Celebrity Scoop: Kevin Michael Richardson

One of the great things about doing voice acting in animated shows is playing roles that would not normally come your way.

Classically trained, deep-voiced actor Kevin Michael Richardson is a grown man, but in Fox's new Sunday animated series "The Cleveland Show," he gets to play a 14-year-old boy, Cleveland Brown Jr., son of Cleveland Brown (voiced by executive producer Mike Henry).

Cleveland Jr. has recently been relocated to his dad's Virginia hometown, along with acquiring a stepmother, a rebellious stepsister and a flirtatious little stepbrother, but despite these challenges, he's not the usual angry TV teen.

"He's naive," Richardson says. "He's very intelligent, innocent; he's definitely a virgin. He loves his dad, he loves his family, he loves the whole idea of family, he loves doing family things."

But just because he's not sulky and angst-ridden doesn't mean Cleveland Jr. is a total pushover. "He's a very sweet kid," Richardson says, "but at the same time, he's got buttons to push. If you push Cleveland Jr. too far, he'll come out with an outburst. He'll kick your butt. You're like, 'Whoa!'

"Those are rare moments, but he will step up for himself. He's a loving kid who really doesn't cop an attitude. He doesn't believe in having an attitude. "He gets a lot of love from his dad, so he's not all that angry about anything."

If this is sounding like the Brown family is all sweetness and light, just remember that "The Cleveland Show" is a spinoff from Fox's very edgy "Family Guy," which features a family that is nothing sort of bizarre.

"Yeah," Richardson says, "('The Cleveland Show') is sort of like the black 'Brady Bunch' meets the Huxtables (of 'Cosby') – with a dash of Chemical X."