Act Like You Got Some Sense

My grandparents told me they wanted me to have every tool in my toolbox—the educational tool, the artistic tool, the discipline tool, the moral tool. My grandmother wanted me to be worldly enough that I would be able to connect with any person in any room I walked into. She also wanted me to have a strong moral compass, because she knew when I moved away from Terrell and got out in the world, there would be many temptations and times when I needed to be able to say "No." Probably should've said no to a few movies, but you can take that up with my agent.

Granny wasn't above using every form of manipulation that she could conjure, wanting me to understand that the only way I would become special was through hard work. And sometimes, when I didn't want to practice the piano, she would actually break down in tears.

"I done did everything I can," she said through her sobs. "You just don't care."

I looked at her and felt the pain working its way through my chest. Damn, bruh, you made Granny cry?

"I don't want you to blow it," she said. "I don't want you to be here. I don't want you to be stuck here in Terrell."

I didn't completely understand what she was doing and saying, but I did sit my ass down at the piano and finish my lesson. My grandmother truly whipped me into shape, and to really understand me and how I look at the world, you need to get to know her.

Estelle Talley was the most influential figure in turning little nappy-headed Eric Bishop into the man I eventually became.

Granny was a tough lady…Basically, Granny was a badass bitch. Everybody in Terrell knew you better not step to Estelle with nothing "messy," as she liked to call it, unless you wanted to get your ass handed back to you. But she never looked scary and was always well put together—all this power was in a tidy little box with a bow. She was Madea long before Tyler Perry put on the pumps and the gray wig. But unlike in Madea Goes to Jail, Granny wasn't going to no jail, because the cops were scared of her too. She was a typical Taurus—which means she was blunt and stubborn as hell. A muumuu-wearing, .380-packing, churchgoing Taurus. With a little bit of cursing-your-ass-out on the side.

She showed me that there are ways to get away with always acting your truth. Her reason for being able to get away with it is that she practically raised our entire town.

For thirty years, she had her own nursery-school/day-care/can-I-just-leave-my-kids-here-for-a-minute-so-I-can-go-hang-with-my-boo place. The children at the nursery ranged from the white mayor's kids from across the tracks to the Black principal's kids from the southside. And me. She watched over us all and carried a very big stick—though when she thought I needed an ass-whupping, she usually handed that job to my grandfather (unfairly, I'd get more ass-whupping than other kids). She believed that a strong foundation of discipline allows young men and women to grow into strong, responsible adults.

There were many great days I remember at the nursery, running around with my little homies, playing games, watching television. Granny made sure we took care and respected ourselves, and that our bellies were full, even if we weren't entirely sure what they were full of. We spent a lot of time trying to figure out the mystery of the brownish-gray mush on Mystery Meat Mondays, but my grandmother was as tight-lipped as a KGB spy. Years later, she slipped up and finally told me the identity of the mystery meat: possum. Before you trip, let me say it wasn't bad. Very fatty, a little gamey. But we were country-ass kids—we wouldn't have cared.

For three decades, I would see the kids she raised grow up to be men and women—Black and white—and come to her for advice as they were figuring out how to raise their own kids. She never turned anyone away. But she didn't have no time for people coming around and being "messy," which meant engaging in any kind of behavior she thought was tacky, crude or dumb. If you were messy, she definitely let you know what was going on. Once I came home from college and I could hear my grandmother on the phone before I even got into the house.

"Well, bring your ass on over here and see if I don't shoot clean through yo ass!" she was saying to somebody.

When I walked in, she had her hand on her .380, which was resting on the table next to her. She slammed the phone down and looked up. Her anger quickly softened when she saw me.

"Granny, can you please give me the gun? You could have shot your grandson coming in here!"

"Yeah, well whoever coming in better be ready, 'cause I'm not having it today! It's one of them days."

When she got into it with her family, she wasn't one to hold back. Her toughness wasn't reserved for strangers, it was practiced on strangers so she could give family the full treatment. And, more importantly, since she dished it out, she could take it (which, of course, I carried with me into my comedy). I would hear different women in the family hitting her hard with things like, "Oh, you better be glad you married to Mark." Mark was the patriarch of the family—quiet, strong, dignified and respected. Everybody loved him; he was the epitome of what I like to call "Grown Man." They were trying to get at my grandma—it would be quite the accomplishment to win an argument against her—but she'd fire back twice as hard:

"You humpback bitches, I ain't scared of none of y'all. And I will see you at the reunion!"

And at the family reunions is where it would really go down. My grandmother was the best cook, but she was the exact opposite of Christlike about it. She'd stand over her food like Peter at the Pearly Gates.

"You ate enough of that!" she'd say when the family member she didn't like approached for seconds. "Put that down! Put that pie down."

"Granny, why you do that?" I once asked her.

"I ain't gonna let these fools eat all the good food," she said. "Uh-uh."

The way she would use her tears at the drop of a dime to get what she wanted, she would also use food. And goddamn, was she a mean cook. But it wasn't just what she cooked, she would hold sweets over my head if I wasn't behaving how she wanted. One of my enduring weaknesses is a fondness for sweet snacks—and because my grandma rarely let me have them, I'm still obsessed with them. I was also deprived of jelly back in the day. Sometimes we would have peanut butter, but never any jelly! Can you imagine? That's like spaghetti without meatballs, salt without pepper, Simon without Garfunkel—which would just be like a Bridge over Regular Water. I've since overcompensated and, to this day, when you open my refrigerator, all you see is bottles on top of bottles of delicious grape jelly. When the kids are at my house, they know to never, under any circumstance, touch my grape jelly, or else…Sometimes when I go in the refrigerator inside the pantry, I'll see that my stash has a big dent in it.

