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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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.
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Chapter 2: 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.
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Chapter 3: How did Peters transition from stage to screen acting?
And yes, we do fall in love. And yes, we do have adventures. And there are still things to discover even at this age. I'm not going to slow down just because I'm a septuagenarian. That just does not make sense. That's the furthest from my mind and hopefully from my body. So finding roles that are...
Like the boroughs, you know, where there's a group of people who are the same age having an adventure. I like that. Otherwise, you know, I've been somebody's dad, somebody's grandfather. You know, I just like to be somebody's brother, somebody's lover, you know, and just carry on as life is, as it really is.
Chapter 4: What is the premise of the Netflix series 'The Boroughs'?
I hope you're not tired talking about The Wire, but it is one of the best TV series ever made, maybe the best, and you are one of the stars. So can we talk about that just a little?
Sure. We can talk about it a lot.
Thank you. So you played police detective Lester Freeman, and you're the detective who finds clues through online research and files, through contacts, wiretaps, and you can put two and two together and synthesize. The clues that you found into some kind of path. But you start off in the series working the pawn shop beat. And I want to play a scene from early on in the first season.
You've just found an important clue that no one else on the investigation has been able to find, identifying who Avon Barksdale is.
Yes.
And so he's one of the two major drug dealers in the series working. So here's a scene where Detective Jimmy McNulty comes to see you in your office. He's impressed with the work you've done, but when he walks in, he finds you putting together miniature models of furniture. And McNulty's played by Dominic West, and he speaks first.
So you're police after all. You know what you're doing, but you ain't been doing it. How long you been in the pawn shop unit?
Thirteen years and four months. Thirteen years? And four months. I gotta ask you... What exactly does a police officer assigned to the pawn shop unit do? You intake reports from registered pawn shops on all items valued over $50. Then you make an index card for that item. Then you file that index card.
If someone wants to find out if something stolen has been pawned, we look to see if we have an index card. If we do, we do. If we don't, we don't. You did that for 13 years? And four months. Why'd you ask out of homicide? Well, no ask about it. You got the boot? Uh-huh. What'd you do to piss him off? Police work. I think I need to buy you a drink. Just one.
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Chapter 5: What motivated Clarke Peters to choose acting as a career?
Back then, you know, we would get the whole episode and you would read the whole episode. Nowadays, you know, you get a scene, you have no idea the context of the scene and you're asked to audition. I can't do that. I refuse to do that. I think that that really makes our job as actors very difficult. When we have the whole story,
Then we can see how we fit into that story and how we can either enhance that story, sell it or whatever. At the end of the day, the star of any story is the story you're telling. It's not the person whose name is above the title. And when that becomes more important than the story that we're telling, then we as actors just become commodities. I push back against that.
Chapter 6: How does Peters reflect on aging in the acting industry?
I really do. And as far as reading every episode, I couldn't wait until the next episodes came. And I was always looking for that moment that said, Kima may be saying something to McNulty, like... Did you hear what happened to Freeman? He caught one while he was pumping gas. I never expected to be there that long, but thank the Lord I was.
What did you think of the police when you were growing up? And did playing a police detective give you an empathy for police that you maybe didn't feel before?
I grew up with great respect for the police because in Englewood... Englewood, New Jersey. Englewood, New Jersey, we knew the police. We went to school with their children. They knew our parents. And so it was almost something that you may wanted to aspire to. Going through the 60s and 70s, I lost total respect for the police. because of their abuse of power.
I don't have a lot of respect for them now for that same reason. Yet, for those who are walking that beat and who are trying to do the right thing, I have the greatest respect for. And I know that we can be in a society that is policed in the proper way where the community as well is part of the health of that community with the police.
I know that it took you years to actually watch The Wire. So my question is, what's wrong with you?
Work. I never had time to slow down long enough to watch it. And there's nothing wrong now that I've seen it. Well done.
Were you surprised at how good it was?
Yeah, I was. I was. I actually binged watched all five seasons. I had a double knee replacements and I was recuperating. And I thought, you know, I've only seen the first two episodes of each season because that's what they would show before we finished shooting. And then I'd come back to England. It wasn't being shown in England. And I would start work until the next season of shooting.
So I never got a chance to watch the whole season. a whole season, you know, but then when I was sitting there with this ice pack on both of my knees, I just binge-watched. I thought, this is really good. I think I may even watch it twice, you know, just to really get the nuances of different people's performances, but also the information that's being imparted concerning our society.
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Chapter 7: What insights does Peters share about his role in 'The Wire'?
I get them, believe me.
A few bars?
They say... Into your early life romance came, And in this heart of yours burnt a flame, A flame that flickered one day and died away.
That's really nice. Who would have thought that Lester Freeman could sing like that?
Oh, that's cute.
You co-wrote a musical and co-starred in the original production. It's called Five Guys Named Moe. It originated in London, but then it moved to Broadway, and it was a huge success. And I never saw it, but I always assumed it was based on 60s harmony groups like the jazz-oriented Four Freshmen or the more folk-oriented The Brothers Four or the very middle of the road The Four Preps.
But it's actually like Louis Jordan songs. And they're kind of like R&B swing songs, like jump songs. What was the origin of the idea?
The origin was back in 85 when I was in Sheffield doing Carmen Jones. I had a nine-hour ride from there on a Saturday night to my home in the southern part of England. And I would listen to Louis Jordan. And I had done quite a few of these records. reviews with a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful man named Ned Sharon and, um, his co-writer Carol Brahms.
Um, and so when I'm listening to Louis' songs, each one of them is a, is a vignette within itself. And he always came with a little, um, with a moral at the end of the song. And some of these songs seem to be really talking to me. So I decided to let them talk to me. So I got as many songs of his that I could and strung them together loosely in a storyline.
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