Roy Wood Jr. and Jalen Rose discuss struggling before fame

If you’re in need of a deep-rooted belly laugh, look no further than Roy Wood Jr.

You’ve seen the hilarious, Birmingham, Alabama, man on “The Daily Show” or giving a hearty roast at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. He’s also had roles on huge TV hits such as “Only Murders in the Building” and “Better Call Saul.”

Roy’s spectacular journey to the limelight is a core example of why you should never let the mistakes of your youth dictate your future path.

He was blessed with the gift of gab from an early age. Roy told me on “Renaissance Man” that he honed his craft by heckling opposing teams at youth sports events as a “benchwarmer” — or a position he preferred to call “team psychologist.”

The potential for success was limitless as Roy enrolled in journalism school at Florida A&M University, but a horrible mistake was set to alter the trajectory of the young man’s life.

“I got arrested for stealing clothes,” Roy said. “I was 19 years old and I was told, ‘Yeah, you’re going to go to prison. You’ll probably do a year, but they’re going to give you five.’ ”

Roy quickly understood his actions were misguided — in his own words he realized he wasn’t “cool” for it. While awaiting his fate, he looked to break into a better lifestyle and future. 

“That’s where guts came in to [start doing] the open mikes … a sense of hopelessness and the presumption that my life was over,” Roy said. “The truth was that was just the rock bottom, ground zero reason that I needed to get me back on the path.”

That road to redemption started off with trips on a Greyhound bus to nearly every comedy club in the southeast, but there was still one more problem he had to deal with.

“I didn’t want my mom to know I was in town doing mikes. So I slept in the bus station where I’m from. Now, the problem is that I knew the whole city,” Roy said.

Eventually, word got back to his mother.

“My mama called me, livid. ‘Where you been sleeping this whole time?’ ” Roy recalled.

Instead of bringing Roy back down to a bad place, she got her son a Ford Focus for travel (and to sleep in, if need be) as he pursued his new dream.

“She did not understand why I was doing what I was doing … but she cared enough to support it in a way where I could do it safely, even if it wasn’t for her to understand,” he said.

At the end of it all, Roy was spared prison time. He has since become a driving force at the intersection of comedy and politics — and the world is a little better for that.

The fortune of Roy’s remarkable turnaround is not lost on him. He has this message to pass along to young people — especially those struggling to be their absolute best.

“The people who don’t believe in you initially, when they see your conviction, the people who are really down for you, they’re going to make a U-turn,” Roy said. “Give them space to understand you in their own time.”

There isn’t a better, textbook example of that than my good brother Roy Wood Jr. 

“It’s been a blessing to go from sleeping in a bus station to roasting the president at the Correspondents’ Dinner with my mother in attendance,” he said.

Detroit native Jalen Rose is a member of the University of Michigan’s iconoclastic Fab Five, who shook up the college hoops world in the early ’90s. He played 13 seasons in the NBA before transitioning into a media personality. Rose executive-produced “The Fab Five” for ESPN’s “30 for 30” series, is the author of the best-selling book “Got To Give the People What They Want,” a fashion tastemaker and co-founded the Jalen Rose Leadership Academy, a public charter school in his hometown.