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are you ready michael potts act one an accomplished actor of stage and screen in 2020 his portrayal of slow drag earned him critical acclaim in Netflix's award-winning feature adaptation of August Wilson's play Ma Rainey's Black Bottom. On the stage, he is known for originating the roles of Mafala Hatimbi, in the 2011 Tony Award-winning musical comedy The Book of Mormon.
from Trey Parker, Robert Lopez, and Matt Stone, as well as the heartwarming Mr. Hawkins in the Tony-nominated Broadway musical The Prom. He received critical praise for his role as Joe Mott alongside Denzel Washington in the Tony-nominated Eugene O'Neill revival, The Iceman Cometh, and for his role in Iceman. Potts received the Distinguished Richard Seff Award, which is presented to veteran actors for their performances in supporting roles both on and off Broadway. Additionally...
He was appointed as the 2018 Denzel Washington Endowed Chair in the Theater for Fordham University. In 2017, he starred as the notorious gossip Turnbow. in the Tony Award-winning production of August Wilson's Jitney, under the direction of Ruben Santiago Hudson. And that same year, Potts appeared alongside Olivia Wilde and Tom Sturridge in the stage adaptation of George Orwell's dystopian masterpiece, 1984.
Potts is widely recognized for his role opposite Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson as Detective Maynard Gilbaugh in the Emmy Award winning HBO anthology series True Detective. Act two. Well-versed in producer David Simon's work, Potts starred opposite Idris Elba on HBO's critically acclaimed series The Wire. He starred in the HBO six-hour miniseries Show Me a Hero.
co-created by David Simon and directed by Oscar winner Paul Haggis. Recurring television roles also include CBS's Madam Secretary and Fox's Gotham. He's a graduate of the Yale School of Drama. His extensive theater background has afforded him several performances on New York's theater stages, roles in Rent, The Tempest, Twelfth Night, and Richard III.
garnered him the Falstaff Award for Best Male Supporting Performance and the Village Voices Obie Award for his portrayal in the off-Broadway production of The America Play. He originated the role of Brooks. senior in the Tony Award-winning play Grey Gardens, and additionally the role of Paul Pierce in Tony Kushner's The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a key to the scriptures.
At the Guthrie Theater. In the regions, Michael has starred as Oedipus, Highway Ulysses, Romeo and Juliet. I'm done. I can't go any further. He's done everything. And finally, finally, he's ready to do podcasts. which is why he's here with me today. We finally decided that we could allow you into the rarefied air. of the land of the podcast. I didn't want to lick of that. This is what happens when you pay a publicist. That's all made up?
No, it's all the credits. Well, you know, sometimes it's great to hear yourself read out loud, isn't it? Because you go, oh, my God, I did do that in that. Yeah, yeah, that is. I was like, wow, that does sound like I did a lot. I haven't wasted all that time. I mean, really, because as actors, right, it's like. you think that you're done after the last job oh yeah that's it I think I'm done now. I have no idea. He landed with a thud as Julius Caesar in the play on podcast. Well, that's it.
You're only as good as your next job. You're brilliant as Julius Caesar. And I mean, I am humbled and honored that you accepted that offer when it came your way. It's been such a joy to listen to you day after day as we do the post-production editing. What was the experience like for you? I'm curious. Obviously, it's not stage. It's not television. Did you enjoy it?
First of all, thank you for asking. And that's why I did it. Because your name was attached to it. Yeah, I have that kind of pull, that kind of. Michael Goodfriend. Wow, I haven't seen him since school. Just wait, I'm going to send you my bio and I want you to read it back to me. Okay. But yeah, it was a lot of fun. I didn't know what to expect. It was really quite low pressure. Yes. So, I mean, clearly you got your professionals at this.
at it because it was it was so logistically so well laid out and prepared it was to pull all these people from I mean we were on different coasts a different time All over the place. Time zones to make this happen and doing it over Zoom. It was quite exceptional. I do have to give a special shout out there to Liana Keys and Kira Bowie from Transcend Streaming. Absolutely. They're coordinating producers. They keep those trains all coming in on time, which is really...
truly a feat. Yeah. And it was wonderful because I'd never done Julius Caesar before. No role in Julius Caesar? No role. At all. You're originally from Wysocki, South Carolina. Wysocki. Wysocki. I grew up there. I grew up there. I actually was born in Brooklyn. Born in Brooklyn. Okay. But at about four years old or something like that.
My parents sent me down to my maternal grandparents because my mom thought it was a great idea for me to grow up in a little farm rather than in the city. And she and my dad were bouncing from lease to lease to lease. And so she wanted me. So nine months out of the year, I'd be down there. And in the summers, I'd come back up to them. And then around junior high school, they flipped it because.
Schools are better in New York than they do in South Carolina. Very forward thinking parents. So were they right? Do you think? I mean, was the farm a good place to grow up? It was fantastic. I mean, it was a really tiny community. I think at its height, there may have been 500 people in this little town. In South Carolina, in the country, were you a literary? Did you listen to stories? What sparked the actor self in you?
Well, it wasn't there that sparked the actor. I mean, it was very literate. It was very, went to school. You were expected to do exceptionally well, or you would be in a lot of trouble. if you got home and here's the thing when you live in a small community like that everyone knows your grandparents so if you misbehaved in school if you weren't performing in school that news was home before you got there Basically.
It truly was a village raising you and anyone could call you out and discipline you and anyone and everyone, if you were in trouble, would call your parents to let you know you had misbehaved or that your work wasn't. And the bigger the trouble. the more calls your parents have more calls luckily i didn't get too many because i kind of liked school i dug it as a kid so
You know, I did my homework and I did what I needed to do. But the acting bug, no. I mean, it's interesting. The acting that we did do, I didn't like at our church. Well, my grandparents' church anyway. Around the holidays, they had these little pageants around Christmas. Easter was the, there'd be some reenactment of the Christ on the cross, that sort of thing. Like a little pageant. Yeah, yeah. And Christmas we would all, all the kids had to give Christmas speeches.
There was a whole program after the main service. Everyone go home, have dinner, then come back to church to have the Christmas pageant where you sang and you did speeches and you were required. There was no way of getting out of it. I guess, in a sense, my skills came about for a fear of my grandmother who would say, I'm going to be sitting in the back and I better hear every word. You better not make a mistake. Don't you mumble up there.
yes projection and memorizing speeches was basically yeah where that came from but no i never took it seriously at that point it was just something i was i dreaded but that i was required to do and you weren't allowed to get out of it right And so then when did you know you were an actor? Oh, I honestly, when did I start taking it seriously? I probably didn't start. Taking it somewhat seriously, maybe in high school, I think junior year of high school, we had a Shakespeare Festival.
Basically, we had an AP, advanced placement, English teacher, Grady Lockley. I remember him to this day who felt that he was the reincarnation of Shakespeare. So every year. He would stage this pageant where, you know, famous scenes from famous Shakespeare plays would be performed for the school. And I remember doing the Porter scene from Macbeth, and I got to do the Porter.
Oh, that's a great thing. That's a great thing. That was a lot of fun. So a great lesson in comedy. Yeah, it was. And timing. It was. Actually, I think I did that for my Yale audition, in fact. Oh, really? I think I did the porter for my, yeah, I did the porter scene from Macbeth. But anyway, when we did that performance, a local theater teacher, Katie Dameron, she had come to see a fellow student of mine who was also taking classes at her little company.
her little school, and she told him that she wanted me in her class. She liked what she saw coming and being my class. So I started going to her classes and she put it in the idea in my head because her son was a mime and had gone to the Marcel Marceau school. She had had another student who had gone to Juilliard. So she's the one who started me seriously thinking about. being an actor as a career. So it's probably around that time, junior year of high school, that I got bitten by it.
And you started performing in shows in high school and then... No, I didn't. College. Undergrad is when I... Where did you go to undergrad? I went to Columbia for undergrad. Okay. But, you know, that wasn't invited. Columbia didn't believe in, they had no art program on the undergraduate level. Really? Columbia University.
Yeah, they did not. The graduate school had an arts program, but acting was not a part of it. I think they had playwriting, theater management, and directing, and that was it. And so, of course, they would get... students from undergrad or wherever or just outside of the school to come and do the plays that the playwrights had written or to work with the directors but it was not columbia didn't believe in
acting as an actual career or certainly at that point the undergraduate level has a degree granting profession but i did a couple of things there And you knew, what inspired you then to, so did you, did you graduate and go straight into grad school or did you work? No, no, not at all. Prior to that, honestly, I went to Columbia as a pre-med because I thought I was going to be a doctor. And when your mother hears something like that, that's it. So the acting thing.
She sets her retirement date. It was a little frivolous. It was like, it was cute. That was cute, but you don't do that. You're not going to. You're going to take care of me in my old age. Pretty much. Yeah. So that wasn't, and then I ran into, while I was there, one of my teachers that took a dramatic writing class, and it was Arnold Weinstein.
