Hollywood being what it’s, “This Is Us” star Sterling Ok. Brown has spent years deflecting roles to but once more play “a Black man in a white household who’s discovering his approach in.”
Brown stated no as a result of he’s adamant about not getting pigeonholed, as he demonstrated this 12 months by shifting to “Biosphere,” a post-apocalyptic two-hander with Mark Duplass, after which “American Fiction,” which is concurrently a household drama, a meta-literary satire and a commentary on race in America at the moment.
“I wouldn’t need to do three films in a row with the identical sort of position,” he says. “The trade desires to say what a Sterling Ok. Brown sort is however after they suppose they’ve obtained it locked down I wish to mess with that.”
In “American Fiction,” Jeffrey Wright performs Monk, a repressed author and professor who should knock down his personal partitions to rejoin the residing; Brown is his brother, Cliff, who has already achieved simply that — after years of marriage, Cliff has come out as homosexual and is reveling in intercourse, medicine and residing giant.
Brown was drawn to the position by writer-director Wire Jefferson’s script and burgeoning status, and by the prospect to behave with Wright — however largely by the prospect to interrupt the mildew but once more.
“You’re all the time joyful anyone’s providing you one thing that they haven’t seen you do earlier than,” he says.
Brown’s level of entry for Cliff was “being somebody who didn’t all the time really feel totally embraced or understood by his household, feeling I can’t be myself and should mood who I’m to ensure that full acceptance.”
Brown’s efficiency is, unsurprisingly, nuanced (he added a slight Boston accent though Cliff has lived out West for many years to indicate he’s nonetheless tied to the household greater than Monk, who wiped his accent clear), however he’s additionally not afraid to go daring with Cliff. “He’s attempting to precise himself authentically for the primary time ever and it’s a little bit messy,” Brown says.
There’s a second the place Cliff kisses his new lover whereas speaking to his brother, and Brown says Jefferson instructed him he didn’t need it to be too gratuitous. Brown, nonetheless, didn’t need to maintain again. “It is a man who has been contained for years, so if the kiss is just too chaste, then the thought of what he’s there to do as he’s snorting cocaine feels off-character. Cliff is about to have intercourse. It’s not gratuitous for him to be ahead in that second.”
Brown will proceed in search of new methods to diversify his portfolio. He’d love a romantic comedy however provided that he will be with a Black girl. He desires to do a “refined horror movie, one with good bounce scares however that additionally leaves you pondering. So Jordan [Peele], if you wish to make one thing…” he says, including that he’d fortunately be the villain, since he desires to play a layered unhealthy man — not just like the “cartoony” one he did in “The Predator” however “a foul man that you simply like who breaks your coronary heart.”
In the end, he says, he’ll tackle any position that challenges him and perceptions of him. “I don’t all the time know the precise factor, however when you consider what folks haven’t seen me in I’m attempting to dive into that pool,” he says. “Hopefully I’ve achieved sufficient that folks say, ‘Brown is a good actor; perhaps he would like to do one thing completely different.’ There’s a little bit little bit of worry that comes together with it — and when there’s a little bit little bit of worry, you’re in the proper place.”