"Hey, I told y'all—nobody take my jelly!" I yell at them, but they ain't trying to hear me. I had to move to more drastic action—I set up a sting to catch them in the act. I waited down the hallway, out of sight. From there, I could hear the refrigerator open in the middle of the night and I knew they were in there trying to get my stuff. At one in the morning! I hid out like that sheriff on the long highway that you didn't see when you were going 90 mph.

After the fridge opened, they scurried out with all kinds of snacks and sodas hidden in their clothes. I jumped out—to their screams. I lined them up and set out to frisking each one, finding loads of jellies and cupcakes and Reese's. All my stuff.

"Y'all eating bread and water for the rest of the week!"

Sorry, I got way too lost in that story. But I had a Snickers and I'm back on track talking about Granny.

I was the only child in the house, so my grandmother was my crew—a crew that didn't let me do shit. She liked to keep me busy and often made me do chores instead of playing with the other kids in the neighborhood. From my perspective, it seemed like her decisions were guided by one simple fact: She was a killjoy.

For example, when I was ten, if I looked out the window and saw the kids from the block playing outside, naturally I wanted to go out and play too. They weren't troublemakers, but I guess to my grandma they were, because they weren't encouraging me to do the dishes.

"Granny, they playin' across the street! Can I go over there?"

"Well, go on over there. See don't I cut your ass clean in two!"

"Granny, why you got to do that?"

"Go on, nigga. They can come over here but your ass ain't going nowhere." It was literally eighteen feet away.

I knew she didn't actually want to cut me clean in two, but I didn't want to test it.

At the ripe age of fifty-three, I now understand Granny. Kinda. She ended up teaching me discipline and that you can entertain yourself on your own side of the street. She didn't want anything bad to happen to me. But at the time, I just felt like she was being difficult as hell. I loved her though. In her mind, it came down to "That boy got something. I don't know what it is, but I don't want him to fuck it up hanging with them little badass kids down the street."

She ended up teaching me how to be a leader and not just a follower. You have your energy, you do your own thing and eventually the kids will come over and play with you—which they did. She told me she wanted me to learn how to enjoy my own space—in some backwards-ass way, but it worked. Now I don't chase the party. I create what I want and the right people find their way to me.

And she also taught me to be a leader by…well, being a leader herself. Even in small-town Texas, she was forward thinking. When I was in fifth grade, we were sitting in the pews on a Sunday afternoon listening to the reverend thunder from the pulpit of the local Baptist church.

"God created Adam and Eve," the reverend bellowed out. "He did not create Adam and Steve!"

Before the congregation could say "Amen," Estelle Talley rose up from her pew and yelled out, "You stop that!"

In the middle of the sermon. In the middle of the church. Smack dab in the middle of Texas. Nobody was gonna check Estelle Talley—including the reverend. The entire congregation probably stopped breathing. "You stop that!" she repeated. "God made sissies too. You stop preaching that!"

Now, I know the word "sissy" is hurtful to a lot of people, but please bear with me. This was Texas in 1976—we hadn't evolved yet and most of us didn't understand the connotations. But I will tell you this: Keep reading and you will see that Estelle Talley was most definitely an ally, even if she didn't have the right words for it at the time.

I don't know what the rest of the congregation was thinking, but I had no idea what she and the pastor were talking about. I had no concept of what gay was. Neither did the other kids. As on most Sundays, we were just trying to get out in time for the football game. During his sermon, half the church was probably already thinking, This dude is gonna make us miss the Cowboys!

Granny's words were greeted with stunned silence. The preacher stared at her for several seconds. Then he changed the subject. Granny kept standing for a minute to let him know who was boss and then sat back down.

I never forgot what she said that day. A few years later, I asked her a question. "Granny, do you remember when you said, 'God made sissies too'?"

"Mm-hmm, I remember."

"What's that mean?"

"God made sissies," she repeated. "God made everybody on the planet. So when people trying to separate everybody, that don't make sense. We ain't here unless God said to be here." Like I said, I don't condone her use of the word "sissies" but I give her a pass for being old. Her heart was in the right place.

She told me that over the course of thirty years, she had raised many little boys in her preschool.

"I would raise little boys who like to play with army men, and I would raise little boys who like to play with dolls. Now, those little boys who like to play with dolls, being in Texas, they didn't know who to talk to, since the preacher talking crazy, so they would come talk to me. So I would protect them and their secrets."

She said she was trying to tell the reverend that he needed to "open the umbrella of Christianity."

"Open up the umbrella and let us all stand under it," she said. "Because we are not here by chance. Nobody is. We have this blanket of 'we are created equal,' but then we don't allow everybody to warm themselves. There's enough blanket."

Years later, she got to see her blood, sweat and tears pay off in a big way when she came to the set and watched me do my thing on In Living Color, at the time the hottest television show in the world. She even appeared in one of the sketches. I couldn't have been happier.

When Granny passed away on October 23, 2004, just four months before I won the Oscar for Ray, it was the close of an incredible American story. She got to see me rise to the highest heights. And she knew it all came about because of the hours and the toil she put in. That's what every parent wants to see—our children soar.

When I won the Academy Award, I paid tribute to her in my acceptance speech.

"She was my first acting teacher," I said from the stage. "She told me 'Stand up straight, put your shoulders back, act like you got some sense.'…She still talks to me, only now she talks to me in my dreams."