And he's the one who put Yale into my head. And I learned later because also the gentleman who was the head of, who ran the graduate art school was Howard Stein. And they both. had been at the Yale School of Drama. Under Brewstein. Robert Brewstein. Under Robert Brewstein. Yeah. They were both there. So in hindsight, I understood why they were promoting Yale so heavily.
That was in my head. And I just decided at some point, I didn't go right away. When I left school, I dropped the pre-med thing, which, you know, of course, broke my mother's heart. And I actually worked for the city, New York City, for a few years, the Parker Violations Bureau. Oh, you were one of them. Well, I didn't give out tickets. I worked where people came to have their, if they wanted to see a judge or get a printout of what they owed in order to get their...
vehicles out of tow. Get the impounded vehicles out of tow. That was the job that I took. I was once written up by a parking violation officer for being irate, abusive, and profane. You're kidding. I was in Los Angeles. Oh, I'm getting rid of this. The nadir of my career.
The officers here don't use that language. I had run out of my unemployment checks at that point, I think. I remember I ran out shirtless. I saw them writing me up and I was like, wait, wait, wait, I'll move the car. And then they kept writing. the ticket. The abuse, I think, was verbal. It was all verbal. I was definitely irate and profane. So they added another $50 on. Oh, wow. Yeah. That's a good one. That's a good story. So you worked there and then, and.
So you had decided I'm not going to do pre-med. I don't like medicine. I'm not going to be a doctor. I'm going to go into parking violations. Noelle, that was a good job to get after undergrad because, you know, with my mother, you had a six-week limit. Yes. Not being employed. You can live in my house unemployed. Six weeks tops. That's it. And she just brought in all these newspapers and said, look at the help wanted. Got to get a job.
And in that period, were you like, I want to act, but you hadn't admitted it to yourself? Yeah, I was torn. I really wanted to do it. but I felt because I had been away from it, and at that point, I didn't feel I had a way in. I didn't know what the... what the next steps were and some part of me also thought it was a bit frivolous i mean going back to it i you know rewinding rewinding a little bit i remember when i did really after undergrad my mom had an intervention
I came home one afternoon after my summer job and there was a dining room full of people, family and neighbors. Mom dishing out food. He goes, sit down, we want to talk to you. Which I thought was... It's strange, and I kind of laughed at it. We want to talk to you about this acting thing. You know, I've always thought it would be great to have a series. You know, there's people's coming out stories, you know, when you come out to your parents that you're gay or whatever.
the people's coming out stories when they come out to their parents that they're going to be an actor or an artist. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Those, those, those would be rich. Oh, yeah. So you're there, the family, they're trying to tell you, like, don't do this. You're a smart young man. You've got a good picture ahead of you. I needed to do something that contributes.
That's how they saw it. Well, that's how the neighbor, who I couldn't understand why she was there in the first place. The heavy artillery. Why is she here? She was the loudest one in the room. Well, you know, her story is I learned, you know, she was a former Black Panther. So she's very aggressive.
And she was telling me I needed to, you know, contribute to my people. And I remember, what did she say? Acting, acting. Black people have been acting all their lives. You've got to do something that contributes. Oh, that is some heavy guilt. That's beyond Jewish. That more than anything else that happened during that little intervention, that's the one thing that stuck with me and just, you know, through my world. upside down yeah yeah and so you know
What do I do? What do I do? What can I do? And it wasn't until, you know, I spoke to my counselor at that point. And she says, I understand. That's true. We need more black doctors, more black lawyers. But whatever you do, if you do it well, it contributes. You can be an actor. You can be an artist.
artist and contribute yeah so that kind of broke the yoke for me and i started thinking about it more seriously and then it was i think the 80s was when fences was up for the tonys and i remember one sunday And at this time, I was also, because I had done ROTC while I was doing all this undergraduate stuff. So I was in...
Stationed in Fort Sill, Oklahoma, during my officer basic course, watching the Tonys. And that was the offenses was up. And back then, remember, they used to do little snippets. from the plays that were nominated. That was the year the late, great James Earl Jones and Courtney Vance did the scene from Fences. And I was so enthralled by that.
And in my mind, it was the first time I saw and heard my experience. People who looked like me and sounded like me and sounded like the people I grew up around. And I thought. okay, there is a place. And so at that moment, I tried to figure out how did Courtney Vance get there? How did he get there to be standing next to James O. Jones?
