Chapter 1: What is discussed at the start of this section?
Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. I'm Dak Shepard and I'm joined by Lily Padman.
Hi.
Hello. Warning to the listeners and the viewers today. Bring some extra slacks.
It's getting smoky.
Oh my God. Sterling K. Brown. My goodness. He is an award-winning actor. This Is Us, Paradise, American Fiction, Waves, Washington Black. And thank goodness we have season two of Paradise are out today. First three episodes are out today on Hulu. What a show. I've watched several. It's phenomenal again. What a great show.
It is. He is fantastic.
He is fantastic. Please enjoy Sterling K. Brown.
He's an archer expert. He's an archer expert. He's an archer expert. We're so happy to have you.
Thank you so much.
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Chapter 2: How did Sterling K. Brown's upbringing shape his identity?
He's like, you know, your neighborhood was a golf course. And then they cleared the golf course. They made residential neighborhood. And it was a lot of Jewish families that moved in because it was lower income housing in a great school district. Ladue School District was very good. And then as a lot of the Jewish families aged up, the older people, the parents stayed, the kids moved out.
But then a lot of black families moved in. Yes. So you had a lot of older Jewish people and a lot of young black families in this neighborhood together. I remember a substitute teacher, Mrs. Wiebelman, lived right down the street from me. My first crush was Elizabeth Shervitz.
Ah, mine was Elizabeth too, Betsy, my first crush.
Yeah. Yeah, Elizabeth Shervitz, not black, Shervitz. The Shervitz gave it away. But then it was the Browns and the Scots and the Smiths and the Herds. And it was this wonderful place to grow up where you rode your bikes everywhere. It felt like stranger things. We'd have these full neighborhood water gun fights where you have super soakers just like blasting people. It was awesome.
Yeah.
I loved it. You're one of five. I don't know your order, but if you got Sterling, were you the first? Are you the oldest? I am my dad's only child.
Interesting. So Moms was married before to Arthur Slaughter. And she had three kids. Fierce last name. Slaughter. Slaughter's good. My brother and sister are Armin Slaughter and Angela Slaughter. Nice. Their oldest brother who passed away because he had a child born illness. His name was Anthony. So Arlene, Arthur, Anthony, Armin, and Angela.
Then moms got divorced from Arthur, was five years single, married Sterling Brown Jr. And I am Sterling Brown Jr. 's only son. Then my mom adopted two more kids when I started grad school. So I was 22 when my little brother Robert and then two years later, my little sister Ariel came in. So she gets them through the church? How did she come upon that? This is interesting.
My Aunt Vera is the collector of things in our family. She brings home pets. Wow. She was a foster parent and she brings home kids. But my aunt also was battling her own substance abuse things at that time. So she would bring home pets and whatnot to take care of and then be like, here, Billy, that's her sister. Why don't you hold on to this? And now that becomes Billy's family. pet.
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Chapter 3: What lessons did Sterling learn from his father's passing?
Whatever you say.
Oh, my God. Oh, that's great.
Wow. So she retired shortly after because she believed the Holy Spirit, God, would find her needs. So there's social security from dad's passing. There's social security for her. Mine cuts off at 18 or something like that. But we just really lived beneath our means. My brother came back and helped for a little bit. My sister came back and helped because she's 12 years older. The slaughters.
They showed up. The slaughters show up. Everybody did their part. This is how tight things were. My mom's senior year of high school, she didn't want me to have senioritis. She wanted me to, like, finish strong. Because, you know, second semester, I was like, I got into school. What are we doing right now? She's like, if you get straight A's, second semester, I give you $1,000.
I was like, say less, homie.
I got you.
I bust out these A's or whatnot. Arlene Brown is a woman of her word. Lays that $1,000 on your boy, right? About a week later or so, she goes, listen to me. It'll last you four days in the Bay Area. You got this cash and you totally earned it. But mommy has some bills that I have to take care of. Could I borrow some money from you? I said, you know what, mom, just take it.
And she said, that's not what I said. No, no, no, no, no. Take it. It's all good. That moment when I went to school, because Stanford was wild, was awesome. My wife and I have this conversation. We thought everybody was going to be like us, meaning the black people at Stanford. And by us, I mean, okay, I filled out this FAFSA. I ain't got a whole lot of income to report.
Help a brother out, Mr. Clinton, right? Yeah. My wife... Her dad was like a chief information officer for different Fortune 500 companies. They wound up retiring to North Carolina and building a 14,000 square foot home. Oh, my goodness. OK. So we're from the opposite side of the tracks. So she thought everybody was going to be bougie. And I thought everybody was going to be like hustlers.
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Chapter 4: What challenges does Sterling K. Brown face in his personal life?
