Interviewed today is Cedric the Entertainer. Most people know Cedric from all those Bud Light commercials that aired almost every Sunday for a few years. But you may be surprised to learn that Cedric has been in a lot of films -- a few from the list are Barbershop, Be Cool, The Original Kings of Comedy and Intolerable Cruelty.

Opening tomorrow is Cedric’s new movie called Code Name: the Cleaner. In the film Cedric plays a regular guy named Jake who wakes up in a hotel room with no memory of who he is and how he arrived there. To add to the problems, next to him are a dead body and a briefcase of cash.

As you can probably guess from the set-up, the film is about Cedric figuring out who he is and how he got there. Also starring in the film is Lucy Liu and Nicollette Sheridan.

The interview was done a few weeks ago and in roundtable form. Cedric talks pretty honestly about how the film came together and why certain people were cast in some of the parts. Hope you enjoy it.

Cedric: How’s everybody?

Question: Tell us about the suit your wearing.

This is – let me see who this is. This is from my tailor, so it’s designed for me; it’s Reggie J. – I have my name in there. You gotta do that, cause lot of times, you don’t know whose clothes you’re wearing.

And if you ever forget your name.

Yeah, ‘Hello, I am…(looks in coat) Cedric the Entertainer. No, nice and loose; good fabric, 1000 thread count.

Have you ever considered your own clothing label?

I’ve thought about it, I’ve thought about it; something for the grown and sexy. Yeah, I might do that; it’s a hard business to be in though. You got to go and pick out the swatches –

You get to go to Paris and Italy.

Aw man, I’d have to go to Paris and Italy – maybe it’s not that hard; I’d have to think about that.

So how did this movie come about?

It started from Brett Ratner’s production company, they had the idea; we sat down and talked. And I was interested in the action/comedy, kind of get out of the ‘family guy’ stuff, and just do something where you could have some fun, knock down some walls, shoot some weapons. As we got on and started developing the script a little more, and found good spaces to add in more characters, so Lucy Liu and Nicollette got involved. It just seemed like something fun to do, so we just kept trying to work it from there.

How do you bring the ‘Cedric’ to a ‘janitor who thinks he’s a spy’ movie?

It was trying to take the ‘every man’ aspect of it; it was taking the energy from the character in the Bud Light commercials. It was just this regular, every day guy and something happens and you’re put in this extraordinary situations; so that’s the ideology behind being thrown into the circumstance. And I tried to have some fun with it, playing with the Bourne Identity of it all; kind of a comedic, looser version of it. I didn’t want to take myself too serious, but I did want to jump out of helicopters and stuff like that.

Was this kind of a tune-up for more serious action movies?

As a kid, we all had those fantasies, we get the GI Joe’s and play the Army men; I think that ideally, I’d love to have the opportunity to play the role when you play it a little more serious, action figures are something people can see you in a different light. So this was an opportunity – you had to learn how to shoot the automatic weapons, and you go through a little bit of training to shoot the weapons off and the door kicks, and they tell you exactly where to put your foot, and all that kind of stuff. And then, you start getting into it; you start dressing in the camouflage and the vest on, and I started to feel like I can do this, even though I’ve never been in the Army Reserves – I’ve barely been to the Salvation Army.

Did you really train for this one?

No, I had two hours of training – intense, though!

And training to use the buffer?

Well, yeah; that was the whole thing, cause you had the real janitors coming out saying, ‘Hey, what are you doing? You don’t buff like that, come here. Let me show you how to buff, young man.’

Are you into video games?

I play a little bit; I actually play the sports games like Madden and NBA Live. It’s been a running thing with my crew, but we have a PlayStation on the set or in my trailer; so usually, on a brake, we’re playing the game. I’m not as intense as my character, giving notes on the game, but I do play.

You’re not into the war games?

No, I don’t play anything like that – except for standing in line for a PlayStation 3; I was there and people had to look out cause I had been doing the movie, and I had been highly trained. I actually beat up three people in line.

Are you a trash talker when you play the games?

Yeah, I do; I usually trash, and that’s the thing about it. You put the comedy on top of it; and the thing is you win a few games and nobody can ever beat you. You try to get in their head from the top – ‘You don’t really belong in the sticks’ you always tell people. You always tell people, ‘You don’t belong in these sticks;’ I ain’t worried about it, the game controllers.

Do you have a PlayStation 3?

No, no, I got beat up; this little old lady beat me up. I beat up three people, and then this old lady did a shin kick on me.

What about the elevator scene with the old lady?

Hmmm…I was smackin’ some booty, the old booty smack – and that was her idea, ‘Smack it!’ I was like, ‘Damn!’ No, it was actually a – we were just having some fun with the fantasy sequences and so we thought it was a fun scene to add it. We thought about it to add in the comedy, and so when I’m hitting my guys to get on the helicopter and in my imagination, I’ve caught this little old lady who’s there on a family vacation. She seemed to enjoy it, she calls me; I get emails from her quite often, ‘Hey big boy!’

