Sterling K. Brown
Appearances
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
And so when people talk to me about it, they're always talking about the tears that the show caused. But I think both of those things are true. So I felt like in that scene, like you have to be able to You can't live too much in one tone. Otherwise, the show becomes monotonous. So you're able to go in and you give this man the peace of your mind.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
But at the same time, all you really want is to be in relationship. And so you see that front-facing anger towards this man. But really what he wants is to be understood, to understand why he left in the first place, and ultimately to be loved.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
Yes. First of all, yes. And I would say even predating all of those beautiful souls transpiring was my own father, who passed away at the age of 45. And so I've thought about it since then, when I was only 10 years old. And my brother and I will have this conversation. My brother's 14 years older than me, so he's 61 now.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
And he'll always say that, you know, no black men in our family have lived beyond age 65. And I remember thinking that, like, that may be true for them, but it does not have to be true for us. And so I've been very conscientious in terms of health and lifestyle choices that I try to make for myself to be here for as long as possible.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
I have two beautiful boys, Andrew, 12, Amari, 8, and I want to be here to experience and enjoy them as much as possible. And beyond them, I'm looking forward to, if they indeed have children, to being able to enjoy and experience those young people as well.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
So some things are out of our control, Terry, but the things that are within our control in terms of diet and exercise, in terms of water consumption or whatever else there is out there, I try to make myself as informed as possible so I can be around in the healthiest version of myself for as long as I possibly can.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
Akuna Matata. I will try to synthesize and make it as concise as possible. My dad is one of the most beautiful people that I had an opportunity to know in my life. And it was a short time. But it was full and meaningful. I was my dad's only son. I have other siblings, but I am my dad's only son.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
And my mom would often come up to my dad, whose name is Sterling Brown Jr., and say, like, Sterling, you're going to spoil that boy. But I tell you what, the love that he poured into me is still with me. There are specific moments of interactions that we have. I would sit and watch boxing matches and football matches with my dad.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
Those were his two favorite sports, so they're probably kind of my two favorite sports as well. We would wash his car outside where he'd play his Michael McDonald 8-track in the pink Eldorado Cadillac as we washed it. And we'd listen to, like, I keep forgetting how you made it so good. You know, whatever it was. We have moments of bliss. that are so ingrained into my soul.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
Terry, thank you so much for having me. I'm delighted to be here.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
And while you don't remember all of the specifics, you remember they're like, that man loved me as much as any human being could love another human being.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
So my mom tells a famous story. She said, when I was in kindergarten and I had to spell out my name for the teacher, I came back home and I said, Mom, I think I'm going to go by Kelby. And I said, because Kelby is five letters and Sterling is eight, and it's just way faster for me to get through. I told her, I said, when I'm 16, though, you can call me Sterling again. Now, I didn't remember this.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
My dad passed away when I was 10, almost 11. And it had been about five years that I hadn't heard his name in my life on a regular basis. And honestly, Terry, it was just like I wanted to hear his name. I wanted to hear the name of Sterling. So I said, hey, guys, could you call me Sterling now? Because I just wanted to.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
Maybe I felt like I and I think I really grieved my father about five years after his passing away. I think for the first five years, I felt like I had to be the man of the house. I had to keep it together for my mom. I also believed that my father and still believe that my father ascended to heaven so that he was in a better place.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
But that still didn't allow me the space to like really just be like, I miss you. I miss this man. And so I think it took about five years for me to fully let that out. And then after I let that out, I was like, OK, I'm ready to hear his name again.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
Absolutely. I found it definitely when I got to Hollywood in the early 2000s that the idea of being intelligent was something that I needed to shed. Many casting directors would be like, he's got this smart guy thing. If he can lose that, then he'll be much more castable.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
Good question. They were not teenagers. They were babies. And so my Aunt Vera, who I adore, she's always my mom's little sister, was the collector of things in her family's life, like pets and stuff. And she got a new cat. She got a new dog. But my Aunt Vera was also dealing with substance abuse issues at that particular time in her life.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
So, she would get a dog, go to the Humane Society, get a dog, get a cat or whatever, and then she would be gone for a while. So, then that dog or cat became somebody else's. My aunt was also fostering my little brother, Robert, who is now 25 or 26 years old, just had a birthday. And she was fostering, and then she went missing forever. for a period of two weeks.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
