Wendell Pierce

And that's what I thought he was training to do when I realized he had an artistic vocation of being a photographer like Roy DeCaravar or James Van Der Zee.

and all of these wonderful photographers when I saw these from his exhibit.

So it was a dream deferred for him.

So a part of his pushback on my wanting to be an actor was his desire as a father not to see his son go through the hurt and the disappointment that he had gone through.

And so that's why he tried to steer me away from being an actor early on when I was in high school.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

That audition, I consider one of the highlights of my career.

And it was for the big deal on Broadway.

And I went in and I had come up with, they had already started.

And it was a play about a boxer who is being manipulated by the mob and he's throwing fights and he takes his life back.

He goes, listen, all right, this is it.

I'm not going to do this anymore.

I'm taking my life back.

And so he explodes in the middle of in this one scene.

And so I was going into audition.

They had already started rehearsal.

And on the break, I was going to go in and do my audition.

So as the doors open and they're coming out for a break, I run into the room and I said, all right, listen up, everybody.

This is what's going to happen.