family before crooning a verse of Prince’s “When Doves Cry” into a reporter’s tape recorder.

When they see Mr. Morgan in the flesh, the stunned onlookers who shout “Yo, Tracy!” and slap him high-fives expect him to play the buffoon. And no one relishes that role more than Mr. Morgan himself, who has embraced the part on “30 Rock” and in public appearances both paid and unpaid.

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