Today Architectural Digest is welcomed by comedy legend Kevin Hart to tour his stylish Hartbeat offices. A year ago, Hart moved his production company into a new 40,000-square-foot West Hollywood office space previously occupied by the Oprah Winfrey Network. With the help of Kai Williamson of Studio 7 Design, Hart was ready to give the office an edgier makeover, moving away from an off-white, coastal palette left behind by OWN. Together, Hart and Williamson designed a modern, open space that encourages creative thinking and collaboration through glass walls and luxe seating areas. But despite the makeover, Hart has made sure the spirit of Oprah remains, “There’s an energy in this room,” Hart says. “Every once in a while, The Oracle herself speaks to me. I’m trying to get a real mold of Oprah’s hand so I can slap Oprah five every time I leave out. The question is, How am I going to get it?”
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00 (bell dings)
00:02 Mm, hey AD, what's going on?
00:08 Kevin Hart here.
00:09 I wanna welcome you guys to Heartbeat.
00:11 What are you gonna see?
00:12 Well, why ask me when I can just show you?
00:14 Come on, follow me.
00:16 (upbeat music)
00:28 I wanna welcome you to what we call our Heartbeat Bar.
00:31 The concept around this particular space
00:34 is for those all around us to gravitate here.
00:38 I love the feel of modern,
00:40 something that presents an environment
00:42 that people not only feel like they can be in,
00:44 but they wanna sit in, they wanna stay in.
00:45 I don't want a bunch of walls.
00:47 I want open spaces, I want a lot of glass.
00:49 And if it's an open space,
00:51 and you see people being collaborative
00:52 and communicating and talking,
00:54 well, guess what you're gonna do?
00:55 You're gonna do the same thing.
00:56 Energy feeds off of energy.
00:58 I've had a lot of success with interior design in my home.
01:01 And that interior designer that I use in home
01:03 had a great relationship with a woman named Kai Williamson.
01:05 And Kai Williamson, in turn, ended up doing Hart House.
01:09 I then told Kai, "Come in.
01:11 "Let's do the same thing here at Heartbeat."
01:13 And she created an amazing design,
01:15 an amazing look, feel, and flow along the guidelines
01:19 of what I felt the colors of Heartbeat were,
01:22 and what I felt the theme of our company should be,
01:24 which was an atmosphere of together,
01:27 one of creative, more importantly, one of fun and funny.
01:31 It's a fun space.
01:33 It's a space of drinking alcohol.
01:35 This is not a plug, but Grand Cormino is behind me,
01:38 which just so happens to be my tequila.
01:40 And the only thing that I allow my employees to drink,
01:43 not that we have problems,
01:45 just that that's what I allow.
01:49 Maybe, you know what?
01:50 If that came out weird, just understand,
01:52 hard work tastes different, and we celebrate it.
01:56 (upbeat music)
01:58 Now, at this point of the tour,
02:02 we are in my in-house studio.
02:04 This is a very important piece to the puzzle of Heartbeat.
02:07 Why?
02:08 Well, because when I bring talent into the building,
02:11 well, I can now interview the talent,
02:13 and I interview talent.
02:15 It's highlighted on gold mines.
02:16 Or if I wanted to, I could switch gears,
02:18 and we could do straight from the heart.
02:20 And you know what I love about it, too, man?
02:21 I love that not only are the chairs comfortable,
02:23 but they make me feel tall.
02:25 That's very important to me, right?
02:26 It's not about sitting in a chair,
02:28 it's about not getting lost in a chair.
02:30 You see that?
02:31 I look big.
02:31 I look very big here.
02:33 Some chairs you sit in, you go all the way back,
02:35 you look stupid.
02:36 Not here, and this mic adjusts to wherever I want it.
02:39 We spent $17 million on these microphones.
02:41 If you come over here,
02:43 now we're looking at a well-crafted desk
02:46 that fits a group straight from the heart.
02:48 That's me and my closest friends.
02:50 We love to be in a close proximity
02:52 so that we can not only feed off of each other,
02:55 but energize one another.
02:57 This desk allows us to do that.
02:59 It was very important to me
03:00 to have a comfortable environment
03:02 where my guests could feel just as comfortable,
03:04 almost like a living room setting.
03:06 So what I have in here is a lot of relaxing light.
03:09 You know, this light can basically,
03:11 it can go from this color,
03:12 I can go to like an iguana green,
03:14 a lava red, a perplex purple.
03:17 These are all real colors, by the way.
