Clarke Peters: From ‘The Wire’ to ‘The Boroughs’
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It's June and another big week in the run-up to the midterms. Primaries in half a dozen states, including California, where new congressional maps are in place and a chaotic race for governor is wide open. We're also following gas prices and Iran. So far, talk of a peace deal is just talk. We'll keep you posted. Listen every morning, up first on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. So many of us became aware of what a great actor Clark Peters is from his role in one of the best TV series ever made, HBO's The Wire. He played police detective Lester Freeman, who helped track down the drug dealers the detectives were looking for through his research and his analysis of wiretaps.
The series was co-created by David Simon, who also co-created the HBO series Treme, set in New Orleans shortly after Hurricane Katrina. Peters co-starred in that, too, as a Mardi Gras Indian chief who returns to his damaged home and tries to rebuild his life. In Spike Lee's film The Five Bloods, he was one of the four Vietnam vets who returns to Vietnam decades after the war. Now he's one of the stars of the Netflix series The Burrows. Clark plays one of the residents in a retirement community that promises an almost utopian chapter of your life. But some of the residents start dying, while others start experiencing some very disturbing, inexplicable encounters and visions. Something's going on, and it seems to be something supernatural.
Clark Peters grew up in Englewood, New Jersey, but moved to Europe in the 70s and settled in London, where he continues to live and is speaking to us from. He's been in London stage productions of the musicals Guys and Dolls, Porgy and Bess, and Chicago, as well as dramas. He co-wrote and co-starred in the original production of the musical Five Guys Named Mo, which was first staged in London. It moved to Broadway, where it was also a big hit. Clark Peters, welcome to Fresh Air. It's such a pleasure to have you.
Thank you. That was a lovely introduction. I did all that?
You did a lot more than that, but I figured let me keep my intro short so we have more time to actually talk.
What roles made Clarke Peters a household name?
I could have gone on. I left out a lot of series and movies. So let's get to the Burroughs. So the cast is largely in their 60s and 70s because it's set in a retirement community. You yourself, as Clark Peters, you're in your mid-70s. What kind of roles do you think you would have been offered at this age when you started acting professionally in the 1970s?
Well, I picked this profession so that I would have longevity, so that I could still be acting at 100 if it comes to it. But starting out, I always played older people. So in Driving Miss Daisy, for example, with Dame Wendy Hiller, I think I was in my late 30s playing Hoke, who was well up into his 80s, and I looked at a diary that I'd written, and on one page it was, I'm tired of playing old guys because there's no future in it. LAUGHTER But I'm still here playing old guys.
What appealed to you about the role on The Burrows?
To tell you the truth, honestly, I didn't want to do The Burrows because someone had likened it to Stranger Things, which I hadn't seen before this offer came through. And what I didn't want to be doing was... acting as I'm chasing monsters until I'm 80 years old. But then I read the script and I thought, oh, I can resonate with this journey, with the quest that art is on. And then I looked at the cast and I thought, oh, there's just no way I can say no to this.
There are roles for older people where, especially sometimes when the cast is all about older people, Where I sense something condescending. They're either like, oh, it's so cute. They're on an adventure. You know, oh, it's so cute. They're still walking. Oh, it's so cute.
They're still breathing.
They're still breathing.
Oh, it's so cute.
They've fallen in love. Do you get offered roles like that? And what do you do?
Yes. I try to let people know that just because we live in a society where we take the elderly and we hide them away doesn't mean that they're not valued or that they have something to offer.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–2:14
2
What roles made Clarke Peters a household name?
2:14–5:09
3
How did Peters transition from stage to screen acting?
5:09–5:58
4
What is the premise of the Netflix series 'The Boroughs'?
5:58–10:20
5
What motivated Clarke Peters to choose acting as a career?
10:20–11:17
6
How does Peters reflect on aging in the acting industry?
11:17–27:38
7
What insights does Peters share about his role in 'The Wire'?
27:38–46:55
Speakers
5 identifiedMore from Fresh Air
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