I remember from Great White Hope when I was a kid and seeing that movie on television and knowing that he had done it on stage. And I found out he had gone to Yale. And I said, I have to go to Yale. And that's how that happened. I decided one year I'm going to audition for the Yale School of Drama. And it was the only place I was going to audition. And I said, I'm leaving it up.
to the heavens i'm leaving it up to god to the universe if i get in i'm meant to do this if i don't get in then i'm not meant to do it that's you know it's it's like my son right now who's 11 years old if the seahawks win it means god exists makes sense he's absolutely right yes So you got in. You auditioned for Earl Gister. Earl was not there. Earl was still reiterating because that's when he had had the tracheotomy. Oh, yes.
So he had done, from what I heard, he had done the first half of the audition tour, maybe L.A. and some other places. But when I got there, it wasn't him. It was Barbara Somerville. Oh, that speech teacher. speech teacher so she was doing them was there someone else did someone that did david chambers sit in on them probably remember so it was either just her or it was her and david
So. Earl said, okay. Well, he couldn't speak at that point. I'm sure after certain. He wrote. His vote was like, okay, I guess. Earl Gister, may he rest in peace. And this is where you and I find our great nexus point and how I inspired you for the rest of your career. That's it. Exactly how it was. Just to be honest, you graduated long before I got in. Not long before, just a year or so before I started.
But it was there. I mean, Yale does that to you, right? It really, like, it cements your resolve. It gives you technique. It really did. Those, you know, everybody has their... experience of Yale, experience at Yale and of Yale. My experience was just golden. It was three golden years because I came there with imposter syndrome.
Like, you know, that first day just before orientation and you're all out, you see your classmates and I'm looking around, I'm going, wow, these are really talented people. These incredibly talented people. How did I get here? And so I spent so much of those first few months feeling like an imposter. I think I was the last one to go up when we started doing scene study.
I'm just going to get up here and just wet the bed. I'm just going to be so awful. But, you know, once I got into it and the teachers, it just became. a golden time. I finally was like, oh my God, this is what acting is. There's a technique to this stuff that I can use, that I can do. I love this story. You told me this story. Actually, I'll say you did tell this story at Earl Gister's memorial. And I'd love it if you told it again. What he said to you at the very beginning.
when you were so nervous about getting up and performing in front of your peers. Can you tell that story? Wow. I'm trying to remember. I know. Well, can I say it on the podcast? Yeah, you can say we put the explicit. At the very end of it, his admonishment to me was like, fuck him. Right. Yes. Was basically, fuck him.
With his voice amplifier. I can't do it. I don't know if I'm able to. I don't know if I'm good enough. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And at the very end, he's like, fuck him. Fuck him. I think that's the best acting advice you could get. It did. You know? And if they don't like it, if they don't like it, you know, fuck them. Fuck them. You can do this. You can do this.
Hey there, pop fans. Next chapter podcast, creative production director Pete Musto here, jumping in to bend your ear for a second because we want to tell you about a head gum podcast we think you're going to love called Overdue. Overdue is a podcast about the books you've been meaning to read. Join Andrew and Craig each week as they tackle a new title from their backlog. Classic literature, obscure plays, goofy children's books, they read it all.
one overdue book at a time. Unpretentious but not unserious, Andrew and Craig are just two old friends trying to learn things they should already know by now. It's like a book club where you don't even have to read the books. Recent episodes include Beach Read by Emily Henry, Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn, and Fight Club by Chuck Polonic.
I know this is going to sound made up, but my wife and I were actually recently talking about Chekhov's gun. And as it happens, one of their most recent episodes is about Chekhov's play, The Seagull. And it was great. Also, a few weeks ago, they covered one of my all-time favorite books as a kid, The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham. And their take on it was so fun. So subscribe now so you don't miss another episode of Overdue, airing every Monday.
Find it wherever you listen to your podcasts. And for more information, head to overdopodcast.com. And when did you, so you get, you got out, you get your MFA, the three years of heaven comes screeching to a halt. You're hit. Yeah. And you started working. How long was the journey before you could, I mean, I know this never goes away, right? Like we said at the beginning. You never feel like you've made it. But when did you feel like, okay, I've got a career. I can make my mother's proud.
I mean, luckily, I was mom came to see a lot of the early things and she was proud then. That's fortunate. She embraced it when she saw. Was it when you went to Yale that she was like, OK, that's what my boy is going to be. He's going to be an actor. No, it took her until after y'all. Remember Joyce used to be in the office? Yes, Joyce. Even Joyce knew how much my mother was against my being there. It had become lore. It had become lore.
