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CEDRIC THE ENTERTAINER on playing the role of Ralph:
“It was something to consider. [Original series star] Jackie Gleason and his character Ralph Kramden were such iconic figures. It means so much to so many people that I wasn’t sure that it was something that I really wanted to do. But I got a real strong vote of confidence from the studio executive at Paramount, according to him he thought I was the only guy that could play Ralph Kramden in these modern times, to capture the everyman aspect. So I had to look at it and decide if I thought I could pull this off.”
MIKE EPPS (Norton):
“I’m not going to lie to you, when I heard about The Honeymooners it was like, ‘Whoa, they want me to play a black version of Ed Norton? I’ve got to play my version of Ed Norton.’ It was really touchy, because this guy’s an icon, people love Art Carney, and he was hilarious. I really wasn’t old enough to be a fan of the show, so I went and bought a hundred episodes of The Honeymooners and I watched them every day, and they were hilarious. I picked up Norton’s antics, how he was always getting ready to do something and it took him forever to get it done. I thought I could add just a couple of those things, but be myself.”
CEDRIC:
“What I didn’t want to do was an imitation of Gleason, and it’s very easy to do because Ralph Kramden was such a dynamic character. Once I got the role, I got the box set and I probably looked at about six of the episodes. I thought it was going to be important to hit the voice from time to time and get his irritation to a certain degree, but also make him lovable.”
EPPS:
“This movie was very story-driven, because of the relationships, that’s how the sitcom was written - it was about the relationships more than anything. So the director and the producers demanded that we stick to some of the dialogue because it carried the movie. Some scenes we were allowed to adlib, and by the time John Leguizmo came into the movie, that’s all we were doing.”
JOHN LEGUIZAMO:
“When you’ve got Cedric and Mike, the script should just be a blueprint. There was this unwritten law that you have to be funnier than everybody else on every take. I had to go to my trailer and just crash and relax my brain, because I had to try to be funnier than Cedric and Mike Epps on each take. And they want you to be. It’s not like a bad competitive thing, it’s like a cool competitive thing, a dream scenario for a comedian.”
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THE CONCEPT:
