I love being on stage, I love being able to tell a story, I love the fact that the audience listens and laughs at it. It makes me happy, and it’s what I live for.
I got a chance to work with Stallone and De Niro – pretty much sums it up for me. You can tell where you’re going in your career by the company you keep.
I read so much stuff that black women say, especially about my relationship. ‘Oh, he left his black wife to go be with some exotic chick.’ First of all, my girl is black: she’s Jamaican.
I’ve done a great job at being universal in my stand-up, which is why, for ‘Let Me Explain,’ I toured all over the world. These movies I have coming out – ‘Ride Along,’ ‘Grudge Match,’ ‘About Last Night,’ ‘Think Like a Man Too’ – are putting me in a position to become universal on an even bigger scale.
You definitely want your kids to understand their heritage, but I don’t want my kids to just focus on being black. They are people. I don’t want them to judge other people or to be judged.
Every relationship should eventually become a long-term relationship. Any director that I meet now isn’t just a director. He’s potentially a friend, and someone I can call to do a project that I want or that I have.
Whatever is on the page is what I’m married to. I’m very prepared. I’m a thespian. I don’t like to improv. I don’t like to go off course ’cause I think that’s where stuff happens. When you stick to the material ’cause it’s written so well, that’s where the magic happens.
You do it to challenge yourself. You do it because, naturally, in the profession of acting, you want to show growth. You want to say that you take the craft seriously.
