Actress knows role on 'Payne'

Bobbi Baker is very different from the gum-smacking barber with an attitude she plays on the sitcom "Tyler Perry's House of Payne," but that doesn't mean she can't relate.

The 27-year-old actress and wife of Duke assistant basketball coach Nate James grew up in Southeast Raleigh, where she knew a lot of girls like KiKi, the tough character she plays in the show.

"She's a little rough around the edges," Baker says of KiKi. "But you get to see that she has a good heart. The KiKis of the world, they exist too."

The Athens Drive High School graduate just got signed to a four-year contract with Perry's show, playing a role that grew from being a minor character in a small story line, to something more substantial.

She's been back in Raleigh for the past two months, the most time she's spent in her hometown in about five years. In July, she'll go to Atlanta for three months of intensive shooting of a 26-episode fifth season.

"[Perry] shoots it about double-time," Baker says. "He gets it done."

Baker made her first appearance on the show last year, when filmmaker Perry (of the blockbuster "Madea" films and others) decided that his comedy-drama series about an Atlanta family should have another "B" story line set outside the house.

He created a barbershop setting and the street-wise KiKi character, whom Baker did not originally aspire to play. She had auditioned for the role of Dana, the role now played by Denyce Lawton.

Baker says the role she didn't get is "more in line with the characters that I usually play -- kind of cute and sexy, but that's about as far as it goes."

But when casting directors discovered Baker was funny, they decided she was more suited for KiKi's dry sense of humor.

"I freaked out," Baker says. "I was like, I don't know how to play a hard-core, up-north chick."

So she thought back to some of her childhood friends, and to the late nights she spent on the train when she was studying at Juilliard in New York.

"I remembered those girls on the train, and as I began to think of them, they just sort of entered my body, and I got KiKi."

Her association with Perry resulted in her first role in a major film, "Madea Goes to Jail," which comes out next year. Most of her background is in theater, and she describes her training as "classical." Past stage roles include Claudia in an adaptation of Toni Morrison's "The Bluest Eye," Esther Mills in Lynn Nottage's "Intimate Apparel" and Margaret of Anjou in Shakespeare's "Henry VI."

She's also done some small TV roles, including bit parts in "Guiding Light," "Dawson's Creek" and "One Tree Hill."

After graduating from Athens Drive, Baker attended Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, and graduated after 3 years.

She met her future husband at a Raleigh nightclub, about two months before she was set to head off to Juilliard and Nate James was set to head off to the Philippines to play for a basketball team. James played with the Duke Blue Devils from 1996 to 2001 and was team captain twice.

"I was kind of holding up the wall -- I didn't want to be there," Baker says. "It was the same deal with him. His friends had to drag him out. He came and sat beside me."

After that, the two were inseparable whenever they were in the same town.

They were married in 2007, and Baker keeps residences in New Jersey, North Carolina and Atlanta. James has played all over the world, and he took the job as assistant coach at Duke last month.

Even though Baker predicts she'll spend only about a third of the year in the Triangle, she's happy, at least, to finally be in the same time zone as her husband.

And she vows to be sitting in the stands as much as possible, whenever Duke plays.

"As much as I can be," she says. "If I'm not in Atlanta, and there's a game, I'll be at Cameron. You'd better believe it."