ST. LOUIS — For actor Sterling K. Brown, it is the light hand that the movie “American Fiction” takes with its satire that makes it easily palatable — and one of the reasons he wanted to make it.
The Emmy award-winning Brown, 47, is best known for playing Randall Pearson on the television show “This is Us.” In “American Fiction” he plays Cliff, the brother of the main character, who is portrayed by Jeffrey Wright. Cliff is a recently divorced plastic surgeon.
“His life is a bit in shambles right now as he’s trying to discover what life looks like now. I also think he has not been able to be his authentic self for the majority of his life,” Brown said in a recent phone call.
“He is fully intent on being who he is, unapologetically and quite messily, until he is able to find a new equilibrium of sorts.”
Made by veteran TV writer, but first-time filmmaker Cord Jefferson, “American Fiction” tells the satiric story of an erudite writer, played by Wright, who happens to be Black. But in the movie, publishers and mostly white readers are not interested in books by Black writers, they only crave what they consider Black books — books set in ghettos and filled with drug dealers, crackheads and violent criminals.
Brown, who is Black, sees truth in the satire.
“For a long time, the kinds of stories that seemed to be open for mainstream consumption had to deal with Black pain — whether it had to do with inner-city stories of drug dealers or strung-out mothers or single mothers who can barely deal with keeping it together,” he says.
“Seeing us in anything else felt not as commercially viable.”
The family at the film’s heart is upper-middle class and privileged, with a house on the beach outside of Boston. Though the family’s structure is fragile, they live in a good deal of comfort.
“It’s a story that isn’t typically told, populated with Black faces. It made me excited in terms of how it could expand the breadth of representation for our community,” Brown says.
Brown himself grew up solidly working class in Olivette, he said. His mother taught in the Ladue School District and his late father was a grocery clerk at Kroger stores.
“We never lacked for anything. I never wanted for anything. It took my wife telling me when I was a young man that I grew up poor for me to even realize it. I was just happy,” he says.
Brown took the role of Cliff mostly because he was impressed by the script, which he thought was new and very funny. But also it gave him the opportunity to explore a character unlike the loving and stable, if anxious, man he played on “This is Us.”
“It’s always exciting to zig when people think you’re going to zag,” he says. “I think Cliff was a nice zig to throw up in the gumbo of characters that SKB has played thus far.”
He was also glad to be able to work with an impressive group of actors, including Tracee Ellis Ross (“Black-ish”), Erika Alexandra (“Living Single”) and Leslie Uggams (everything from “Roots” to “Deadpool”).
But the actor he wanted to work with most was Wright.
Brown saw Wright and Don Cheadle in the original off-Broadway production of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Topdog/Underdog” in 2001, and the experience was life-changing for the young actor.
“It was a watershed experience for me, an invitation to what freedom could look like onstage,” he says. “Someone who owned their artistry and their bodies so fully that they felt comfortable to do anything at any time, and it was exhilarating.”
“American Fiction” is the first time he got to work with Wright, and he was pleased to see that their styles of acting meshed so well.
Both come prepared, he said. They read the script and try to understand the writer’s vision, and both memorize the lines — “You’d be surprised how many people don’t do that,” he said.
“When you are prepared, you are then giving yourself the freedom to be there in the moment, and life transpires in the moment,” Brown says.
Though there was little ad-libbing on the set, even something as small as a different tone of voice or expression by one actor in a scene can provoke a real-time, in-character response by another, he says.
“To catch your scene partner off-guard is the greatest gift you can give to them,” he says.
Brown was also impressed by Uggams, who plays their mother. At 80, Uggams is a Hollywood legend, and Brown found her to be vibrant, funny and intelligent — something to aspire to when he reaches her age.
