I like LA. LA is cool, but it ain't like home. Atlanta is home. All my friends are here, I grew up here. But LA is cool. It's more like a big office. It's work and you work, and you're meetin' people all the time, but it's more like acquaintances than friends and stuff. I wanted to cut down on the profanity, because I think I'm funnier without sayin' a lot of cuss words.
So I kept it to myself. Then some of my classmates started to come down to the comedy club, taking a girl out, and they started finding out I was a stand-up comedian.
It's crazy because people expect you to be funny all the time and every day is not a funny day. I go to funerals and people are like "Tell a joke" and "Say one of your lines in a movie." IT'S A FUNERAL, MAN!
I've been fortunate to work with good directors who understand improvisation and understand the way comedians work. Luc Besson let me do my thing like do what you feel and take the character to another level. Quentin Tarantino was more of an acting coach. He can teach you beats and then hell say go with it, but give this feeling. So I've been fortunate to work with good, seasoned directors.
When you're first starting out, you want to keep making good movies. When you're young and you're black, you do a bad movie and you're through.
I think real life reflects your movies. In your life, you pick stuff that influences what movie roles you wanna pick. I think if you've got an interesting life, you wanna do interesting movies about interesting things.
I tell people that stand-up's like golf: you gotta do it every day to get it down, or at least three times a week to get it down.
What?! You tell people that, I won't get no more black movies?
I will always do stand-up, even if my acting career takes off. Stand-up is my life.
