Everybody Hates Chris is a semi-autobiographical show. We try to get humor out of tough subject matters. It never occurred to me what a 6-year-old would think about the subject of Santa.

A comedian knows how to twist a phrase and make a face and fall over a chair or whatever they have to do to get that laugh, that's what they know how to do. That's what Chris Rock does in voiceover.

I think the thing that makes this show entertaining is that we don't pander at all. We don't assume the audience is stupid, and we're not trying to trick them with anything fancy. We're just trying to tell decent stories, deliver the best jokes we know how. And we're not trying to dazzle them with B.S.

We started looking for someone in L.A., and what we found was that we were encountering the usual suspects. They're Hollywood kids who have been in the business for a few years. We were looking for someone who was a little raw and a little edgier. And we got a tape from New York with this kid on it. The thing that sold us was his face. He has an incredibly expressive face, and it's older than his years. When you sit and you look at him, it already feels like he's carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. He looks like his eyes are a little sad, but he's really bright. At this particular point, there's no Hollywood in him.

He looked honestly just too cool. He just had way too much swagger to play [Chris].

We were just trying to cast a great kid that kind of embodied the idea of the character. A young kid who kind of felt put upon, who wasn't too cocky and who was a little unsure of himself.