Sterling K. Brown says he tries not to judge the characters he plays, but tries to convey their truth.Courtesy of Elevation
It is difficult to pin Sterling K. Brown down. With roles in this year’s Angry Birds 2, Frozen 2 and the upcoming spy thriller The Rhythm Section – when he’s not busy on television’s This Is Us and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel – the actor is seemingly everywhere, across genres and mediums. (And then there’s his behind-the-scenes work, having recently created Indian Meadows Productions in order to champion diversity in film and TV from development through production.)
Yet it’s his latest performance, as a demanding father in Trey Edward Shults’s intense new drama Waves, that may be the Sterling K. Brown project to rise above all others this year. After the film’s premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival this September, Sarah-Tai Black sat down with Brown to talk about the most unusual script he’s ever encountered, what happens when we view black lives on screen and the future of filmmaking. (Spoilers to follow.)
Review: Trey Edward Shults’s Waves is a hollow attempt at selling black lives as cultural product
Can you tell me what attracted you to this script?
This is a two-part answer for me, starting off with: One, the way in which I first read the script. I normally read hard copies of scripts, but for Waves, the script had to be read on a computer because there were musical queues attached to each scene. It was recommended that we play the music for each scene as we read along so we could hear the way in which Trey had the film scored in his head, which is a method I had never encountered before. He would use colours in the script the same way in which he used music – to inform feeling, not necessarily as a plot device, but as something he was trying to invoke within you in terms of song, in terms of sight and in terms of the written word in a way that I found to be extraordinary.
The second part to this, and this is sort of a catch-22, is that my attraction was also met with a very real reticence to a young black man taking a woman’s life in the middle of the film. I told Trey, “I think this is a very potent and powerful film, but my worry is that people might not be able to stay with it to the end, knowing that this dramatic event has happened halfway through.” We engaged in a dialogue and talked about how that pivotal moment should be executed. What I love about Trey is that he’s always open to collaborate. He was actively looking for input from the people that he created this film with so that we could have a collective, shared experience.
The core of the film is this extremely emotionally intense narrative surrounding a specific black family, but, as you were saying, there are all of these different kinds of media and extratextual references that are also engaged here, which work to inform a certain type of feeling. Overall, there are so many forms of a specifically black cultural language being used here to tell the story. Did you have any reservations about working with a non-black director?
At first, I actually thought he was black, because there aren’t too many white dudes named Trey! Trey had collaborated with Kelvin Harrison Jr. on his last film, It Comes at Night, and when Trey had showed Kelvin what he was working on, Kelvin was immediately drawn to the role of the son. So the two of them came to structure that role so that both of their voices were heard, especially since Trey had written this story as partly narrative and partly autobiographical. So the role came to take on part of Kelvin’s autobiography, too, in terms of his relationship with his dad, and it was in watching that collaboration between them that I came to the script and recognized that there was a lot of thought and consideration put into it. It’s very much about human experience, but it’s also about African-American experience.
Trey is so egoless. He never felt the need to censor us, but always encouraged us to bring our full selves to it. Many parts of the film were scripted as they are, but a lot of it is us going off the cuff. It didn’t feel like [his being white] was something that I needed to worry about, which is very similar to how I feel on This Is Us, which has an African-American family front and centre in the show, but Dan Fogelman, the Jewish creator of our show, at no point in time feels like he knows everything, so he always has at least three black writers in the writers room and always asks us for our input. So I would say part of my experience on the show prepared me and helped me to lean into the experience of making Waves, knowing that it is possible for a collaboration to transpire with authenticity.
Did you have any anxieties or heaviness perhaps on your mind about your role specifically? Not only does it seem like an extremely emotionally intense role to play, but your character also lives at such a complex cross-section of social and cultural intricacies, both onscreen and off.
I recognized my character as a real human being and I recognize that all human beings have a right to share their stories with the world. I try not to judge the characters that I play, but try to convey their truth. This character certainly was not my dad, nor is he the dad that I am to my children, but he is someone that I’m familiar with. What I recognize in him is that all of his motivations are out of love and that his shortcomings aren’t because he wants to do harm to others, but maybe because he holds on too tight. The ultimate motivation for him is love, it is concern, and it can be ugly.
I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means for black actors to play roles that aren’t inherently “good,” that are formed out of how we’ve come to find softness or harden in certain spots in reaction to the world and the way we exist in it. Characters who have both a beauty and an ugliness to them, which I think is very human and very lived in nature.
Absolutely. I’ve heard people refer to this character as being indicative of toxic masculinity, and I’m not sure which label fits there and which one doesn’t. All I know is that he has a clear motivation to protect his family and to love them in the best way he knows how. And what I enjoy about him is that he has a journey in this film and he learns how to do better.
What is your dream for the future of filmmaking?
No pressure. What’s been interesting in the course of my young career has been how streaming has changed things so much. I think there are certain films which demand a communal experience. I hope people go to see Waves in the cinema, and I want to see more films where people have the need and drive to see them in the cinema. I think there’s something so beautiful when we all collectively watch something together and share that specific experience of cinema. I’m all for it.
Waves opens Nov. 22 in Toronto before opening across the country Dec. 6
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