Cedric The Entertainer has a lot on his plate these days — ranging from a couple of upcoming new films, to his continuing role hosting “Who Wants to Be A Millionaire” (to a new reality show to his own line of men’s hats.
The actor and comedian called Wednesday to share his latest doings with his Chicago fans.
Q: Now that you’ve been hosting “Millionaire” for awhile, do you feel you have become any smarter? Do you impress your friends with little tidbits of obscure knowledge?
A: You find yourself at dinner parties thinking you do know the answers to things. You hear a little piece of an answer and you start thinking, ‘I’ve got all this great knowledge. I think I probably get on people’s nerves now. I’ll come up with something like, ‘Back in Macedonia in 1847…’ and my friends will say, ‘Really! NO, NO, NO!!! We’re eating out pizza right now. Quit that!’
Seriously though, I do love it when we come up with theme weeks — like the one starting Feb. 24. It’s a nice prelude to the Oscars for movie buffs — lots of good questions tied to the movies.
Q: What new movies do you have coming out?
A: “Haunted House 2” is out April 18. I love working with the Wayans. The first film did really well. They are so good at building quirky, spoofy brands like this one and like ‘Scary Movie.’ … I also have a Chris Rock project coming, but I don’t think they have a name for that yet. It’s a big funny movie. Chris used his comedy powers to pull in all his friends. J.B. Smoove, Tracy Morgan, Seinfeld. Everybody’s in this movie!
Q: How is your hat line doing?
A: It’s great, but I wish I had marketed that Pharrell [Williams] hat from the Grammys! That Deputy Dogg, Dudley Do-Right hat. Now people are going to go get quirky hats!
Q: Tell me about your upcoming reality show.
A: “Barbershop Battle” is a reality series. Basically, we will be going to different cities and qualify barbers to challenge each other’s cuts. We will profile the world of the barber and what that is, plus their technique and skill sets. But we’ll have challenges — like they might have to cut with dull scissors. But there will also be challenges against each other — like ‘Cutthroat Kitchen.’
For example we might have somebody cutting the Chicago skyline in somebody’s head — and we’ll do our big challenges in iconic locations. Like in Chicago we might, for example go to Soldier Field. We want interesting backdrops.
Barbers are the cornerstone of their neighborhoods, but have not really had the chance to shine and show their skills.
Barbers are the cornerstone of the neighborhood – not really had the chance to shine before and show their skills. Plus most of them have very interesting personalities. We should get a lot of great soundbites. There will be 10 episodes. We’ll start taping in May and it’s expected to air this summer on CW.
