Four Questions for Entourage’s Jeremy Piven

Ari Gold shares show secrets about season five.

Thanks to the writers strike, it’s been a full year since we last saw Hollywood It boy Vincent Chase and his sponging buddies E, Turtle, and Drama living it up in L.A.—and in Colombia and France. Where will their wild ride take them next? We caught up with Jeremy Piven, the two-time Emmy winner behind Vince’s hard-charging agent, Ari Gold, to find out.

What’s happened since Vince’s movie bombed at the Cannes film festival?
You can’t pop your wheelie forever. You gotta come down sometime. And Vince is coming down in a major way. He’s hit rock bottom—grown this bushy beard and just said “fuck it” and gone to Mexico. This is, of course, impossible for someone like Ari to understand.

We hear you all head to Joshua Tree to get a little psychedelic, too.
Eric Roberts, playing himself, gives us mushrooms. And to watch a tightly wound guy like Ari eat ’shrooms and unravel is a treat.

Do you have lots of Entourage groupies?
Guys come up to me, not girls. And their reference point for me is this really abrasive character, so they give that right back. It’s pretty awkward when strangers slap you on the back when you’re standing at a urinal.

How closely does your life mirror Ari’s?
Not at all. Because he’s high-strung, people assume I’m in the belly of the beast, shoveling handfuls of pure Bolivian cocaine up my nose and barking. If I did that, my system would cease to exist. The craziest thing I do is the occasional espresso shot.