One of the world's greatest mysteries in the 1990s was what Tommy did for a living on Martin.
The series is inarguably one of the best half-hour comedy shows in all of American television (at least that's what we Martin fanatics think). And a running joke on the show was that Tommy was always well dressed with cash in his pockets, but no one—not even his best friends, Martin and Cole—knew what he did for a living.
Well, the wait is over. During a Bossip podcast interview, Tisha Campbell-Martin, who played Gina on the show, described the episodes that shed light on what Tommy did for a living; then she dropped the bombshell about what his job actually was.
"Tommy really did have a job; I'll give you a hint," Campbell-Martin said. "The woman I was gonna fight, she was Martin's teacher, Beverly Johnson; in that episode that's the first time you hear about Tommy's job," she explained.
"So Tommy talks about him being in the Boys & Girls Club," she continued. And here it is, ladies and gentlemen: "He was a counselor at the Boys & Girls Club. That's what he did for a living."
Who knew? Campbell-Martin said the joke came about because Thomas Mikal Ford, the actor who played Tommy, used to complain about his character being underdeveloped.
"Tommy was complaining, 'I don't think they're developing my character enough. No one knows what I do for a job; they keep asking me what I do!' " she explained. "So then they started putting in the script that Tommy has no job."
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Diana Ozemebhoya Eromosele is a staff writer at The Root and the founder and executive producer of Lectures to Beats, a Web series that features video interviews with scarily insightful people. Follow Lectures to Beats on Facebook and Twitter.
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