There's an anecdote that's really been sticking with me: To be a Black man in America, you are born into the horror genre. You are not safe. Period. Full stop.
So I feel now very much like a guardian. I'm standing in front of art. I'm standing in front of cinema. I'm standing in front of Black culture. I'm standing in front of the history of America, and I'm protecting it by making art, by protecting our art, and by promoting our art.
I grew up in the Dallas Metroplex. But I spent a lot of time in Waco and then in small towns down there with my grandma and then in Killeen and in Riesel.
I love being uncomfortable. I love feeling very revealed. And when I watch a piece of work that I've done, I'm actually looking for that. How naked is this character? How truthful is this character? If it's truthful, there's automatically a separation.
We now have the Black Lives Matter movement. I find that curious because this country is not quite the melting pot it's purported to be. Black lives are unknown in some pla'ces.
You have to be as smart as you can be, not smarter. You don't need to be smarter than you are.
Eight years of steady acting training nonstop... three years in the profession. And I'm still in the apprentice mode and I'm still watching everybody and learning.
I use the transition of the airport, the flying from one place to another to really let go of the -isms, and the ideas that I have as an individual and kind of adapt and begin to morph.
I have a very high frequency of anger, and a very high frequency of sadness.
I spent some time in juvenile detention, and as far as owning space, I may have owned too much space as a young boy, and it got me in trouble. But through that, I found some unity. I found acting, and that's become a place to exercise that.
The thing about terror and why it's so interesting is that terror is there to keep us safe. But then the issue comes in: Well, how do you ever grow if you can't get past this fear? That's called suppression.
My intention was always to share my experience and my gifts on the largest stage possible.
I played sports, I did all that, but I was a theater kid.
If you've been in drama school for eight years, you've got teachers in your head all the time.
Because when you're in drama school, you're playing multiple characters at once. You know, in the morning you're doing a Chekhov play, and then you're doing a Shakespeare workshop midday.
And if you think this young boy, from Dallas, Texas, is adding to the canon of theater arts, of performing arts, of cinema, well I'm humbled and I'm very excited.
In sci-fi, the Black guys always die. So, it's extremely important to bring African-American characters to the genre and not have them killed.
Sometimes the world didn't feel fair enough. Everything feels fair on the stage.
We say Black lives matter, but a lot of white folks don't know Black folk.
We talk about America as a melting pot, where you can't turn salt into pepper. Then you got too much pepper. You need the salt. You need the paprika. You need the broth.
