Chris Rock Talks to TIME

The comedian, actor and producer on life in the 'burbs, ad-libbing a zebra's lines, and when he's getting back on the road.

Chris Rock is 47, rich, a suburban father of two daughters, and starring in his third family-friendly Madagascar movie, but he still thrums with the same indignant energy he had when he first stalked the stage in the stand-up special that made his name, Bring the Pain.

Arriving at a swanky suite at New York City’s Waldorf Astoria hotel for his interview, he noted that he saw fewer and fewer black folks as he journeyed from his home in New Jersey to midtown Manhattan. “The closer I get to money, the fewer black people I see.”

Rock talked about a wide variety of subjects, including being a family man, how fame affects comedy, whether he would ever vote for Mitt Romney and if he still feels like an outsider in show business.

Willy Loman’s Legacy: Broadway’s Soaring Prices

How premium seating, and the critics too, have fomented a class divide on Broadway

Mike Nichols’ new Broadway revival of Death of a Salesman, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman as Willy Loman, had plenty to brag about. It got rave reviews, garnered seven Tony nominations (more than any other play revival), and was the season’s biggest box office hit, setting house records almost weekly at the Barrymore Theatre. But the show achieved one other less-noted milestone to which attention must be paid: Death of a Salesman set a new record for the costliest ticket in Broadway history.

If you were looking online to buy a seat for one of last weekend’s performances (Salesman ended its limited run on Saturday night), you would have been startled. A “premium” ticket (the only kind available) to Arthur Miller’s 1949 assault on capitalist heartlessness would have set you back an eye-popping $499.50. That surpassed even Broadway’s reigning hit musical The Book of Mormon, whose premium seats currently top out at $477.

Is Broadway just for the 1%? Increasingly, it is looking that way.