03:19 There's a lot of little things,
03:20 a lot of little discoveries,
03:21 a lot of little Easter eggs.
03:23 You just gotta open up your eyes to be able to see 'em.
03:25 This pot here was Eddie Murphy's first pot
03:29 that he ever spit his gum in.
03:31 We found it.
03:32 We spent $6 million on this.
03:34 Eddie Murphy's gum is still in it.
03:36 If you wanna get a closeup, you can.
03:37 Don't look at it.
03:38 [upbeat music]
03:41 Come in here.
03:44 Whoa!
03:46 Hello!
03:47 This is where it happens at, baby.
03:49 Right here.
03:50 This is my desk.
03:52 A lot of big deals happen right here.
03:55 Right, I come in here, I sit down,
03:57 and I say, "That doesn't work for me."
04:02 You know why?
04:03 Because it works for me, doesn't work for you,
04:05 and sometimes that means that we got more work to do.
04:08 Now, this here, right,
04:11 I'm a huge fan of baseball gloves.
04:12 I said, "I need a couch
04:14 "that gives me the synergy of a catcher's mitt."
04:17 Now, if you sit in this couch,
04:19 you'll find yourself feeling like a baseball,
04:22 and you'll just conform and get ready to be thrown.
04:27 When I sit in this couch, you know what I say to myself?
04:29 "Throw me into the rest of the day."
04:31 This chair right here, I love this chair.
04:33 Very sleek.
04:34 Basically, this is my, like,
04:36 "Okay, Kev, it's time to get up," right?
04:38 Because if I go here, I could get sleepy
04:41 'cause that glove, it makes me warm, right?
04:44 My eyes are getting a little lazy.
04:45 I'ma take a nap there,
04:46 but sometimes I don't wanna take a nap.
04:48 Sometimes I wanna sit straight up.
04:49 This is my posture chair.
04:51 Look at me.
04:52 I'm up, okay?
04:56 All right, now, these two chairs are different.
04:59 When I sit here, I mean business.
05:01 Sometimes I let people sit in a catcher's mitt,
05:03 and I take the seat here.
05:05 You sit down, go right ahead.
05:07 See, I called you in here.
05:09 You see that?
05:10 This is my main business chair.
05:12 See, every chair has to have a purpose.
05:13 If you just got chairs in your office just to have 'em,
05:16 then that means you're not utilizing your office correctly.
05:18 Purpose chair, posture chair, catcher's mitt.
05:22 Sleep, sit up, talk straight.
05:25 I have a saying around this office,
05:28 and my saying is, "Oprah was in this bitch,"
05:31 because this used to be Oprah's office.
05:33 And every once in a while,
05:35 the oracle herself speaks to me.
05:38 There's an energy in this room.
05:40 I'm waiting on a sign to put at the top of the door
05:43 that I can jump up and touch as I leave out every day.
05:46 Almost like the rock at the Apollo,
05:47 but instead, it'll just be Oprah's hand.
05:51 So I'm trying to get a real mold of Oprah's hand
05:55 so I can slap Oprah five every time I leave out.
05:58 The question is, how am I gonna get it?
06:00 I can imagine me and Oprah saying some of the same stuff.
06:04 Like, "Motherfucker, you better get up!"
06:07 Oprah cursed.
06:08 Y'all don't know Oprah cursed.
06:09 Oprah cursed.
06:10 I know she did.
06:11 (upbeat music)
06:15 Can't go any further without showing you
06:17 my favorite piece in my office.
06:19 That's my mom.
06:20 This is a hand-drawn picture
06:22 that was given to me years ago
06:24 that I fell in love with, and I kept.
06:26 Got it framed, and it's followed me
06:29 through every office space that I've had.
06:31 You know, there's been times
06:32 where I've actually heard my mom say,
06:33 "Oprah was in this bitch, too."
06:35 So it's a shared energy there.
06:38 Okay, come on in here.
06:39 Now this here, this is my little beauty area, right?
06:43 If I need a haircut, I get in this chair right here,
06:45 and my barber come in, zip, zip, zip, zip, zip, zip, zip,
06:48 and I come out looking like a dom.
06:50 This chair is from North Philadelphia's finest barbershop
06:55 called Cuts and Shuts.
06:57 You know, that's where basically I was born and raised.
07:00 Seen a lot of things happen there, right, in that area.
07:02 There was a lot of good, a lot of bad, but I made it out,
07:04 so I went back, bought this chair.
07:06 Chair cost me $785,000.
07:09 This is where the magic happens.