She had dropped my little brother off at my mom's house and my mom called the social worker after a day and said, listen, I want you to know this little boy is here with me. Social worker came to the house and said, are you okay to keep him? And my mom said, yes, absolutely. So then my mom became the foster parent for my little brother, Robert.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
Then the birth mother for Robert, who was dealing with substance issues herself, was pregnant with twins. my little sister Ariel and my little sister Avery. And the social worker said, would you be willing to take on these twins as well? And my mom said, yes. Now, I don't mention my little sister Avery that much because early on in her life, she passed away from SIDS.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
And it was very difficult for my mom. She's like, why would God bring these children into my life to have one of them pass away? And for a minute was wondering whether or not she would wind up keeping them. But after a moment of just saying, like, my life is more full and rich with them in it than without them, she decided to continue fostering.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
And then another two years later, wound up going through the formal adoption process. And so my brother Robert and my little sister Ariel have been with us For 25 and 23 years now, and my little sister Avery, similar to Kyle is the young man's name in This Is Us, the third of the triplets that didn't make it, went on to sing with the angels.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
Yeah. I have quite a mom, I have to say that too. She's an extraordinary human being.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
I think that similar to what you were saying in your intro with regards to the kinds of stories that folks were willing to put money into had to deal with Black folks overcoming certain adversities and dealing with certain traumas.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
My mother is still alive. And here's an interesting one. I don't talk about it that often, but I'm talking about it more now because I think that The universe is calling me into some sort of action, and I'm still figuring out what that is. My mom was diagnosed with ALS in April of 2018. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. Diagnosed in April of 2018.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
She lost the ability to speak in October of 2018. And I think has far exceeded the expectations of most doctors in terms of lifespan because she's still with us and about to go into 2024. But the joy that my mom is able to hold on to in the midst of this incredibly debilitating disease, the smile that she still has for the people who walk into her sphere is radiant. Right.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
And it shows you, it shows me, that first of all, I don't have to allow circumstances to dictate how I am in the world, that I still have choice. I may not have choice over what the circumstances are, but how I respond to them. And my mom has been a shining example of how to maintain radiance in the midst of a very difficult situation.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
And I think that that was also linked to a certain socioeconomic wash that they thought was appropriate for how blackness needed to be portrayed in order to be, quote unquote, authentic.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
I may have lost some of y'all, but you know, Google it. And 19 years ago, Detective Frank Pimbleton held this joint. As impeccably played by Andre Brown. I just want to say, Mr. Brower, whether it is at Stanford University or on this Emmy stage, it is my supreme honor to follow in your footsteps. I want to thank Bob Greenblatt, Jennifer Salke to NBC for your support from the beginning.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
The fact that you played that through to the end was priceless because I was thinking in my mind, I was like, this is when I got cut off, isn't it? Yes. I remember thinking that I saw earlier in that show Nicole Kidman had won Best Actress in a Limited Series. And I remember thinking, I was like, okay. I was listening to her speech.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
I was like, oh man, this speech is taking a little bit longer than the average speech is. But they're giving her a little bit of latitude. So I was like, okay, that's cool. And I was sort of like clocking it on my phone. on my watch, I was like, okay, my speech isn't that long, so I should be okay.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
Yes. I think at that point in time in my life, Terry, the most important thing was being able to pour back into my community in a way that was substantial. And the primary way that felt most substantial was through financial resources. So... My goal was to make money. I felt like my mom sent me to this fancy college prep school, and I got into Stanford University.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
And before I came what I thought was close to that length, I was like, oh my goodness, they're not gonna play me off. Like it's really, it's not gonna happen. I was like, let me just keep talking and I'll get a chance to finish what I need to say. And I was sort of surprised because like the microphone, they literally pulled it into the ground. As if to say like, bro.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
It physically, like it came, you know, like it had a hole in the ground that it started to retract back into. Oh, that's so funny.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
They physically lowered it and it was like, it's time for you to go, sir. And I was a little in my feelings. I'll be perfectly honest, Terry. But I was like, okay, I still won, and I still got a chance to share with a lot of the people what it is that I want to share. You always, in these situations, you always want to thank your wife. So I was like, oh, man.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
My wife is going to be so mad that I didn't thank her. But I know she knows that I love her and that if I had more time, I would have got there. So, yeah, I was in sort of a state of shock more than anything else. Like, they're really going to play me off.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
