(Photo: John Ricard/BET)

Like most good actors these days, Romany Malco can be seen on television lately (Unsupervised, The Good Wife, Weeds) where versatile and exciting roles exist for thespians to show off their best work on a regular basis. But whenever the 43-year old takes to the big screen (Blades of Glory, 40-Year Old Virgin), he always sets it ablaze. Malco does so again in the highly anticipated romantic ensemble comedy Think Like a Man that also stars Taraji P. Henson, Gabrielle Union, Michael Ealy, Regina Hall and Kevin Hart.

In it, Malco plays the suave, cool and mack of all macks Zeke, and even though it’s familiar territory — he played another iconic funny player Jay, in 40-Year-Old Virgin — the actor admits the two characters couldn’t be more different.

“The guy Jay that was the player in 40-Year Old Virgin was very introspective and philosophical no matter how skewed. And that’s closer to my nature,” Malco told BET.com. “What I really liked about Zeke in TLAM is that I got to have the discovery and the actual process of falling in love and I could portray this major turnaround in someone’s life. And even though this is an ensemble cast, that is something only a leading man gets to do.”

This self-professed co-star movie “side guy” admits he was excited to have this leading man onscreen “arc and journey” with the very capable and beautiful Meagan Good. Think Like a Man hilariously pairs Malco’s Zeke with Good’s Mya, who has a three-month, no-sex dating rule. No offense to Good’s real-life fiancée Sony executive DeVon Franklin, but this onscreen coupling is one that Malco has been looking forward to for a very long while. The actor likens it to, “seeing a fruit bowl and saying, ‘there’s a mango in there I can’t wait to get it!’”

This big screen longing dates back to 2008, when he and Good previously starred together in Mike Myers’s The Love Guru, but the two shared no scenes together. And Malco says it was like, “like looking at the fruit bowl and not being able to touch it.”

So the former Weeds star could hardly contain his excitement when he learned Good would be his love interest in Think Like a Man. “I was like, ‘Yo! We’re working together and I get to bite into this fruit?’” Malco exclaimed. And don’t sweat all this comparing a woman-to-fruit analogy stuff. Apparently Malco has cleared all of it with his co-star. “Yeah, don’t worry about it,” Malco laughs. “Meagan already knows all about this. We’ve had the conversation.”

Think Like a Man arrives in theaters nationwide on April 20.

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