07:11 Sometimes I don't wanna go home and get dressed,
07:13 so I just make it happen here.
07:15 You know what these are?
07:16 Hustle hearts.
07:18 Mm-hmm, you didn't expect to see that, did you?
07:20 These are my first Nike collabs.
07:23 You know, I'm an athlete.
07:25 One of the few only comedians
07:27 to ever have their own athletic shoe.
07:29 It's never been done before.
07:30 History.
07:31 This is a basketball with a heartbeat on it.
07:33 Five out of 100.
07:34 This was a limited edition.
07:36 They gave these out to all of the best players in the NBA
07:38 that made it to the Hall of Fame, that did amazing things,
07:41 'cause only the best athletes
07:42 could have a heartbeat basketball.
07:44 So fact check, go look it up if you don't believe me,
07:46 or not.
07:47 Oh, oh, this right here is the jersey I had on
07:49 when the Eagles won a Super Bowl.
07:51 E-A-G-L-E-S, Eagles!
07:54 By the way, don't look at that footage,
07:55 because I may have been drunk, okay?
07:57 My tour clothes.
07:59 These are from Irresponsible, a phenomenal tour.
08:02 These are in my office,
08:03 just in case anybody ever want me to perform.
08:05 Quick change.
08:06 These are like my talk show suits down here.
08:08 Yeah, this is the suit that I had on when I did Jimmy Fallon.
08:12 This is when I did Ed Sullivan.
08:14 Don't fact check the last one.
08:16 [upbeat music]
08:19 All right, so this here is a really cool space that we have.
08:24 Another bar, another nice sitting area.
08:27 You'll notice a digital board.
08:28 On this digital board, we can put cool things,
08:30 whether it's movies coming out,
08:32 TV shows that are premiering,
08:33 things to watch out for in this particular time.
08:36 We said, "Welcome, Architectural Digest team."
08:38 That's a message for you guys.
08:40 The reason why that digital board is there,
08:42 because a lot of things that we sometimes screen,
08:44 well, we can market and promote there
08:46 to ultimately bring people in here.
08:48 If you notice out here,
08:50 you see a lot of the movie posters or TV posters
08:54 to the things that our company has produced.
08:56 But if you follow me in here,
08:58 [upbeat music]
09:00 this is our theater.
09:01 So this is where we come, we screen, we view.
09:06 After a screening, we talk about it.
09:08 We give notes, there's feedback.
09:11 I love this space.
09:12 I always sit in the back in the corner.
09:13 I like to watch everybody.
09:14 So this is my first time sitting in this chair,
09:16 actually, not bad.
09:17 Oh, can I get a drink from the bar and bring it in here?
09:20 While we are screening, no.
09:23 After the workday is complete, you can do what you want.
09:25 That's why it's there.
09:26 Now, when you come out of here,
09:27 sometimes we may say, "Well, that was good.
09:30 "Let's do a toast."
09:32 And I get everybody to the bar
09:33 because we watched my project.
09:36 I think Kai made this room blue
09:39 because she loves clouds, light clouds,
09:43 that ultimately turn dark after rain.
09:47 She's a deep thinker.
09:48 [upbeat music]
09:50 This is actually a very cool room.
09:53 This is like an exec breakout room.
09:55 Also, what I like to call this room
09:57 is a in-the-cut meeting environment.
09:59 If you're with a client that you kinda wanna be
10:01 a little more low-key about,
10:03 or a talent that you wanna be a little more low-key about,
10:05 this is a space that provides that.
10:07 It's just comfortable, it's chill,
10:08 and there's no excuse not to be relaxed,
10:10 drop your shoulders.
10:11 This furniture here is a casino.
10:12 There's a nice creative space,
10:14 and more importantly, once again,
10:16 a comfortable environment to work, all right?
10:19 Not to be confused with a home.
10:21 It's work, okay?
10:23 Make a note of that.
10:25 I have taken seven naps on that couch.
10:27 That couch needs to go 'cause it's too comfortable.
10:31 It's the only thing I fell asleep on in this building,
10:33 and sleep is not welcome here.
10:35 (upbeat music)
10:38 Well, guys, I mean, that's it.
10:56 That concludes the tour.
10:58 I hope that you enjoyed all of the things
11:00 that I've shown you.
11:01 By the way, this is how it happens.
11:04 I just showed you how the beat happens within the heart.
11:07 I showed you heartbeat.
11:08 Get out of here, get out of here.
11:09 Close the doors, go, goodbye!
11:12 (upbeat music)