You know, that's what I was thinking to myself.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
No, no, completely spontaneous.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
But thank you. Those speeches, when you're blessed and have an opportunity to win something, you want to be able to say something that sticks to people's ribs. And I felt like it was a bit of history in terms of I was the first black man to win that particular award, Best Lead Actor in a Dramatic Series, in over 19 years.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
And the fact that it came after Andre Brouwer meant all that much more to me because he's been somebody who I've been looking up to the entirety of my career. Since I started acting at Stanford University and people said, you know, Andre Brouwer went here. And I did some research and saw the wonderful things that he did in terms of Shakespeare in the Park, all of his stage stuff.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
And that glory had just come out. And so you got a chance to see him do his thing in that. And Homicide Life on the Street was happening. And by the time I got to NYU, a TV show called Gideon's Crossing was on ABC. And he was the main character in that. And so everywhere I went, I would see Gideon.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
This man doing this incredible work with this incredible integrity, the way that he carried himself through the work, not just the work itself, but just his presence meant something. I was like, if I can represent the way that that man has represented, you'll be doing something all right.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
I didn't read the comic growing up. But I did when I graduated from NYU. Reginald Hudlin had done a new series of the Black Panther comic series. And it was entitled Who is the Black Panther? And it was a series about five graphic novels that I consumed and loved because I didn't know about T'Challa until I was 25 years old.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
And then as I was working on a TV show with a friend of mine called Army Wives, he asked me, he goes, are you into any comics? I said, you know what, not hugely, but I am into this Black Panther comic. And I showed him my collection. And he goes, dude. He goes, you should try to get the rights to this so you can make the movie.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
And I told my buddy, Drew, I said, dude, they're never going to make a black superhero movie. Get out of here. And then fast forward. I was like, I should have got the rights.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
So I auditioned for it and I felt like I did a good job. And I had a meeting with Ryan Coogler, the director of Black Panther. And he goes, listen, you're not quite right for this one role who is of the tribe that is sort of outside of Wakanda because he gets to be a big guy. But there's a role that we have that I think requires a really good actor.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
I felt like the most important thing that I could do to show my appreciation is make sure that I was able to be a contributing member of the family, a contributing member of the community in terms of financial resources. So I said, what better way to make money than to be an economics major, learn what money does, and Right.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
And it's not a lot of scene time, but it's important. It sort of like sets the narrative into place. And I said, bruh, how can I be down? Because I knew it was going to be a cultural moment. Because it was something that I could not have conceived of 15 years earlier when I was reading the comic books that was now actually coming to life. And it was not just coming to life.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
It was coming to life with... the most zeitgeisty movie studio in Hollywood. Like the Marvel Cinematic Universe was unstoppable at that particular time. And the fact that they were going to put their eggs into the basket of telling the story of the Black Panther was enormous. So for me, it wasn't a matter of like, oh, I can't get the part that I wanted. I was like, this is going to be huge.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
Whatever it is that I can do to be a part of it, I am happy. And it turned out to be a great role where all of my friends, of course, would be like, oh, man, I can't believe they killed you so fast. Spoiler alert.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
I can't believe they killed you. Spoiler alert. I had to get back to my day job as well. So the fact that I was able to moonlight everything. and something that did wind up making history. It's something that I get a chance to celebrate until the day that I pass away. I'm so honored that I got a chance to be in that film.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
And what I found through my first year at Stanford and through this internship at the Federal Reserve Bank was that while I was good with numbers, I wasn't really interested or passionate about numbers. The inner workings of what it took to make money. Like money in and of itself wasn't a driving force for me that motivated me to continue.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
People bleed in there every day. We have to sanitize it by law.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
Did you kill him? No.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
I didn't want to drive drunk, so I took a cab. And you didn't have your phone? I left it charging in my office, and I didn't realize until I was already out of the building.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
I'm talking about your phone. Why does it matter that I forgot it? Oh, if I had it on me, you could have seen it pinging off the cell tower. Doesn't matter. Didn't have it on me.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
But let me ask you this. Did you kill him? Nah. You know, it's not surprising nobody remembers seeing me. The bar was extremely crowded that night, and I spent my whole time in the corner talking to this woman, Dana.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
