James Earl Jones and Cedric the Entertainer on the set of Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins David Lee/Courtesy of Universal

Where do you live now?
I live in LA now and I've been out here for about 12 years with my wife, family, and kids.

Do you go back home often?
I go back to Missouri. I spend a lot of my time in St. Louis, but I also grew up in Caruthersville, Missouri as well from when I was a little kid until when I was about nine or ten. I lived in a small, rural town in Missouri and I still have some relatives there. So I'll go down there and visit as well sometimes. [When you're in Caruthersville] you sit out on the porch and wave when people go by. That's it. That's pretty much the activities you get. You get in the car and you drive around a few blocks.

It's idyllic.
Yes. This is country life. People will ride past and you wave every time they go past. You don't see that much in any metropolitan area. In any metropolitan area it'd be like, "What you waving at? Why you lookin' at me? Whaaaat?" [The other guy will say] " I ain't going down the street. They're always sitting around waving at somebody." And you're like, "Sorry, it's a wave. How does that hurt you?"

And smiling is also seen differently.
Right. Like, How you doing? [Pretending as though he's being ignored.] "I…spoke…to…you…earlier." "Heeey naw." That's the one [thing they say in more country places]: "He-eey naw."

Any thoughts on the state of the industry? What do you think about the writers strike?
I am a Writers Guild Member, but also being a screen actor and a television actor. I have a show that I sold at ABC that's basically sitting in limbo. I have movies that I've sold that didn't get greenlit before the strike, so they're sitting in limbo. It's a slow enough business as it is when things are moving. [It's] what we call "analysis paralysis." Everybody's got to analyze something and finally you get a movie made three years later. But now you put this strike in the middle of it and it just makes it extremely not hopeful. I think that on one level the writers, we are very much fighting for things that are necessary. The revenue sharing of DVDs nowadays has to be increased. The revenue sharing of the Internet model has to be increased. And there should be a way to come to an agreement on that. I know that the producers on their side are saying, "Hey, this is what we represent because we're spending all the money and we're taking all the chances." And at the same time, the revenue is coming a lot faster nowadays and they are basically devaluing the properties that they have the writers waiting on to come.

Syndication used to be the thing where you wait five years. You do a hundred episodes and you wait the five or six years and [after that period] hopefully you go sell it and you make a lot of money, but now they'll put a whole season of your show on before your fall season comes out. So now, what are people waiting five years for? They already have it. They're basically taking the value out, so by the time you're waiting on syndication they've made all their money back and then they can't really sell it for the value it used to have. To tell me to wait on that while you're getting paid right now is like an unfair kind of scenario.

What are your upcoming projects?
I have the show at ABC that's basically sitting there. Once the writer's strike is over, we look forward to getting that into production. I'm going to start a movie called Cadillac Records that's coming up with Adrien Brody, Jeffrey Wright, Beyonce, and myself. It's a very cool movie about the story of Chess Records — a legendary, great record label that started a lot of blues and rock and roll and a lot of these great performers. The film starts shooting in March.

Are you working on any music projects?
Me? I went onstage with a blues band the other night, which was really fun. I did a big comedy show and then afterwards I went to this kind of after hours spot and there was a blues band playing onstage and I went up and performed and it was a good time.

What did you perform?
I just made up this song about eating soul food. You know, with a blues riff you can sing just about anything. Whatever it was, you could just start singing about it. I sang about soul food.

READ MORE: Mike Epps of Roscoe Jenkins