My father was the role model I looked up. My dad was an entertainer, too. I patterned my life after him. He wanted me to do better than he did. He never sold a record in his life, but to me he was still a rock star.

The actors are different, although I didn't set out to be different. My inspiration came from people like Eddie Murphy, Martin Lawrence and Will Smith. The genre is what it is. My inspiration was drawn from great movies like 48 Hours, Bad Boys and Rush Hour.

Stand-up is mine. It's a part of me.

I'm not really much into politics, because it's rarely discussed in my line of work.

When I was a young kid, my pops introduced me to it. He took me to Harlem, 145th and Edgecombe, to watch the filming of Claudine with James Earl Jones and Diahann Carroll. That was my first taste of seeing a set and the cameras, and I was bit by the acting bug at a young age.

Stand-up is the foundation to my career. It's what I started out doing.

Having a daughter makes you see things in a different way. This is my only girl. So I don't care what it takes to protect her. You can call it what you want to call it. As long as you treat her the same way I treat her, like my princess, I don't mind.