Who picks out the different versions to do for the outtakes and the various takes?

That’s kind of a directorial thing, the directors kind of get to do that; but as a producer, you come in. While they’re doing the cuts, I’ll say, ‘What about this take?’ And there would be weird things, whether the audio wouldn’t be quite right, or he didn’t like the camera angle; so at the core of it, it’s the director/producer kind of situation, but the director usually gets his way in the end. You can battle over certain things, so you pick and choose on which one’s the best one. And it’s all about the audience you’re targeting, and you’re only allowed to say ‘asses’ before you go to NC-17. ‘Do we use our fourth ‘ass’ here?’ Or ‘Do you have a better take?’ ‘Let’s not do it.’

So how many takes did you have?

It was when we were doing the scenes – I asked for a lot of takes on when I’m kind of delirious and I’m coming up. And so it was just things that I wanted to make sure we made the right choices there, but I was pretty happy though; cause I was improving a lot of ‘em, so you just vary it on taste at that point so it didn’t really matter that much to me.

Who was more nervous during the sex scene?

I think it was me; Nicollette was like, ‘Let’s do it!’ She’s a very ‘sure of herself’ kind of woman in general. Once she got the idea of the scene, and why we wanted to do it, she was cool with it; but there were moments when she climbs on top of me, and I’m trying to be an actor here, and I’ve got Nicollette Sheridan on top of me right now. So it made it a little more hard for me to stay focused.

How many alternate takes do you have for the DVD?

Oh man, there’s got to be a lot, cause I was just – we would do – a lot of the times we went until I ran out – ‘Just keep the camera rolling till I run out.’ And I’d just go down, come up with another one, go down, come up with another one; so that was fun. So when we get to the DVD, it should be other varieties and different takes that aren’t in the outtakes there.

How did Lucy Liu come to the project?

Well, she came in, but it was very important – especially in today’s movie world, to get your foreign distribution. So it was one of these things, the necessary aspects to have someone who has that kind of presence in that world; and that’s how Lucy came on as an executive producer, cause she was an important aspect of making sure we were able to openly get the movie and shoot the movie at a budget we thought was going to be necessary.

Was the good rapport with her there from the beginning?

It was actually fairly quick; I had to convince her to do the movie – it was different than what she’s done. I heard she was looking for a comedy, and I thought she was a great choice for this. But on our first meeting, she has this really infectious laugh, and she seemed like she was having a good time, so we talked about it. And then in our first meeting, I could feel we were getting along, and I could feel it was going to be unique chemistry on and off screen. And then as we worked together, and continued to grow, we had a lot of fun working on set; and I thought she brought something different than what her normal ‘she’s the tough girl’ even though we needed that – we needed her to do the kicks. She just has some quick liners she was spitting off, and it was just fun to see her in that light, a little different.

How do you look back at The Honeymooners experience?

Yeah, man; it’s one of those things that you don’t have control. I think in theory it was a great idea, and when we first started talking about it, there was one studio head who brought the idea to me and Mike (Epps) and we wanted to do the movie. We were trying to capture a different kind of energy, and then he left the studio and another executive came in and he had a whole nother idea in order to get the greenlight. So you’re halfway down the street and decide to do the movie; he was gone, and by then the whole Brad Grey regime was in and they just put the movie out. And it came out with Mr. and Mrs. Smith and Spider-Man, and it’s just not that kind of movie; you don’t put that kind of movie out along with the summer blockbusters – of course, you’re going to get your ass kicked. It just felt like a bad spade; it wasn’t that bad of a movie, it could have been a lot better, but it definitely didn’t belong in the time slot in which it came out.

Does that make you more cautious about initiating projects?

It is overall, especially having the opportunity in developing projects from the beginning; you look at the writers and come up with ideas that are great ideas. And by the time you put them into the studio’s system, and people have different hands on them, it makes them pretty difficult. And you see that especially in the African American-led films, cause we don’t have the executives on our sides to support your original idea; you don’t have anyone to say, ‘No, let’s stick to this plan.’ You have a room full of people who don’t exactly know that experiences, determining what the experience is. So you end up getting something that’s not quite what you want at the end of the movie, and that’s pretty much my experience, and it’s still the same. And I think it makes it a little difficult, but it’s a time a space now, the digital world coming up, and even Hollywood is doing a lot of self financing. And you’re starting to see people make moves – Will Smith and other people are trying to raise funds and do things where they’re going to be in control of a lot more of the product. So you’re starting to see a lot more material and movies that have better story lines and ask for a different point of view than what has been asked from the norm.

Whose idea was the cat fight?

 (raises his hand) Yeah, it was just one of those things; Jake is this character where he’s having all these crazy imaginations of different things. Of course, you have these two beautiful woman fighting over you; the guy’s not seeing the actual physical fight, he’s seeing something totally different – ‘nuff said.

Were there outtakes of that?

A few.

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