If you grow up in the South Bronx today or in south-central Los Angeles or Pittsburgh or Philadelphia, you quickly come to understand that you have been set apart and that there's no will in this society to bring you back into the mainstream.
I've been on Wall Street once in my life in 1980 as a tourist. I went to see the stock exchange when I was 18 years old. I'm not a Wall Street lawyer, I'm a Stanwix Street lawyer. Stanwix Street is a street in downtown Pittsburgh.
I come from a working-class family in Pittsburgh, whereas 'Mike & Molly' deals with the working class in Chicago. I swear a little, but I pretty much talk the same. It's not like when you see someone like Tim Allen and he's a lot bluer onstage.
I grew up when one of America's greatest black playwrights, August Wilson, was writing about life in Pittsburgh, but I never saw myself in any of his straight-male plays. And then I see 'Angels,' which was so honest and painful, and it had this black drag queen in it, Belize, with a big heart. I finally had a character to relate to.
I love Pittsburgh because it's a humble city. It's really grounded in its rich history and culture.
Pittsburgh was a great team. Coach Noll, Joe Greene, Jack Lambert, L.C. Greenwood and all those guys did a great job. That's the team that kept us from winning two Super Bowls. It was a great rivalry.
When you're from the East Coast or you're from the South, people expect you to sound a certain way. So if you don't sound that way, people won't label you as that type of artist. For me, I had a whole new lane to create for myself being from Pittsburgh and being a Midwest artist.
Winning the Super Bowl was obviously a great one, but the joy I felt of going to the Super Bowl, it was what I felt about the Pittsburgh Steelers and where we came from, the history of us to that point.
My father was an electrical engineer who worked at Westinghouse in Pittsburgh. When I was growing up, my mother wrote humor columns for the local paper. She was the Erma Bombeck of Murrysville, Pa.
Everyone's like, 'Oh, you must live in L.A., the glamorous life,' and I really don't. I'm in a small house, in Pittsburgh, in the snow.