Page 53 - ABILITY Magazine -Cedric Yarbrough Issue

(L-R) “Speechless" stars Cedric Yarbrough as Kenneth, Minnie Driver as Maya, Kyla Kenedy as Dylan, Mason Cook as Ray
They say, “So when he says—” and I’m like, “Did you noticed that it’s actually me speaking?” I’m doing a lot of dialogue within myself with J.J. It’s an inter- esting way of acting, but it seems to be working.
Martirosyan: There’s no cheat sheet on that laser board?
(laughter)
Yarbrough: No. That’s the thing also, he’s supposed to be—I probably shouldn’t be telling you all the ins and outs of Hollywood, but—
(laughter)
Yarbrough: —let’s say he’s not always spelling out what
he’s supposed to be spelling out. (laughter)
And then there are times I’m not saying what I’m sup- posed to be saying. They let me improvise and do all kinds of stuff with the show. That’s fun.
Martirosyan: Cool! [To Cooper] Do you have anything? Cooper: Yes, I have 22 questions.
Yarbrough: I can only do 21.
(laughter)
Cooper: Do you have any organizations that you’ve worked with over the years, such as nonprofits and charitable work?
Yarbrough: Most of the stuff that I’ve done has been with the Los Angeles Police Department. With Reno 911!, we did a lot of fundraising and citizens’ awareness about what the police do and what the police should be aware of when interacting with citizens.
Cooper: This is pre-‘Black Lives Matter’?
Yarbrough: Yes, this is pre-Black Lives Matter. It’s an interesting thing. I was just thinking about it. We’ve always wanted to do a Reno 911! reunion, but every- one’s busy doing other things. It’d be a little hard to do it in that there must be a balance. Why that show worked so well is because the cops were bad at their jobs. But we have a society to balance that off of. If things aren’t aboveboard in real life, then you can’t have the funny, you can’t have the fantasy, you can’t have the silliness when it’s actually true.
Cooper: Jeff Ross went in and roasted the police, and he was able to. What he did was brilliant. It’s really hard, though.
Yarbrough: Yeah, it’s definitely very hard to roast cops.
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