Thank you very much. It made me smile just listening to it. It was so much fun to do.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
Yeah, it is just dogged repetition. And you show up. One thing you learn in the world of television is that you don't get a lot of rehearsals. So you do a lot of that work on your own by yourself so that when you come to the set, you're ready to dance. And you know that Andy and Andre are going to be ready to go. So you're like, all right, let me not be the weak link in this threesome here.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
Let me show up ready to play ball the same way as everybody else. And they make it so much fun. that it sort of just happens naturally. You'll go over the scene a couple of times before the cameras start rolling, and then you'll start to do it or whatnot. And if there's a little bit of a hiccup, it's just like anything else, you'll take it back to the beginning and you'll do it again.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
And you just breathe, Terry. I think for me more than anything else is that when you try to stay in the moment, the next moment has a way of taking care of itself. When you're trying to project to the future and be like, oh, I hope I make it to this crescendo at the very, very end, then you sort of like wind up missing what's happening just right now. Take it moment to moment.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
In life, on stage, on screen is usually the best recipe to get to the end of anything. That's what I try to do as a performer. I think those two gentlemen in particular are wonderful at it. And so they made it easy for me to join in the symphony.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
Terry, the pleasure has been all mine. Thank you for having me, and I look forward to doing it again.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
I couldn't see a life just making money if I wasn't doing something that excited me or ignited me in a more passionate, spiritual, holistic sort of way.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
Great question. And it's something that I thought about for a while. And so when I told my mom that I was going to change my major, I knew that she would probably have some questions for me in terms of why I wanted to do it. But most importantly, I had to let her know that I prayed about it. And I said, yes, ma'am, I had. And I felt led.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
And that gave her permission to give me permission to dive into it without any sort of regrets or second questionings.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
Ladies and gentlemen, to grasp this crime, you must first understand Mr. Simpson's relationship to his ex-wife, Nicole. It was a ticking time bomb. The fuse was lit in 1985, the very year they were married. Officers responded after Mr. Simpson beat Nicole and took a baseball bat to her Mercedes. Then in 1989, Nicole had to call 911 again, fearing for her life.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
When officers arrived, Nicole ran towards them, yelling, he's going to kill me.
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Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
In her torn bra, Nicole pleaded with the officers, you've come up here eight times. You never do anything about it. And they want to tell you that the police conspired against Mr. Simpson. This case is not about the N-word. It is about OJ Simpson and the M-word, murder. Now, I'm not afraid to point to him and say he did it. Why not? The evidence all points to him.
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Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
In February 1992, Nicole filed for divorce. She was running away from the man who said he'd kill her. She saw the explosion coming. Why else fill a safe deposit box with threatening letters from the defendant, a will, and police photos of past beatings? She knew that the bomb could go off at any second. And then it did.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
And he was also one hell of a great football player. But he's still a murderer.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
I'm going to be honest and say, like, it was... it was a second consideration. It wasn't the first thing on my mind. I think that was sort of what a lot of us were experiencing was that we wanted the criminal justice system to work in favor of someone who looked like us because we were accustomed to it working against us. But in terms of like seeing someone beat the system
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Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
who doesn't typically beat the system, I think that was the driving factor, at least for me, in terms of why I rejoiced in his innocence at the time, in the not guilty verdict, right? And it was such a strange thing to step into, Terry, having been so pro-OJ and anti-Darden, right?
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
as a young person to have an opportunity to step into that other person's shoes and experience life from their perspective. And it was me and my friend, Sarah Paulson, had the best time on that show because she would read Marsha's book. I would read Chris's book. We would read excerpts to one another. We would go over the evidence and the evidence is pretty overwhelming because I'll say this.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
Correct. And the way that it was set up even... In the room, in the courtroom, like we had sort of crappy kind of chairs and the dream team had like these spinning swivel chairs that had like nice armrests on them and everything. And Sarah and I would look over at them and we're like, I'm going to beat these bastards.
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Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
You know what I mean? Like completely convinced that we were going to sort of like retell the trial and it was going to come out the way that we wanted it to.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
Absolutely. Hands down, 100%. He was persona non grata, as far as I was concerned. Like, you're trying to take down one of our heroes. I think that's the way... A lot of black folks will relate to people who quote unquote make it.
