Cedric is home for new sitcom
By Gail Pennington
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
ST. LOUIS
TV Land wanted Cedric the Entertainer to make Cleveland his home. He held out for his real home: St. Louis.
In “The Soul Man,” a comedy making its debut Wednesday on the cable network, Cedric plays R&B star Boyce “The Voice” Ballantine, who has given up the fast life and moved home to take over his father’s church in the Central West End.
Viewers first met Ballantine on TV Land’s “Hot in Cleveland” in an episode that found him offering premarital advice to Betty White’s character.
“When we were talking about the new series, they asked if I wanted to be from Cleveland, but I wasn’t really comfortable with that,” Cedric says. “I said, let’s make it St. Louis, so the setup is that I leave Las Vegas and come home to St. Louis.”
As co-creator and an executive producer of “The Soul Man,” Cedric, who also co-wrote the pilot, had a hand in other details, including casting. But choosing fellow St. Louisan Niecy Nash to play his wife, Lolli, was a coincidence, he says.
The two soon compared notes about their St. Louis childhoods and some of their favorite spots.
Cedric, 48, was born Cedric Kyles (he still uses the name in his personal life) in Jefferson City and lived in Caruthersville before moving to St. Louis, where he graduated from Berkeley High School. He worked as an insurance claims adjuster here before making it in comedy.
Nash, 42, was born in California but spent much of her childhood with her grandmother, Mildred Brookins, in the Hamilton Heights neighborhood in northwest St. Louis. She often has said that she considers St. Louis home, or at least a second home, and visits family here often.
Maybe it was their similar roots, “but we had a nice rhythm together right away,” Cedric says of Nash. “We have so many connections.”
In “The Soul Man,” Boyce and Lolli Ballantine have been married for 18 years, with a teenage daughter.
When his father (John Beasley of “Everwood”) decided it was time to retire from the church he had led for many years, Boyce saw a chance to turn his life around by taking over. As viewers meet him, he’s getting comfortable in the pulpit and trying to fit into the church community, often asking God for help along the way.