He's trying to get a foothold with his writing career. He's trying to take care of mom. And my character is sort of like on a different path. I've been married for 20 years. Things have fallen apart. I'm gay. I'm finally coming out of the closet and trying to live my truth. And sometimes what I need out of life right now is not exactly what he needs from me. So it's fun.
I often play the guy that has to hold it together.
Chapter 5: How does Sterling K. Brown's character navigate his relationships?
It's fun to be the dude that messes with the dude who has to hold it together. Absolutely. That was a lot of fun. But I think what I found out for me, like I have a lot of... gay people in my family and friends and people who had chosen for a period of time to live in the closet and then ultimately come out of the closet.
There is no real fulfillment in life if you're not allowed to live your truth. And I think what I was most curious about or most interested about is like, okay, how will I show up in this space? Because I've had other characters before that have been offered me who were LGBTQ, and I didn't know if I would be able to do it. So I passed. What I refused to do is half-ass something. The community...
that I represent needs to be able to see something on screen that they should be proud of and feels fully inhabited and not sort of commented on. Do you know what I'm saying? And so like, it took me probably till I was 47, whenever I wound up doing the role to be like, the humanity is what's most important to me.
And what about, again, I would be guessing because it's not happened other than when I get to work with occasionally some white trash folks, which they don't come around Hollywood all that much. But you got to do two movies with Chadwick. You're in Black Panther. Then you're doing American fiction. Like, what about working with black folks? Is that extra rewarding in a way?
Chapter 6: What insights does Sterling share about representation in Hollywood?
Yeah. You know. How can I say it? This is interesting. It's fun, like on Black Panther, like you go into the hair and makeup trailer and all hair and makeup is black. Yeah. If you have to get a haircut, you know shit's going to be right. Yeah. It's going to be a good fade. It's going to be good. Other experiences you walk in, there's not a black person in there.
And they pull out a set of clippers that nobody has ever put towards your head before. And you're like, I guess we're going to wear a hat on this one.
You know what I'm saying?
What I sort of rejoice into is I think I grew up in an era, like there were a few ensemble things that would take place. And I remember having this conversation with Chad specifically, where for a long time it seemed For black folks in Hollywood, there could be only one. That only one person was allowed to sort of pop at a time. And I've heard Eddie Murphy talk about this in his documentary.
And you've heard other people talk about it. There's this thing, number one on the call sheet. And it now seems like there can always be more. Don't get me wrong. Where we're allowed to play and you don't have to see, like, if you get something that you took it away from me. Yes. It's not finite resources the way it had been. It's not a zero-sum game. And I think they tried to set it up like that.
to make us sort of fight each other instead of support and champion each other. Women too. Agreed. To be in a space right now, I don't want to mistake my own fortune and goodwill for like everything is okay. Sure, sure. Because I'm good, but like things can be better for everybody, right? Yes.
But I go into rooms and I see people, whether it was Chad before or Michael B. or Brian Kinry or Mahershala Ali, who was a year above me at NYU. And I get a chance to see bras and I was like, Oh, man, we're here. It feels good. It's cool to be here.
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Chapter 7: How does Sterling K. Brown reflect on his journey in acting?
Yeah. I was saying this the other day. I wonder if you connect to this. I feel like I grew up needing to be the exception, needing to be like, oh, well, we don't like that group, but we like her. We'll let her in because we like her specifically. It was like a game of survival to just be the one that got through. And now I'm at an age where I'm like, That's fucked up.
I have some guilt around that. Why didn't I embrace those other Indian people, other, other people to let in? Because I was so like, I'm in. So I don't care about the rest of you. It's a mind fuck a little bit.
I think I knew that when it was happening even then. because you get things like, you're so eloquent and you're so articulate. What a joy. And they're saying it like, you haven't had that experience before, have you? You know what I'm saying? I was like, I have this experience quite frequently. So there's that.
And then even my school, in my CDS, like I remember I won this award called the Headmaster's Cup for the student that best exemplifies the spirit of the school. but I also get that it's a good PR move for the school. I was like, so you guys get something, I get something, we'll call it a wash. We'll call it a win in that sort of way.
The feeling that I have more than anything right now, which I think is unique to being a person of color in a predominantly white space, which Hollywood is, is that you know how many people are watching you and counting on you. And like, it's just different.
Yeah. What's he going to say about this?
It's just different.
Yes.
You have to, to a certain extent, embrace it. And then you have to remember, you just have to be yourself. But in being yourself, you're trying to like bring the best part of yourselves in such a way that you don't set anybody back. The pressure. Please don't send us back, Brown. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Please allow us to continue to move forward and champion you and be proud.
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