She even realized. And it took mom a while to come around, I think. It was probably after graduation and maybe seeing the first few shows that she finally was like, okay, you're good at this. But what she was most worried about, it wasn't that she was against the profession of acting. You know, mothers want you to be able to take care of yourself. And her concern is that I would be poor and homeless.
that I couldn't make a living doing it. That's what bothered her. Because to a certain extent, she didn't know what it was no more than I did. It's like, how do you do that? I mean, you can watch television and go to the movies. We have no idea. And she took me to plays. on Broadway as part of, you know, church trips to see The Wiz, the original Wiz, or your armstreet trip to Oxford, anything kind of religious themed. So it wasn't foreign to her, but she had no...
Like most parents, how do you do that? To them, you just show up and just say these lines and that's done. They have no clue. how it works and i remember the funny thing was when i got my first jobs and and after you have the rehearsal process and you're home during the day and perform at night and she never she's she would call you home Yes, I'm home. You're still working. I said, yes, mom. I go, she said, that's a strange kind of job. You're off on Monday.
Yeah. That must be great. No, it's my only day. She never, never understood how it worked. But she did become, you know, very, very pleased with it. But it was later on. It was after I graduated. But I never felt that I was because I wasn't working. as much or as profitably in the beginning. I mean, Off-Broadway wasn't the beginning. Who did you graduate with? Who was in your class that we know of? Well, the biggest name is, of course, Liev. Liev Schreiber.
Liev Schreiber, Malcolm Goetz. He went and got a series like two years out or a year out after that ran for five years. Caroline in the City or something like that. Caroline in the City, yep. Daryl Thierce worked. You know, my dear friend, whom we lost, but he worked consistently out of school. Chris Bauer. Chris Bauer. Who still works. in this business. He never stops working. Those were the people working, which was highly unusual for any class, as you know, to have that many people.
And that makes it even harder, right? Because you're graduating and you're looking around. There's Liev Schreiber on a billboard.
right yeah billboard yep and you're like my god what am i i i'm a failure i suck i you know all the imposter syndrome comes back it was just it does it absolutely does and nothing that you know because and it's that thing it was working so well at school and then you have the realization school and real life are very two different very different things like it doesn't work like that out here right they don't they don't just yeah asked me yeah they don't and in fact as earl would say
And we can do Earl's voice again for this. Yes. But they're looking at you down the barrel of a gun when you come out of a program like that. Like prove to me that you're. Yeah. Better than I was because I auditioned for Yale, too, and I didn't get it. A lot of that. Oh, yeah. There was a lot of that. The chip is on.
Both shoulders, your shoulder and theirs. They're ridiculous. But there was a lot of that in the very, very beginning. But it was also that when I got out, it was what was, because the business was what was popular. And when I graduated in 1992, Boys in the Hood was the big movie out of Hollywood. It's Hollywood who discovered the inner city black male.
Street was the term that they were used. And I remember Daryl and I, another Black, you know, my classmate, we were two Black male actors in the class, would always laugh how many times we were asked to make a character more street. Yes. And then they say goodbye to you and they call you the wrong name. Exactly. Oh, the one fun time when Daryl and I, because we would.
And oddly, people thought we were the same type. So we would audition for a lot of the same roles. And there was one day we were both auditioning for something and I went in and I happened to be in the elevator with... the director, and I think maybe his assistant or maybe one of the producers. And I was taken aback as he looked at me and he went, oh, you're back. And I went, you wait. Yeah. And then I realized, oh, Daryl must have been in here earlier. He's mistaken me for Daryl.
Which had happened, you know, which wasn't the first time that it happened. So I just played into him like, yeah, I didn't like what I did the first time. So I decided to come back and give it a shot. I changed clothes and everything. Times have changed. Times have changed. Yeah, everything. You say you're one of. Well, right. But you said you're one of two black male actors in your class at Yale. And now now, you know, the.
At least the alumni stuff that I see that the palette has changed. It has. Kudos to. They may have changed the name to the David Geffen School of Drama, but. Yes. so but what was the point where you things changed for you where you felt like you that seeing Liev on the billboard didn't cut to the heart. Not that it ever did, but I'm just saying that you weren't like, and I'm down here trying to make it. Well...
First of all, the Liev on the billboard didn't cut because we all expected. I think the whole class kind of thought if anyone was going to do it, you know, if you did a most likely to succeed kind of thing, we felt that Liev would probably do well. So that wasn't the surprise. That wasn't surprising to us at all. Was there a show you booked or something that...
