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Hornsby hopes to expand conversation with dad roles

By Joseph V. Amodio, Newsday
Published: February 22, 2018, 5:20am

Playing a dad doesn’t come easy these days for Russell Hornsby. Not, at least, the fathers in his next two projects.

Best known as Det. Hank Griffin on ABC’s supernatural drama “Grimm,” Hornsby is returning to TV opposite Emmy-winner Regina King in the new Netflix drama “Seven Seconds,” premiering Feb. 23. The two play Isaiah and Latrice Butler, parents of a teenage boy who is critically injured by a white police officer in Jersey City. What starts as an accident snowballs into a complicated cover-up, igniting tensions throughout the community.

Then there’s “The Hate U Give,” a film based on Angie Thomas’ best-selling debut novel about an African-American teenage girl named Starr (Amandla Stenberg) who witnesses the shooting of her best friend by a white police officer. Hornsby plays Starr’s father.

Hornsby, 43, is married and a father himself, to two young boys. The Oakland native studied at Oxford University before finding acting work on stage and screen (he played Denzel Washington’s elder son, Lyons, in “Fences”).

Well, sir, “Seven Seconds” is one intense TV series.

It is. It’s an intense time in our country’s history.

Was that intensity on the page when you first read the script?

It was. That’s what attracted me to it. I’d been shooting goblins for the last six years. I’m an actor of the theater. And rarely do actors — more specifically, black actors — get a chance to be authentic on film and television. This was important to me. To be a part of this conversation.

It must be hard to play dads like these — going through such pain — when you’re a dad yourself.

I have two black boys, so it’s palpable for me, the concern, the fear. It’s scary, but … actually, what it does — it makes it easier to say “I love you,” to just grab my kids and kiss them.

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