Photograph courtesy of TV Land
In comedy, timing is everything. The same might be said of Cedric the Entertainer’s and Niecy Nash’s paths from St. Louis to Hollywood. Cedric Kyles moved to Los Angeles in 1993—after working as an insurance claims adjuster at State Farm and moonlighting at East St. Louis’ The Wiz comedy club. The comedian lived up to his stage name, hosting BET’s ComicView, starring on The Steve Harvey Show, and reigning as one of The Original Kings of Comedy. He lends his voice to Maurice, the stocky lemur in this summer’s Madagascar 3. St. Louis native Carol “Niecy” Ensley dreamed of being a dramatic actress, years before starting a family with a minister named Don Nash. It wasn’t until her early thirties that she landed the role of a sassy cop on Comedy Central’s Reno 911! Niecy went on to host Style Network’s Clean House and waltz on Dancing With the Stars. Now, she and her second husband, Jay Tucker, star on the TLC reality show Leave It to Niecy alongside their four children. This month, Cedric and Niecy play husband and wife with the debut of TV Land’s The Soul Man. The sitcom revolves around Cedric’s character, Rev. Boyce “The Voice” Ballentine, a one-time R&B singer known for the hit “I Wanna Have Sex With You.” Ballentine’s still adjusting to the holy life—and a recent move to (where else?) St. Louis.
What are your earliest memories of St. Louis?
NN: I was in St. Louis when I decided to become an actress. I was with my grandmother, watching TV, and the soap operas were interrupted by another program, and I saw the most gorgeous woman I had ever seen in my little five years of living. She had on a long red dress and these beautiful eyelashes. I said, “Oh my God, Grandmamma! Who is that?” She said, “Baby, that’s Lola Falana.” I said, “That’s what I want to be, right there: black, fabulous, and on TV.”
CE: Being a 10-year-old kid from a little ol’ country town [Caruthersville], St. Louis seemed like the biggest metropolis in the world at the time. We would come up and visit my mother’s relatives, so my first entry into St. Louis was to the North Side… When my mom got a job, we moved out to Berkeley. Being a little kid, all I knew was there was a park in the backyard and a swimming pool down the street—you might as well have thought I moved to Beverly Hills, man. I thought I was living so high on the hog! I went back to visit my old house not too long ago, and I couldn’t believe how small it was. As a kid, though, I thought we were the Beverly Hillbillies!
When did you realize that you could make a living from comedy?
NN: Even as a child, I was funny…but no one knew it was a gift—they’d just say, “Oh, that girl is so silly.” It wasn’t until ’93, when my brother [Michael Ensley] was murdered and I was using comedy to help heal my mother, that I realized that it was a gift. I was like, “OK, there’s a lot of people outside suffering, Niecy. Don’t be selfish; go outside and spread some of this funny around.”
CE: It was around the same time that I started working at State Farm… I was encouraged by a friend of a friend who used to borrow my jokes. We would be hanging out, having a good time, and he would go, “Can I use that?” … This guy came home after one weekend and said, “I made $1,400 this week.” I’m like, “Doing what?!” And he’s like, “You know, doing comedy.” I was like, “$1,400? For doing my jokes?! I’m in the wrong gig!” So I started doing comedy at night, and that was the start of my career, out at the Westport Funny Bone.
What are your favorite haunts when you return to St. Louis?
NN: We’ve gotta do a couple things. One, we have to find out whether any of the restaurants that I used to love are still there. Can someone take me to get toasted ravioli from Talayna’s? Can somebody take me to get some fried fish from Hatfield’s & McCoy’s? Can somebody take me to Steak ‘n Shake? Because we don’t have that on the West Coast. Then, it becomes, “Grandma, when are you cooking? Thank you for making chicken ’n’ dumplings and roast; I need some greens.” And then my Uncle Turk will have to make up some barbecue and peach cobbler. So there’s a whole food science to coming home.
CE: My mom’s house is one of the first stops. Then, I like to go to The Cigar Club at the Ritz-Carlton; it’s a hangout spot for me and my manager, who still resides in St. Louis. And I like Oceano Bistro in Clayton.
Now, you both live and work in Los Angeles. Besides rent, how’s it compare?
NN: From the woman’s point of view, there’s a different caliber of glamour in Los Angeles. When I go home now, even if I wasn’t a known personality, I think I would stick out like a sore thumb. You can’t go back in that humidity, honey, with five packs of hair on, eyelashes, and a full face of makeup. You think you can until you get out there in that heat… In L.A., it’s also so chill that you can meet somebody in a grocery-store line and end up hanging out with them the rest of the day. In St. Louis, people are a little more unto themselves, unto the people they know.
