Cedric the Entertainer has his eyes set on Broadway after eight years of starring in CBS’s “The Neighborhood.”
Co-starring Tichina Arnold, Max Greenfield, Beth Behrs, and the series finale will air on May 11.
”I don’t think it really hit us until the afterparty,” Cedric told PEOPLE. “I was looking around that room, going, This is the last day this group of people will be together in this capacity.’”
For his next endeavor, Cedric has already begun rehearsals for the Broadway revival of August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.
The highly anticipated play also stars Taraji P. Henson. Cedric said it was an “opportunity to stretch and do something totally different than being a TV dad.”
“It’s like riding a horse,” he says. “You can feel the emotion of the horse, and that horse can feel your emotions. When you’re performing live, you can tell when you’ve got the audience in the palm of your hand. And when you’re losing them.”
You can’t be riding off your old laurels talking about the Original Kings of Comedy days,” he continued. “Nobody wants to hear it. What’s funny now? You’ve got to turn it up.”
Cedric said that growing up in the Midwest taught him to be a “regular guy,” although he’s enjoyed an incredibly successful career.
“I just keep it regular: Say good morning, say goodnight, say goodbye,” he says, before joking, “Other than having a barber on call and a driver and security and a chef, I’m just a regular guy!”
While he has several film credits, television gave him the stability he needed for his family.
“You would have to go and be in Prague, Ireland, or Canada for four or five months to do a film. And you’d be away from your family, because once the kids got to an age where they had schedules and they had to be in school, they couldn’t necessarily come,” he says. “You just start to feel like you’re missing out on way too much life. Television allowed me to go to work and pick the kids up from school.”
August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone premieres on April 25.