- [on replacing Monty Hall as host of Let's Make a Deal (2009) in 2009]: They got me because they wanted someone a little edgier, but I get that it is daytime, so I am not going to say, 'Hey bitch, what's behind Door No. 1?' But it lets me push it as far as you can in the daytime schedule, because it is a Vegas audience.
- I was teased horribly as a child and beaten up a lot. I had a horrible stutter; I got my butt kicked by bigger kids in school for breakfast, lunch and tea. I want my child to not be that person. I want her to be popular. I want her to have self-confidence. I want her to be comfortable being herself because those were the things that I never had.
- [on Reeko the Skunk]: Stuart showed Reeko that he could take down that wall, and just let people like him for him. At one point I say, 'You don't like me because I'm a skunk,' and they say, 'No, we don't like you because you're a jerk.' He couldn't understand that. There was a good lesson there."
- [In 2008]: This is what I was built for, I can't save a life; that's why I didn't become a doctor. I can't drive a 16-wheeler. There are a lot of things in life I can't do, but I'll be damned if I can't get on a stage and entertain.
- The old adage is, you strike while the iron is hot. I've been blessed enough that my irons have been hot-to-warm-to-hot for the past 10 years. So I'm still striking.
- To be honest, I have no desire to turn into the king of game shows. I consider myself an actor foremost, and a writer and singer, and I still tour and do Broadway shows.
- I know that I might be a role model, especially being a young Black man on TV. And I'm fine with that because I stand behind what I do. I do a great job. I do a clean job. So if that gets me made fun of by another Black actor, then so be it. And if some kid in the projects or even in the suburbs watches what I do and says, 'I want to be like that,' then I've won.
- [About his birth parents (2003)]: My father, who was in the Army, moved around. He didn't want me to have that life so he had his mother raise me, but he would still come. She actually kept me fixed in one place in Orlando, and I'm forever grateful for that. I don't talk about my mother because I really don't know her well, so it's nothing that I go into. She's alive and fine, but in the press I refer to my grandmother as my mother. Nothing bad, I just don't really know her. My grandmother IS my mother, she's everything to me.
- [About his ex-wife Mandie and daughter Maile (2003)]: My wife is from Hawaii, but she's not Hawaiian. She's part Japanese, part Caucasian, so our little girl now has all of that plus me. She's named Maile, which is the name of the most beautiful-smelling plant ever.
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