CE: L.A. is a city where it’s like, “We’ll get to it.” St. Louis is very blue-collar—you get up and get your day started. But the most noticeable thing is the dress code. We used to always joke that in St. Louis, people wake up and put on their best clothes and you ask them where they’re going, and they’re like, “I don’t even have plans on going anywhere. I just want to look nice, in case something happens.” In L.A., you’ll see people in church with flip-flops.
Would Rev. Boyce “The Voice” Ballentine allow flip-flops at church?
CE: Oh no, that would be a whole reason to get put out of church!
What’s the back story of Rev. Boyce—apart from the fact that the character evolved from TV Land’s Hot in Cleveland?
CE: To me, it was always funny to think, “What if R. Kelly gets saved in his later life and becomes a minister?” It’s like, “This is the dude that sang ‘Half on a Baby’!” You’ve also got great examples like Al Green and the rapper Mase, all these people that made the transition. I thought it was a world that allowed me to be entertaining, and at the same time play a character that’s flawed but trying to find his way through it.
Did you ever consider being a minister in real life?
CE: Ever since I was a kid, my aunts always said, “Boy, you’re going to be a preacher one day.” When you see guys like T.D. Jakes and Joel Osteen making so much money with their churches, it’s like, “That’s not a bad business tax-free.” It’s the wrong motivation, but yeah, I think I would cross over. [Laughs.]
How did you two first meet?
NN: We were at the premiere of Cedric’s movie The Honeymooners. I was making my way to the bar, and he turned around and said, “Hey, there’s a role in my next movie that I think you would be perfect for.” … I questioned it at first, but he proved me wrong. He ended up putting me in his movie [Code Name: The Cleaner]. I told him, “Ced, I love people who do what they say and say what they do.”
CE: When I met her at the casting session, she was energetic and outrageous and over-the-top funny… It was like lightning in a bottle.
NN: The first day I got there, we had to take pictures as if we were a couple. The back story was that we got drunk at a company Christmas party, and we got in the display of the manger and started taking all these photos. So it was like, “Hello, how are you doing? I’m in my little sexy Santa outfit—and boom, let’s go take some wild pictures!” … One of the photos we took is actually used as set dressing in the sitcom we’re shooting now.
How did you both land on The Soul Man?
CE: We met at a Cheesecake Factory [roughly a week before Niecy’s audition] to get lunch. The big irony was that this [role] mirrored her real life. So when I was telling her about the show, she would gasp. Every time I would say something, she was like, “Cedric, are you making this up right now, or are you serious?” I’m like, “What are you talking about?”
NN: I was like, “Cedric, you’re playing a pastor—did you know that I was married to a pastor?” My ex-husband was an R&B singer. It was just one thing after another. I could not believe it, down to the part that I found out the wife [in the show] is a beautician. I said, “You know, all through high school and college, I was a kitchen beautician!” I was like, “This is getting crazier by the minute.”
CE: She said, “This is my story! I can’t even believe this.” There were all these parallels. And I had no idea she’s originally from St. Louis! We found all that out while sitting and drinking strawberry lemonades at Cheesecake Factory.
Do you draw from your own experiences for the part, Niecy?
NN: Absolutely. I say that some roles you were born to play; in this case, it was a role I was divorced to play… When [my ex-husband] got called into the ministry, just like Cedric’s character, it upset the whole apple cart. When the father is called into the ministry, the whole family is called—we’re all along for the ride. We have to figure out how to navigate in this new world as well.
And that’s not easy.
NN: Especially when you’re a woman with a great rack! Hey, cleavage is a girl’s calling card, and now, “What?! Put these girls away? Where am I going to put ’em?”
What it’s like to play husband and wife on TV?
NN: I just got married, and my new husband is not in entertaining, so he was very nervous about Cedric and I having to kiss. He was like, “Wait a minute. Let me go talk to the director or someone, so they can take that part out.” … But then he came to the taping and met Cedric, and he was like, “You have such a wonderful chemistry together. I love this show, and I love you guys together.” I was like, “Oh, thank you!” And he said, “On camera.”
Cedric recently joked about being approached by Dancing with the Stars. But he insisted the show can’t handle him. Do you have any advice for him if he were to go on the show?
NN: From a Season 10 alum, he would be perfect—if he leaves his dancing moves at home.
On Leave It to Niecy, you said family and show business don’t come with instructions. If they did, though, what would those instructions say?
NN: Proceed with caution! Windy road ahead! At the same time, I’ve come to know that with the challenges that are going to come, if your heart is in the right place in trying to navigate the terrain, you will come out ahead. You just can’t get weary in well-doing.
CE: It’s definitely a hard business, because you spend so much time away. As the breadwinner, when you get hot in this business, you have to take advantage of that, so look for the opportunities where you can do it all. When my kids were young, I did movies where I could bring my family with me. Now that they’re older, I went and looked for an opportunity where I can do television and just kind of hang around with the little folks. It is what it is: You have to try to do it all—that’s the gift and the curse of it.
