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I was raised by very traditional Southern parents with Southern manners. You don't air your dirty laundry to people that aren't your family or your friends. Why would I ever want to portray myself as anything other than together?

It's really rare that you come across a Southern character that's not stereotyped, vilified or aggrandized.

I like the fact that I'm from the South and that I have this rich history behind me. I come from a family of storytellers. They can't just tell you how someone went to the store. They have to tell you who they saw, what they were wearing, what they said, what they had in their grocery cart.

I just developed my act way back in the late '80s. I went to college in Georgia, so I picked up the Southern accent. I talked like that with my friends all the time, because it was fun. It was funny... All my friends were real Southern. We're buddies, so I'd say stuff to make them laugh. So that was pretty much it.

You know, I'm from the South, and I wasn't interested in perpetuating a stereotypical southern character.

I have a wonderful family: My parents are churchgoing, salt-of-the-earth Southern people. They gave me a lot of love and are so unaffected by fame.

My particular lifetime, my individual profile, represents something very basic to African-American history and culture because I was a second generation immigrant, so to speak, from the South. My grandfather was born in South Carolina - well, both grandfathers were born in the South.

You know, a lot of those angry sort of Southern man characters that I've been doing are based on different people I might've had as, like, a soccer coach or as a teacher.

My ancestors fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War; I was raised in Natchez, Miss.; I performed in the Confederate Pageant for a decade; I dug ditches and loaded trucks with black men who taught me more than any book ever could; and I graduated from Ole Miss. Anyone who survived that is a de facto expert on the South.