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RadioFree.com: My condolences on the untimely demise of No Ordinary Family. Given what happened to your character in the series finale, and the fact that his name was George St. Cloud, I'm assuming he would have gotten much more hands-on with the hero business had the show continued. Was that the specific direction for a potential second season?
ROMANY: Yeah. In the final episode of No Ordinary Family, George got powers, and he wasn't sure what they were. He was just discovering [them], and it also revealed an underworld of other people who had special powers as well. We never really discussed what it would be. You know, usually, they're playing off of something that pertains to who they are in their regular lives, and I'm wondering if George would have developed really keen hearing. I wanted the ability to stretch like Plastic Man--I wanted to be able to, like, reach 500 feet this way...
But now you're voicing Darius on Unsupervised, the season one finale of which aired last night...
Oh, my Lord! "Let's buy some rubbers!" [laughs] Was my character buying some rubbers last night?
Hey, the dude knows you gotta do something with a fake ID...
[laughs] Right. Exactly, yeah.
How did you come up with the way Darius would sound? I swear I can hear the adult-onset diabetes coming through that voice...
[laughs] It was weird. You know, they hired me because they trusted me to come correct. And they showed me some pictures prior, and I looked at the pictures and I was like, "Oh sh*t, this is my boy! This is my homie! I talk to this dude like two, three times a week. This is my boy, for real." Like I instantly knew his mindset and the whole deal. So the day I showed up and started doing it, that was all she wrote--literally, that was all she wrote. They were like, "All right. Nice."
On the one hand, he seems like a bit of a bookworm and an outcast, but on the other hand, there have been instances where he's done well socially and with the ladies. So in the final analysis, do you think Darius has game?
Darius definitely has game, but what he has is traditional game. He's got the old school game--the good guy, the chivalry, you know what I mean? Darius is not really going to come into his prime until he hits about 35...Actually, what happens is [other] people grow into it. Those women who were liking the bad boys in the beginning are going to come around and develop an appreciation for Mr. Chivalry over there. It just takes time.
 
Like a lot of fans, I knew your co-star and series creator David Hornsby from his guest appearances on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and it's great that he's taking center stage and killing it on Unsupervised. Aside from Darius, do you have a favorite character from the show?
Russ, for me, is my favorite character. [does the voice] "With the lisp"? That's my favorite character, ever since he started crying in Principal Stark's room. He called her a b*tch and then he started crying. [laughs] That sh*t...He can't say nothing without me crying. But it's true though, they're killing it. It's weird...These guys seem so regular, but when you hear them do these characters, you have to look out the booth and be like, "Who was that?"
Just as Kaitlin Olson has a signature way of saying "goddammit" as Dee on It's Always Sunny, Darius has a very specific way of saying "sh*t" that makes it sound more vulgar than it really is. Any secret to that kind of delivery?
You know, when you're speaking in the company of people, you tend to be a bit more conscious of what you're putting out socially. [But] when you're in a booth, you have free reign--there's no need for a filter. So if you hear the sh*t that Darius says in episode 11, you'll understand... [laughs] All I'm going to say is "Rihanna." It's going to exemplify exactly what I'm talking about, which is that in the booth, when you're alone, it's almost like everything is a soliloquy, and so you can take liberties that you would never take otherwise.
Have you been able to coordinate Unsupervised with all your live-action projects without too much of a scheduling problem?
Yeah, it's pretty easy. As you know, I live in New York now. I moved back, and I've been doing half the show in New York. We just talk over the phone while I record, and they play everything for me, and we've got engineers. So it hasn't been very difficult at all. It probably takes two hours out of my week. If I were here [in Los Angeles], it would probably take more like four to six hours out of my week because of the commute. But in New York, it takes two hours in the booth and about 20 minutes worth of commute.
How was your experience of switching gears from comedy to full drama mode for A Little Bit of Heaven with Kate Hudson?
Well, for me, I don't really distinguish between comedy and [drama]. I'm going to give you an extensive answer here...How did comedy come into my life? As a youngster, when there were uncomfortable situations, I learned early that I could use comedy to diffuse a situation. I learned that comedy tends to diffuse uncomfortable settings, and I learned to use comedy to do that, and I began to do it throughout my life. So I suddenly realized, as an actor, the only difference between comedy and drama is whether I choose to use comedy to deflect--so am I going to crack a joke here, or am I going to sit in the discomfort? Drama, to me, is sitting in the discomfort and just delaying the comedy. And the longer you delay the comedy, the more dramatic [it is]...It's resisting the urge to be funny, you know? There's also the discomfort of an actor in a scene [who thinks], "I might not be very good right now, I gotta pull out a trick." Resisting the urge to respond to that insecurity, as well, is a big part of it...The Good Wife is a perfect example of that--you know, there's a lot of temptation in Good Wife to be funny. But leaving the funny out, actually, has worked. I seem to be enjoying it. I think the directors are enjoying it, too.
You're very hands-on with your online presence. Is it fair to say that FunnyBlack.com is the central hub where fans can connect with you?
Yeah, Funnyblack.com is where fans contact me, and I did it because I am involved in so many different social networks...Everybody calls me the funny black guy, so I was like, "You know what? FunnyBlack! That's it: FunnyBlack!" [laughs]
The internet obviously makes it easier for artists to reach out to their fans directly. Was it a struggle to make that connection before the onset of social media?
No, because I came from hip hop, so I would go to the fans anyway. As a rapper, we would literally go to Shreveport, Louisiana, and we would go into the hoods, and we would do store signings. I've always given out my phone number since the beginning. I have a phone number that's designated specifically for the fans. Speaking of which, because of that, and that history, and the way that I interact with fans on Facebook, Google and Alchemy Networks came together and made an offer for me to do a show that I'd come up with. And the show is called Romany Meets His Friends, where I land in a city and I'm given a bicycle on a rack with a rental car, and I start going down the list, in that city, of all my Facebook friends. I contact them. If they're available, from the minute that I contact them, I have 30 minutes to spend with them. The quicker I can get to them, the more time we have to spend. And my goal is to meet as many people as I can within that weekend.
That seems like a great new mash-up of social media and reality television...
Absolutely. If you look at the way that we engage on Facebook, you gotta meet these people.
Well best of luck with the new endeavor. And thanks for your time this afternoon, I appreciate it.
I appreciate it, too. Thank you.
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