Actor Jeremy Piven asked his mother Joyce to help him rehearse lines for his unforgettable role as Ari Gold in the hit HBO series “Entourage.”

“It was a racy scene, but my mother is a professional,” said Piven. “She knew it was just a character.”

Piven didn’t hesitate in asking mom for help. She and his dad, Byrne, founded Piven Theatre in Evanston, Ill.

His parents were actors and drama teachers. Piven and his sister Shira grew up around performers, which led to his time on “Entourage.”

“I think I have the acting and the performing gene in me,” he said.

He has since taken his career from the big screen and television to the stage and comedy. He will perform on Friday and Saturday at Pittsburgh Improv Comedy Club in Homestead.

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Hanging with my mom always makes me emotional. She is such a young spirit and has so much wisdom and gives it to me straight. It’s important that we hang out with people of other generations, so much to learn… #family

A post shared by Jeremy Piven (@jeremypiven) on May 28, 2019 at 4:17pm PDT

This will be his first time in Pittsburgh. He said he heard about country singer Garth Brooks drawing the biggest-ever crowd for a ticketed event in the city.

“I am so excited about coming to Pittsburgh,” said Piven, who lives in Hollywood Hills, Calif. “I am no Garth Brooks, so I don’t expect 80,000 people, maybe 80. I welcome the challenge.”

Piven said acting and stand-up comedy are related.

“They both have the same engine but different gears,” he said. “The skills I have learned through acting have led me to stand up. Through doing comedy an audience gets a sense of who I am and what I think is funny.”

A lot of the material he uses comes from his life experiences, he said. He said a comedian does have to have a spine to do a show and know where he is going with it.

“But every audience is different,” he said. “And no two shows are the same, because it’s live. These shows aren’t cookie cutter…each one is unique.”

He said there are many brilliant comics he looks up to, including Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, Dave Chappelle and Richard Pryor as well as talented females who have emerged such as Iliza Shlesinger, Ali Wong and Sarah Silverman.

“And we all need to laugh more than ever because this is such a confusing time for our nation,” Piven said.

Growing up in Chicago, he was one of the few Jewish kids playing football. He said he learned about racism. When he heard about the Tree of Life tragedy in Squirrel Hill, he thought of the horrible impact of hate.

“This is an incredibly strange time we are living in,” he said. “We are all in this together. That was an insanely terrible thing that happened at Tree of Life. It was so hateful. Racism and hate are taught.”

Piven will visit Tree of Life on Saturday morning. He was invited by Rabbi Hazzan Jeffrey Myers to do an Aliyah, a segment of a reading from the Torah, and will have lunch with the congregation.

“I will be honored to reach out to Tree of Life,” Piven said.

Comedy can help in times of stress, because it connects everyone, he said.

“We all have the same fears and when you share that with people we can all connect and that is kind of magical,” he said.

“We all experience setbacks in our lives which are ways for us to figure out who we are and to come back even stronger. I saw all of the love from Pittsburgh when that happened. I can’t wait to get to Pittsburgh and mix it up with them.”

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