Celebrity Mound

Comedian Chris Rock will make his Broadway debut in a new play about love and fidelity with an X-rated title.

Rock will join Bobby Cannavale, Elizabeth Rodriguez, Annabella Sciorra and Yul Vazquez in a production of Stephen Adly Guirgis’ play “The Mother … With the Hat.” (The title includes an expletive.)

The 14-week engagement begins previews on March 22 at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre.

The play centers on Jackie (Cannavale), a parolee who is newly sober, and his girlfriend, who is not. Rock will play Jackie’s sponsor.

Anna D. Shapiro, who won a Tony for directing “August: Osage County,” will helm the project.

Chris Rock’s representative has shot down rumours the funnyman has fathered a lovechild, insisting a mystery girl recently pictured with him is the daughter of a friend.

The comic was photographed leaving New York City’s Trump International Hotel with his wife, Malaak, his five-year-old daughter, Zahra, a nanny, and the unknown woman.

The images fuelled speculation Rock, who also has a seven-year-old daughter, Lola, has a secret child by another woman.

But a spokesperson for the star has moved quickly to refute the claims, insisting the girl in question is a friend of the family, who regularly visits from South Africa.

The representative tells People.com, “The child in the photograph with Chris Rock that appeared in the New York Post is the daughter of a family friend from South Africa whom (his wife) Malaak Compton-Rock met through her charity endeavours over the years. She visits often and when here is a joy to the Rockfamily.”

Chris Rock is lucky he had at least one “Good Hair” day in New York, because the rest of his week is shaping up to be one big old mess of a tress.

The comedian discovered he’d been slammed with a $5 million plagiarism lawsuit just 41 minutes before he was due at the Big Apple premiere of his flick “Good Hair” on Monday.

Rock was understandably late – though only by a half hour – to the IFC Center’s red carpet, but still gamely spoke to reporters. Calm and collected, he gave no indication he’d been sued. In fact, Rock seemed to have a fantastic time at the Cinema Society & Target screening and after-party, joking until 11:30 p.m. with Amber Rose, Adrian Grenier, Ashanti, “Precious” star Gabourey Sidibe and Dylan McDermott at the Standard Grill.

While Rock was all laughs at his premiere, director Regina Kimbell certainly wasn’t smiling when she filed a suit against the funnyman for allegedly ripping off her 2005 documentary, “Nappy Roots.” Kimbell claims that she showed her film – which won the Pan African Film Festival’s best documentary award in 2007 – to Rock on the set of his TV series “Everyone Hates Chris” that same year.

The ideas behind both films do seem similar. The synopsis for Kimbell’s film on mynappyrootsthemovement.com says the flick “takes an unparalleled look at how black hair is used as a prism through which to look at cultural, societal and political issues in the African-American community over time.”

Rock’s movie delves into the same topics, but takes a celebrity angle that Kimbell’s documentary does not cover. Maya Angelou, the Rev. Al Sharpton, Ice-T, Eve and Kerry Washington all speak to Rock about their own hair-y situations, as well as about how black people’s hair is perceived by the black community.

While this to-’do is still in progress, at least Rock won’t be accused of plagiarizing his latest project. The comedian will star in “Will You Be My Black Friend?,” a movie based on an article Devin Freidman did for GQ in 2008 that will be produced by Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Films. Rock has been candid that the idea is not his own.

Rock’s rep and Kimbell’s lawyer did not respond to calls for comment by press time.

(source)

Chris Rock – one of the funniest men alive – isn’t funny at all on a 31-minute tape of a phone call he had in August 2001 with disgraced private eye Anthony Pellicano, who was helping the comic fight a bogus rape charge.

“Once you’re accused of rape, you’re just [bleep]ed, you know?” a stressed-out Rock tells the detective.

An angry Pellicano replies: “That’s why I want to blacken this girl up, totally. I want to make her out to be a lying, scumbag, manipulative [bleep]sucker . . . stupid [bleep].”

Rock agrees, telling Pellicano, “I’m [bleep]ed. I’m better getting caught with needles in my arm, way better, needles, with pictures. There’s Chris Rock shooting heroin – much better blow to the career.”

The Huffington Post obtained the recording and planned to put all 31 minutes on its Web site last night. The Web site said prosecutors plan to call Rock as a witness in Pellicano’s trial in Los Angeles on charges of illegal wiretapping.

Rock was distraught because Monica Zsibrita, who had a one-night stand with Rock at the Beverly Hills Hotel in 1998, was suing him three years later, claiming he had raped her and fathered her child.

Zsibrita claimed that she saved Rock’s semen on a tissue she stored in her freezer and that she’d prove Rock fathered her child.
But she later dropped her suit.

Rock was separated from his wife, Malaak, at the time of the fling. (Despite divorce filings last year, which were subsequently dropped, they are still together.)

During the call, Pellicano reads Zsbrita’s police report to Rock and tells him her allegations aren’t taken seriously by the cops.

Rock says, “I know the night we went to the Ivy she had on white pants. I only noticed cause my wife’s real classy and subdued and I’m out with a girl with big [breast]s and white pants.”

Pellicano then reads to Rock a portion of the report that said Zsbrita collected his semen in a Kleenex and put it in her pocket.
Rock responds, “I’ve been so set up.”

“Does your old lady know what’s going on?” Pellicano asks.

Rock: “No. She thinks it’s over. Put it that way: She knows of it.”

(source)