I was raised as a Catholic, but I got up to go to church because I thought I'd be hit by a bolt of lightning if I didn't.
They say marriages are made in Heaven. But so is thunder and lightning.
I really got struck by lightning when it came to my decision to leave WWE. If I literally think about that day and who I was then, it's drastic. It almost happened overnight for me.
We all know the dangers of sequels. Lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place too often, and I think you've got to move beyond it, go the extra mile and have the courage not to just repeat the first one.
On 'Black Lightning' I have a stunt double who's a lot younger than me. The fighting style on the show is heavily martial arts-based, and I know boxing; I don't know martial arts. I also have a really bad knee, and he's been doing martial arts since he was 6 years old, so I'm not thinking, 'No, I can do that! I can make that look cool!'
A friend of mine kind of revealed to me that idea that there has been countless Supermen and Batman. But I'm the first person to play Black Lightning. It's exciting to originate a character.
I didn't really know of 'Black Lightning' until I got the script and started to investigate - it wasn't a hero that I grew up with. So I didn't know if his powers were natural or if it was the suit, but those things are, for me, very important. I really like the idea that his powers are his - that whether he has the suit or not, he has them.
When you're playing a superhero, you're almost playing two different people. I separate when I'm playing Jefferson Pierce and the days when I'm playing Black Lightning.
Other music that 'Ride The Lightning' led me to discover was to start really kind of sinking my teeth into some of the thrash of the era that I literally had no exposure to - whether it was Slayer, whether it was Testament, whether it was Megadeth. It was the opening of a doorway, for me, to a whole new palette of music.
My favorite parts of work as an actor and a director are those unplanned mistakes that do happen, because it's like catching lightning in a bottle. It's the best part of what we do.
