I'm from Long Beach - not the best area in the world - and I had a lot of ghetto friends growing up.

When you're young, it's all about the society of school and being cool, but they don't understand that somebody can be different and live a different lifestyle and still be a regular person. I was the same way when I was a kid.

As an actor, you're always worried about getting stuck on a show that's not good because working actors need the paycheck. So being cast on a regular procedural, where everything gets wrapped up by the end of the episode, was always a fear of mine because that doesn't really test you as an actor.

People usually spend the first two months playing themselves up, not really being themselves. You waste those two months - and then they tell you, 'You're not who I was dating the first month!'