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Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
Celebrity or otherwise, but particularly celebrity and particularly at that time, we have so few people that are able to make it to a level of esteem, notoriety, what have you. That the idea that the system, the man that, you know, America is trying to bring them down and that a black man got attached to being Christopher Darden to the wrong side.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
This felt like, why are you allowing them to use you? That was definitely my perspective at age 18 or 19 when it happened.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
Yes. That's a yes to both of them. the DNA evidence is overwhelming. My perspective as a human being has shifted in terms of, also in terms of playing Christopher Darden, like who was the voice for the people who were murdered? They don't have anyone to speak for them. And so someone has to do it, right? Even getting into Darden's book in terms of being a prosecutor, he was like,
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
We need to have a black presence in all facets of law enforcement, whether that is as police, whether that is as prosecutors, as defense attorneys, like a presence in all of those things means that we can work from the inside. And I think that that is sort of an admirable perspective that he has on how law enforcement can work at its best.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
So that was one of the audition scenes for the show.
Fresh Air
Sterling K. Brown Was Told By Hollywood To Lose The "Smart-Guy Thing"
No, no, no. Auditioned by myself, you know. So in that scene, I remember thinking that what I understood from reading the pilot of the show, and what was very sort of surprising in terms of how it landed on people ultimately, was that it made me laugh from beginning to end. And so I was always sort of focused on the amount of light That the show had.
Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!
WWDTM: Sterling K. Brown
It is a very similar experience to promoting This Is Us. Right. Yeah. It's the same creator of the show, so I can say that Dan Fogelman created This Is Us, created Paradise.
Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!
WWDTM: Sterling K. Brown
very talented man, love him dearly, but the whole time when you're talking about This Is Us, you're like, oh, it's a family drama, and it's got, you know, all the feels and all that kind of stuff, but if you know the end of the pilot, you're like, wait a minute, all these people are related? You know what I'm saying? Sorry if I ruined anything for people who haven't watched This Is Us.
Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!
WWDTM: Sterling K. Brown
Well, you know, to be the adult son of more white people, I think would be going to the well. It's definitely not that. I usually just try to talk about the things that I can. The president dies in the pilot. But most folks, and you see that in the preview. Right, right, yeah, yeah. And I say that that's the tip of the iceberg.
Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!
WWDTM: Sterling K. Brown
I do indeed. My wife and I, Ryan and Michelle Bathé, we do a podcast called We Don't Always Agree. Spoiler alert. Yeah, it describes most marriages, but we've been married. We just celebrated 19 years in March. Mazel tov.
Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!
WWDTM: Sterling K. Brown
You know, the podcast is my wife's idea. Ayahuasca was my idea. We're both what we like to call crunchy granola black people. So we don't really fit in the box of, like, typical sort of things. Like, we like to do what they call white people stuff.
Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!
WWDTM: Sterling K. Brown
That's good. That was really good. But the ayahuasca, we went to Costa Rica. It's one of the few licensed dispensaries of the medicine in the world. And I think we were interested in seeing... A friend of mine described it to me as it unlocks blind spots that you weren't aware that you had.
Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!
WWDTM: Sterling K. Brown
The biggest blind spot is that we all sort of delude ourselves into thinking that we have some degree of control over what happens next. And really, all we have control over is our response to what happens next. That's probably the biggest takeaway.
Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!
WWDTM: Sterling K. Brown
Yeah, that's right. That's correct. I was an economics major when I was in undergrad, and I thought that being an intern at the Fed was going to be something that led to me doing some sort of investment banking thing or what have you. And really what it led me to, Pete, was knowing that I was bored to tears working at the Federal Reserve Bank. Really? Something else, yeah.
Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!
WWDTM: Sterling K. Brown
I try to comment as little as possible. Most people don't want to hear from actors about most things, so I just try to stay in my life.
Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!
WWDTM: Sterling K. Brown
All right, I think if you're in a retirement community, you're not trying to drop trowels. So then the first one was tricking out the golf cart. It is Florida. It's golf courses.
Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!
WWDTM: Sterling K. Brown
This one, I'm believing B makes the most sense. The party starts at four and ends whenever.
Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!
WWDTM: Sterling K. Brown
I hear them. I hear Chicago Live. I got to go with the crowd, baby. Let's go A. Yes, yes.