James "Murr" Murray: Always Up for a Challenge

Head to our Youtube chan­nel to watch Valerie inter­view James!!

This arti­cle brought to you by ​“The Speed of Light”. That’s because we got a last minute chance to sit down across the online meet­ing screen from each oth­er ahead of James Mur­ray’s Austin appear­ances at the Para­mount State­side The­ater on Sat­ur­day March 5, 2002. Tick­ets are lim­it­ed for the 1pm and 4pm sleep-deprived set who like to be in their paja­mas by 8pm. You should grab yours (the tick­ets, not the paja­mas) the moment you read this article. 

Now that the hard work of get­ting the imme­di­ate plugs is done, let me say that this was one of the eas­i­est inter­views to pre­pare for. We are a fam­i­ly of fans of Imprac­ti­cal Jok­ers. I have mem­o­ries going back as far as the launch of Imprac­ti­cal Jok­ers of my son and I vis­it­ing my mom and watch­ing hours upon hours of IJ (as the fans call it) since he was a wee one. So, I feel like we’ve known ​“Murr” for almost a decade. Which explains why I asked my son to con­tribute a ques­tion for the inter­view (not mom, she would have just asked if he was tak­ing his vit­a­mins). I know Murr as the ball­sy one who has had to suf­fer wear­ing Q’s hair wig, and steal­ing cig­a­rettes from agi­tat­ed unsus­pect­ing vic­tims. The num­ber of times my son and I have yelled ​“he’s going to get beat up” specif­i­cal­ly about Murr is near­ly infi­nite. What we’ve always loved about Imprac­ti­cal Jok­ers is the pranks aren’t direct­ed out­ward at strangers, they’re direct­ed square­ly at the group of friends who’ve been best friends since high school. The depic­tion of cama­raderie is the most pow­er­ful mes­sage that I get out of this show. Imprac­ti­cal Jok­ers is in its 9^th sea­son and Mur­ray revealed dur­ing the inter­view, he had just filmed a chal­lenge from the 10^th sea­son. The Jok­ers are our friends, these are the pals we joke around with and play pranks on. They are us. 

In, 2018, my son and I took a trek to San Anto­nio to watch the Imprac­ti­cal Jok­ers live show. It was then we learned that Murr was an author. After the show, he did a book sign­ing for his debut book Awak­ened. I’m kick­ing myself that I did­n’t grab a signed copy then, but the road trip back home was call­ing. The book is an adven­ture and a bit of a thriller. It also kicked off the ​“hey, let’s write a book a year” pace that Mur­ray has been fol­low­ing. All books are avail­able on Ama­zon and the first of his 2022 books is aimed at the mid­dle school set (the prime IJ audi­ence, so it’s a smart move). Area 51 Interns is avail­able for pre-order now. His sec­ond 2022 book will be avail­able in Octo­ber With his bur­geon­ing book career and his over­full act­ing career (in addi­tion to Imprac­ti­cal Jok­ers the TruTV sta­ple, there’s the Ten­der­loins live tour dates, and there’s the lat­est TV hit, The Mis­ery Index), how does Mur­ray find the time? 

We’ve heard it before.…..love what you do and you’ll nev­er work a day in your life. Mur­ray’s ver­sion is ​“when every­thing is a pas­sion, noth­ing feels like work.”. Etsy — let’s get this on some posters and paint­ed wood­en planks. That’s some sage per­spec­tive. By the way, it also helps that Mur­ray, a life­long bach­e­lor, found and mar­ried the love of his life a few years ago. He quick­ly admits that being mar­ried has added nec­es­sary bal­ance to his life brim­ming with cre­ative projects.

While he’s a suc­cess today, he admits that it’s all a wait­ing game of hard work and patience. It took 11 years of fail­ure to break out with Imprac­ti­cal Jok­ers. His first book Awak­ened was writ­ten in 2003, but no one picked it up until 2018. Once they did, it became a #1 inter­na­tion­al best sell­er. Any­one read­ing this has to be inspired by this sto­ry. You’re sim­ply not human if you aren’t moti­vat­ed to keep work­ing hard know­ing that what you love to do will even­tu­al­ly become what sus­tains you. 

After achiev­ing glob­al suc­cess with the Imprac­ti­cal Jok­ers, why did Mur­ray decide to strike out with his per­son­al tour, Murr Live? As Mur­ray tells it ​“being in front of audi­ences, there’s no bet­ter feel­ing.” and that crav­ing became the impe­tus for cre­at­ing Murr Live, his indi­vid­ual tour­ing show which fea­tures improv and standup per­for­mances. But he’s just as excit­ed that The Ten­der­loins are going back on tour as a group soon.

Aside from Mur­ray’s infec­tious enthu­si­asm dur­ing our con­ver­sa­tion, you’re also struck by how down to earth he is. Lit­er­al­ly. His lat­est pas­sion project is his grow­ing veg­etable gar­den. There’s noth­ing more charm­ing than hear­ing an inter­na­tion­al­ly famous comic/​actor/​author/​producer/​etc. rat­tle off with utter glee the exten­sive list of fruits and veg­eta­bles that he and his wife have been grow­ing. So, if you’re look­ing to bring Mur­ray a gift, you’d best con­sid­er bring­ing a veg­etable plant or seed. He uniron­i­cal­ly believes that in anoth­er uni­verse he would be a farmer. Stay tuned for Murr Farms (We’ve seen this before, right New­man’s Own?) com­ing to a farmer’s mar­ket near you

On the oth­er hand, when talk­ing about his nov­els, Mur­ray was very quick to rec­om­mend Stow­away as one of his favorite ser­i­al killer books that he’s writ­ten and teas­ing that he’s got anoth­er sched­uled for release this fall and next year. And I’m con­fi­dent that at least one of his books is going to be hit­ting a screen at some point. Whether you believe Mur­ray is a whole­some farmer exud­ing pos­i­tiv­i­ty or an author capa­ble of grab­bing you through ser­i­al killer, mon­ster, and alien forces, you’re in for a good time. 

I’m hap­py I got to know Mur­ray bet­ter in our short inter­view togeth­er, but what makes me real­ly hap­py is that the ​“char­ac­ter” on Imprac­ti­cal Jok­ers, isn’t real­ly a char­ac­ter. It’s Murr — fun­ny, hap­py, opti­mistic, with a good dose of mis­chie­vous ener­gy. What will he take on as his next chal­lenge — will it be a movie based on one (or all) of his books? adding a noto­ri­ous­ly dif­fi­cult veg­etable to his farm? or just jok­ing around with his best friends? Either way, he’s assured us the stage beck­ons him, so we’ll get plen­ty of chances to see him perform. 

Fol­low James

• Web­site
  • James​Mur​ray​Of​fi​cial​.com
  • TheTender​loins​.com
  • trutv​.com/​s​h​o​w​s​/​i​m​p​r​a​c​t​i​c​a​l​-​j​okers
    
• Twit­ter — @jamessmurray
• Insta­gram — @therealmurr
• Face­book — Face​book​.com/​j​a​m​e​s​s​m​urray

James can be seen, heard, and read:

• Ten­der­loins
• Books
  • The Awak­ened Tril­o­gy: Awak­ened, The Brink, and Oblit­er­a­tion
  • Don’t Move
  • The Stow­away
  • Area 51 Interns (pre-order now for release March 15, 2022)
• TV
  • Imprac­ti­cal Jokers
  • The Mis­ery Index
• Film
  • The Imprac­ti­cal Jok­ers Movie
• Per­form­ing live in a city near you! Check his web­site for dates