It kind of felt like you settled in. I'll tell you, it happened late because, as I said in the beginning, I wasn't working. And after about the first eight years, because I wasn't street enough, you know, my agents taught me. So I was an agent for... a few months. And the only roles I was kind of booking is that I would have to do dialects. Thank you, Barbara Somerville, teaching us how to do. Barbara Somerville, how my finds a cure. Yeah.
Exactly. You know, I play Caribbean and African characters. That's how I kind of made it. But I didn't really think I was getting anywhere until 2011 with the Book of Mormon, really. Because I'd never had that experience with a show being that much of a, you know, being in anything that was a phenomenon like that. And you had the dialect for that, right? Yeah, exactly. Because I had done so many African dialects prior. I was already, I was prepared. That's right. I was able to do that.
And it really wasn't until then. It was that particular time that I started being in a hit show. I'm going, oh, okay. I think I know what I'm doing. But it's so inspiring, you know, because... That is a long journey to 2011 from 1995? 92? 92 to 2011. Yeah. Before you felt like, okay, I'm... I'm a professional, like I'm a working, steadily working professional actor. And honestly, I, and it's only been recently that I feel.
like in control of my abilities, where I feel like I know what I'm doing without apology. Because I think even in 2011, you know, although I felt like a real actor. You know, sometimes I felt like I wasn't doing all I knew how to do. I think I was concerned about how it's still the concern about how would be perceived in the industry or basically.
working more to please people who could hire me as opposed to just being the artist that I can be, that I know that I could be. And honestly, I honestly... only recently with the piano lesson in 22 is when i finally just went without apology it's like i'm just going to do my thing and and that earl came you know is when I finally just went, you know what, fuck them. I know what I'm doing. I know that I'm really good at this and I'm going to do it without apology. I'm going to use my full powers.
Did you meet August Wilson? No. See, unfortunately, I was... The summer after the first year, I went up to the O'Neill Center. You know, they would get some actors to do. And I was just doing the readings. I didn't get to do it. Summer after first year at Yale. Yeah. And so he was up there. I don't know which play he was working on at the time. But I just remember, you know, you'd have breakfast in the morning kind of communally, and he happened to sit at the same table I was sitting at.
And I just kind of just sat there and looked at him. He was busy scribbling and writing stuff and eating, smearing peanut butter on this giant cinnamon roll or whatever it was, eating. And so I just kind of stared for a while, but I was too intimidated and too nervous to say hello or to speak to him or even to interrupt him because clearly. He was focused on what he was writing. But that was the only time I really ever met him. I was in his proximity.
That's so interesting because reading your bio, it's like, oh, you must have known August Wilson. No, I did not. In the beginning, no one thought I could. People didn't see me as an August Wilson actor. I mean, of course, initially too young to play those roles to begin with. But I think a lot of casting directors and directors just didn't see me as someone who could do August Wilson. Amazing. So how did Ma Rainey come about for you? Ruben Santiago Hudson.
There's this thing in New York called Encores where they perform it at City Center. It's sort of an off-Broadway thing. They try to bring back old musicals that had been famous in the past or hadn't. been performed very often and they bring them back it's high pressure sort of you have two weeks to get an entire musical together with a full orchestra mind you and perform it kind of a staged
book in hand, that sort of thing, performance of these musicals. And they were doing, I don't know if you've heard of the movie Cabot in the Sky. Yeah. Well, the artistic director... encores at that time they put a lot of money into recreating the book and and the libretto the libretto and the music because it had been lost or there were only fragments of it so i think
They put a lot of money into reconstructing the libretto of it. And Rubin was directing it. And I think it was the late Jay Bender. was the casting director at that time. He brought me in to perform for it. And I got to perform, audition for Rubin and ended up with the lead in it with the great Lachance. So we were the co-leads in this musical. And so that's how I first got to know him. And the next thing I heard, he was going to be directing August Wilson's Jitney for Manhattan Theatre Club.
So I went to audition for that. And so I think he convinced the producers over there that I could do this. They didn't see me as being able to do August Wilson, of course. He convinced them I got to do Jitney. And at the end of, towards the end of the run, Denzel and his wife, Pauletta, came. They came because I didn't know at that time, this was after Denzel had announced he was going to turn all the plays into musicals, not musicals, movies, sorry.
