Cedric “The Cleaner,” this time |Slowly but steadily, Cedric the Entertainer is building his empire.
He started out as a standup comedian, in which capacity he first gained fame as a member of “The Original Kings of Comedy.” Cedric later graduated to television, co-starring on “The Steve Harvey Show” (1996-2002), and movies, with supporting parts in “Big Momma’s House” (2000), “Barbershop” (2002) and “Intolerable Cruelty” (2003). He eventually hosted his own variety show, “Cedric the Entertainer Presents” (2002-2003), and starred in and produced the films “Johnson Family Vacation” (2004) and “The Honeymooners” (2005).
“I think that, for me, it’s always been a step-by-step process,” the 42-year-old says. “I’m the kind of person who enjoys the ride. I’m never really in a hurry to get anywhere in particular, so I’m always enjoying the ride along the way. So, with that, I think good things have come my way.
“When I was just doing standup, it was all about being on the road, going city to city, doing the shows,” Cedric continues. “When I had the opportunity to do television, ‘The Steve Harvey Show’ was a great run. I’d go to work every day and have fun developing the character. Now I’m doing a lot of movies.”
Cedric’s current project is “Code Name: The Cleaner,” a comedy that he produced and stars in. It opens Jan. 5.
A corpse and cash
He plays Jake, a man who awakens in a hotel room to find himself lying next to a corpse and a briefcase containing $250,000. Jake is a humble janitor, but he soon meets a gorgeous woman (Nicollette Sheridan) who claims to be his wife and then a waitress (Lucy Liu) who claims to be his girlfriend. And he thinks he’s a CIA operative known as “The Cleaner,” and in that identity embarks on a mission involving a major arms deal.
“I wanted to do an action comedy, something where I could have some fun, kick down some doors, shoot off some automatic weapons,” Cedric says. “That’s how I got involved in ‘The Cleaner,’ and it made it easier to say yes when I knew that Lucy Liu and Nicollette Sheridan were in the movie with me.”
The film was written specifically with Cedric in mind. And during the shoot, the ever-amiable Cedric says by telephone from a Los Angeles hotel, he, Liu and Sheridan took plenty of liberties with the script.
“Really, I wanted Jake to have this everyman attitude,” Cedric says. “He’s just a regular guy, but something crazy happens in his life and he suddenly thinks he’s something else. That’s what we did shaping the script, getting a good feel for him on his regular job and then how he’s thrown into this extraordinary situation. So we had that in the script and then, on the set, we added in my kind of humor. I did some improvising from take to take.
“Lucy wanted to do a comedy,” he continues. “She’d been doing a lot of action movies, and this one was just fun. So she had her comedy game on and put her flavor on it too.”
“I like the movie,” he says. “As a comedian, because it’s been eight or nine months ago that we shot it, you always think of things you could have done better. You wish you’d done this or done that, or could get that joke back, but overall I think we captured the idea of what we wanted to do.”
“Web” still in theaters
When “The Cleaner” opens, Cedric’s other recent film, “Charlotte’s Web,” will still be in the middle of its theatrical run. The well-received family feature boasts an all-star voice cast that includes Kathy Bates, John Cleese, Robert Redford, Julia Roberts and, as the married geese Golly and Gussy, Cedric and Oprah Winfrey. Cedric previously lent his voice to the television series “The Proud Family” (2001-2005) and the films “Dr. Dolittle 2” (2001), “Ice Age” (2002) and “Madagascar” (2005).
“The thing about the animated films is that I have kids and I do a lot of movies that kids just cannot see, so I do them because kids, especially my kids, can see me in these animated movies,” says Cedric, the father of two. “‘Charlotte’s Web’ was a classic book that people grew up on and they love the story, so it was just fun to be a part of something like that.”