Terry Crews Kicks off 2022 With a 'Beautiful Experience' Giving Back (Exclusive)

Terry Crews is embracing connection in 2022. The Brooklyn Nine-Nine actor had a "beautiful experience" giving back to a small business that's managed to weather the pandemic, he told PopCulture.com ahead of Tuesday's Verizon 5G Ultra Show. Crews was thrilled to help give back to Malik Books in Los Angeles, a bookstore that helps give exposure to Black authors and celebrates Black culture, in a journey that was filmed for Verizon's showcase. 

It was a "pleasure" helping Malik Books owners Malik Muhammad and his wife April get their space set up with Verizon 5G Business Internet after the small business owners made a hard pivot to get their store online to ship books all over during the pandemic. "Going through the pandemic, my big question for them was, 'How did they make it through?'" Crews told PopCulture. By getting "unconventional" with their approach, not only did Malik Books survive, it actually managed to expand, even starting a podcast. 

"I had the pleasure of giving them this Ultra 5G Business Internet," Crews shared. "It was just a beautiful experience, and nobody is more deserving than Malik and his wife." Not only did Crews make a literal internet connection, but he also made a friendship connection, and the America's Got Talent host predicts he and Malik will be friends "for life" after bonding during their time together over their pasts as athletes and Crews' love of reading. "I'm a book nut – my library is gigantic," Crews told PopCulture, adding of 2022, "I plan on hanging out with [Malik] in the new year." 

Looking at the impact internet can have on a small business like Malik Books, the White Chicks star noted, "Technology is taking us to a whole different place. What's so funny and amazing is things are happening so fast now, things are changing so quickly." This month, Verizon announced more than 100 million people in 1,700-plus cities around the nation will have access to speeds up to 10 times faster than 4G LTE1 through the Verizon 5G Ultra Wideband network. 

And while he's "not really" one for making new year's resolutions, Crews is thinking about the connection we all have especially amid the COVID pandemic. "What I'm ready for is for a breakthrough with the COVID stuff," he shared. "We're two years in here and I think this is the last bit. I'm hoping that by early spring we're all vaccinated and ready to go."

Getting to start returning to more normalcy over the past few months, Crews said he almost forgot how much he loved being with other people until he attended the movie premieres of American Underdog and Spider-Man: No Way Home. "I didn't realize how much I missed being out and being among people," he said. "We're all connected, we all need each other."