He's going to turn them all into movies. I didn't know at that time that they were already working on the script for Ma Rainey and Ruben was doing it. Ruben was doing it. And so that became, as you say, you have to be lucky in the business. That became a moment of luck. I was doing Jitney. It was a great production. Won the Tony for Best Revival.
He and Reuben were already working on the movie. And then later that fall, I got to be in the Iceman Comet, directed by George. And George had also come and seen the Jitney. George C. Wolfe. George C. Wolfe. And so...
I was now getting to, well, Denzel could see me work up close. He can get a sense of who I am and the work. And he would tell me about his plans for turning the... the plays into movies blah blah blah and who he would he says and i can use actors and i don't have to use big names blah blah blah and he's i can use this person that person i can use you and in my head i'm going sure
Right. Someday, maybe. I just hope when you finally get to Jitney, that maybe down the line, when you finally get to Jitney at the end, I can get a shot at the same role that you saw me in. Yeah. And I thought that would be the end of it. And then months later, after Iceman had closed, months, months later, and then suddenly we get a call, Denzel wants you to be in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom. Wow.
They want you for this role. So that's how that happened. And like they just they want you to do it. Yeah. Audition. You didn't. Oh, my God. Actors dream. Actors dream. Wow. And you were like, let me check my calendar. I told my man and I said, you need to check that again. there you are doing that filming that incredible story with may he rest in peace the great chadwick boseman that's right that's right and what was can you talk about the experience did
Can we talk about him? Sure we can. We absolutely can. Did you know he was sick when you started? No one had a clue. Wow. Absolutely no one. I mean, it's things in hindsight, you kind of go, oh, oh, because, you know. You know, when you start at that level, you have your entourage, you have people who take care of you, your assistants. And of course, you have your own makeup person and wardrobe person and all of that. But I noticed that.
People were taking great care of him. But you figure that's just star treatment. Yeah. I was like, wow. I think I remember making a comment one time. I said. That's a lot of people in that SUV. That's quite the entourage for one person. Because Denzel didn't have, I'm going, Denzel's been an A-lister 40 years and he don't have people around him.
And I'm going, he's the billion dollar man. He's Black Panther. Right. And then sometimes he would be late coming back, you know, from a break or to set or even, you know, in the mornings for Carl. And I'm going. Okay, it's Black Panther. He can do that. Doing an interview, he's doing whatever. Yeah. But in hindsight, you recognize, yeah, he was just, he wasn't well.
But he never showed it on set. I mean, he would do take after take after take. And he would, you know, the thing we used to laugh at, he would look at George and go, one more. Let me do one more. Wow. Oh, my God. How many takes of this scene? Now, George and Denzel must have known that he was sick. No. No. Oh, my God. No clue. That's incredible. No clue. Absolutely no one had a clue. He and his doctor and his then fiance, now wife, Simone, she knew. Of course, everyone around him knew.
and they were taking care of him but no we didn't know and when i spoke after he passed i spoke to the actor tory kittles who played my partner in true detective that season And he and Chad were very, very close. And I spoke to him about it after, you know, it became public knowledge after his passing. And Torrey was saying, yeah, he knew, but he always thought he would beat it.
He said he was completely convinced he would beat it. And so he said basically the only people who knew were, I think, Chad and his doctors. Because he had already finished negotiations with Black Panther 2. So no one... No one, no one other than those extremely close to him probably knew. But there was nothing in his performance that would let you believe, that would lead you to believe he wasn't 100%. Yeah. Completely.
Is there a story, sort of an inside story that you can tell us, not gossip, but just something near and dear to you from that? set from that experience well there is there's a line that he says he's he's playing levy and i'm the bass player and so at some point There's this whole big thing. Chad's character, Levi, has just spent his money on this fancy pair of shoes. He's very precious about these shoes. And so that at some point, my character Slowdrag stepped on his shoes. Just stepped on it.
And it became this tense confrontation between the two of them. Where basically I tell them, move them out of the way. I didn't step on your shoes. Get them out of the darn way. And there's a line that he said when we were practicing, because he's very condescending to his fellow musicians, because he's the brilliant. musician the brilliant artist it's a line he uses if you were any kind of musician you'd take better care of your instrument and so that became a running joke and so at some point
He was playing the, his instrument was the trumpet, the cornet. And at one point, I think in between takes, he was picking it up. And he dropped the mouthpiece and it hit the floor. It was just complete silence. And just very quietly out of nowhere, Glenn Terman was like, if you were any kind of musician, you take care. Better care of your instrument.
