"I'm not taking my wife, so I didn't really want to tell her where this was," says Cedric the Entertainer about The Comedy Festival. Either his spouse is pretty darn gullible or she doesn't watch TV—or he's, you know, kidding—because once he appears on TBS's upcoming two-hour special, Earth to America!, she'll probably realize that something's up.
Serving as the festival's kickoff, America!—which will call attention to the effects of global warming—tapes at Caesar's Colosseum on November 17, featuring such comedic hard-hitters as Larry David, Al Franken, Christopher Guest, Steve Martin, Ray Romano, Ben Stiller, Wanda Sykes, and yes, Mr. Entertainer.
"With all the hurricanes and fires and all these kinds of things that happened this year, there's plenty of stuff to talk about," the Barbershop and Honeymooners star says. "It's a great cause, just bringing awareness to the world that we live in and how we have these great environmental concerns. That's the reason for my involvement, and I'll just go up and have a good time with some fellow comedians. That's what it's all about for me."
Even after the television appearances and the movies and even writing a book (2002's Grown-A$$ Man), what is it is about stand-up comedy that keeps him coming back?
"Onstage is the place where the commentary is truly your own," says the one of the Original Kings of Comedy. "When you do televison and you do film, you have writers and producers and you have the networks and everybody who has an objective and a goal of what they want to portray and how it needs to come off. It's also so immediate. A TV show you can shoot in one day and it comes on the next week. And the same thing with a movie; you can shoot it in October and the movie won't come out until next October. You don't know if it's still relevant or even what you said. But the thing with stand-up is it's live and it's in the moment and you get a response from the crowd. That kind of charges something in you that you just can't replace."