Legendary actor Joe Morton is starring in CBS’ “God Friended Me,” although you may best recall him as Rowan Pope, the treacherous paterfamilias of “Scandal.” Both roles are just tips of a remarkable iceberg.
Morton recently wrapped a stage run with Tom Hanks and Hamish Linklater in a Los Angeles production of Shakespeare’s “Henry IV,” with Morton as Hal and Hanks as Falstaff. He’s also leading an effort to bring the John Legend-produced play “Turn Me Loose” — about comedian/activist Dick Gregory — to Broadway. Morton, who’s already starred in the L.A. version, would play the lead on Broadway, too.
He’s starred in dozens of TV series over the decades, beginning with the soap “Search for Tomorrow” in the early ’70s, then “M*A*S*H,” then …
Oh, and the movies? There’s been a few of those too, most recently 2017’s “Justice League.”
I spoke recently with Morton. This is an edited version of our chat:
Let’s fast-forward to 1984 and one of your most famous roles, as the mute “brother” in John Sayles’ 1984 sci-fi “The Brother from Another Planet.”
I thought it would put me on the map, and it sort of did: When I went to auditions afterward people said, “I love that movie,” but that usually meant I wasn’t going to get the role because they didn’t know who I was because I didn’t speak … Nobody knew what to with me and so for the longest time I did a lot of theater and television.
Then the big TV break — ABC’s highly regarded “Equal Justice” in 1990.
It was huge. To be a black actor and have a lead on a dramatic series was unheard of. We had two seasons, then ABC canceled us along with “thirtysomething” and “China Beach.”
Are you in way like Arthur Finer, the Harlem pastor you play on “God Friended Me?”
I’m not a churchgoer, not a religious person, but the phrase I use with this show is that you don’t have to believe in God to believe in good, which is how I have lived.
It’s not a religious show, but more of a humanistic show and about the connections that humans have with one another. We are all connected, whether you believe in God or not.