And Chad just, he turned and he knew he was caught. And the biggest smile came on his face and he just collapsed into laughter. And everybody on the set went. Yes. Yes. And it just became a running thing. If anybody made a mistake at all, and he would repeat it. It was like, if you was any kind of musician. So I think that's my favorite story from that. And we just, everybody, we became so tight.
And so close. And, you know, Viola Davis said this interesting thing when she described Chad on the set of Ma Rainey. It's like, you know, he didn't make his presence wasn't the event. Aside from being a brilliant, brilliant actor. He was such a great person. And, you know, wrote me this beautiful letter at the end. He gave me this harmonica as a little rap present. And at that point, there was still talk of there's going to be a little tour, Jitney, that I was...
attached to for a little bit and it was going to stop. And he says, I want to know when it comes to, to LA, cause I'm going to come and see you. Are they going to do a film of Jitney? Oh, eventually. I don't know when. If Dizel initially said he was going to go and order how they hit, how they went to Broadway. Yeah. Which means Jidney's dead last. Okay. It was the last one to go to Broadway. How many went to Broadway? All of them. All of them. All of them. How many is that total? Ten.
Yeah, Jitney was the very, the last one. Ruben, really, really. It was his mission. God bless him. Ruben's mission was to make sure that Jitney got to, he said, every last one of them has to go to Broadway. How does Jitney not make it to Broadway? And he campaigned and pushed and cajoled everybody. And finally...
Martin Theatre Club, I think, which produced the early August Wilson plays initially on Broadway. You know, Meadows said, OK, you're right. We have to do it. But yeah, Chitney's dead last. What are you going to do next? Do you have things lined up? Right now it's just press.
Because the piano lesson movie starts, is released on November 8th at theaters and starts streaming on Netflix on the 22nd of November. So we can see you in the piano lesson. In the piano lesson. So right now we're doing a bunch of press junkets. And they were doing festivals. So I was up in Toronto a few weeks ago at the Toronto Film Festival where it was a special, where the movie was a special presentation. So, and we have...
We're going to Savannah to get an Ensemble Award. And then there's more press junkets here in New York. Honoring of Sam Jackson at MoMA. Museum of Modern Art, for those people who don't know. and then the gotham awards in december and there's going to be the la premiere excuse me so right now that's mostly what's going on i am going to be working on doing a quick lab of a James Brown musical. And then I'm going to direct God Help Me at Othello Lab in December. That's great.
And I mean, I just got back from Vancouver from shooting an episode of Irrational, NBC TV show, going back to my African dialects again. You know you've made it when you can't think of all the projects you've got lined up. No, I'm just talking about that's it. This is a lot. Usually it's like. i'm gearing up to do to play this or but i mean you've got you've got press junkets you've got this other thing and the other thing i mean yeah but that's for them that's netflix true
That's for Netflix. That's the, you know, hopefully. It's award season. That's right. And the producers were pushing it to get as many awards as possible for the movie. Well, get ready to receive your ambi for your performance. Of Julius Caesar. It's just been so great to hear you and to reconnect with you on this project and to work with you and Harry Lennox.
Oh, wow, yes. The thing is, and I've never, I think the only time I ever worked with Harry was, was it Madam Secretary? Blacklist. Blacklist, yeah. And I don't think we even had any scenes together, but that was the only time. I mean, I've known his work for years. Another great August Wilson actor as well. And he, like you, just out there, just working on so many different types of projects. Just working, you know, I'm blessed to be a working actor.
I mean, it's, I don't know how I got here. Well, not as I planned it. So I don't know how it happened. You know, as long as you're willing to do podcasts, you'll still be working. As long as I'm producing them. Well, thank you. Thank you. it's it's it's a great honor and a privilege and i i so appreciate you your time your talent thank you for sharing all of this with us it's it's really inspiring my pleasure thank you thank you you know i'm grateful you asked
You know, maybe we can talk about after all the films have been made, we can do all the August Wilson podcasts. Ooh. Ooh, that's a great idea. There we go. That's a great idea. They would do well as podcasts. I think they would. Yeah. They absolutely would. Let's make that happen. Okay. Yes. Brilliant idea. You, me, Denzel, you know. Yes. Well, yeah. Well, and you know.
costanza the whole estate of august wilson she's right she gets final say that's right that's and that's a tough estate they're tough they're very tough yes You've been listening to the Play On Podcast bonus content series. You can learn more about the Play On Podcast at Next Chapter Podcast's website, nextchapterpodcasts.com.
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