The veteran actor discusses putting his personality aside and being of service to the wild story of the 2014 LA Clippers controversy.
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00:00I was not surprised that an owner of a basketball team
00:05like the Clippers would be,
00:07would have some of these racist attitudes.
00:09I wasn't surprised by that.
00:10What I was surprised by was the fact
00:13that he was held accountable and responsible
00:15and then subsequently had to sell his team.
00:17That surprised me.
00:18Doc Rivers!
00:19The Clippers have never won a championship, ever.
00:23We are going to win this year and it will change your life.
00:27Look at you.
00:28Does that have RT?
00:30Are you trading DeAndre Jordan?
00:31Excuse me, this is my assistant, Phoebe.
00:35Hello, thank you so much for taking the time.
00:37Just to kick things off.
00:39Well, I have to ask first,
00:40did you get a chance to speak with Doc Rivers
00:42about everything that happened before taking on this role?
00:45Well, I got to meet Doc Rivers.
00:48I didn't really try to ask questions about the events
00:53that take place in the series Clipped,
00:54but we had a nice chat
00:58and it was just about meeting him
01:00and getting to know him a little bit for me.
01:02Makes sense.
01:03I kind of wanted to ask you what you feel,
01:07well, you didn't speak with him,
01:08but kind of what it was about this moment,
01:11which deals so much with the age of social media
01:14and race and sports and everything
01:16that was so significant for not only his career,
01:20but for sports overall, moving from that point forward.
01:24Well, I was in LA at the time.
01:26I live in LA and everybody in LA was aware of the story.
01:30I'm not a sports fan,
01:31so I wasn't really following it, following it,
01:33but you couldn't help but be aware of it.
01:35I was not surprised that an owner of a basketball team
01:40like the Clippers would have some of these racist attitudes.
01:44I wasn't surprised by that.
01:45What I was surprised by was the fact
01:48that he was held accountable and responsible
01:50and then subsequently had to sell his team.
01:52That surprised me.
01:53And I thought, oh, that's interesting.
01:54So when I read the scripts, what was great was,
01:58as you said, there's this confluence of racism,
02:01sexism, money, power, wealth, fame, influence,
02:05social media, like the whole gamut.
02:09And it's written in such a beautiful,
02:12intelligent and humorous way that I thought,
02:15okay, these are the things that I like talking about.
02:19These are the kind of issues that I like to deal with
02:21in terms of the stories that I want to tell.
02:25So I was very excited to join and be a part of it.
02:28You did an amazing job.
02:28It was a really chameleonic performance.
02:31It really made you look a lot like him.
02:33I do not-
02:34I know, it's crazy, right?
02:35Right, it was really nice.
02:38In your opinion, what do you think, say for instance,
02:41Ms. Viviano did not pull out a recorder,
02:44what do you think would or would not have changed
02:46from that moment in that industry?
02:49You know, I hesitate to speculate about anything like that.
02:53I'm just, listen, I'll tell you,
02:55Cleopatra Coleman is brilliant in this performance,
03:00as is Ed O'Neill.
03:03It just, all the performances I think are,
03:07I mean, just really hands down,
03:10they're all really wonderful and pitch perfect.
03:13Also, you are in a different industry
03:15and acting a veteran in that sense,
03:18but it also has its own issues
03:20with racialized things overall.
03:24Do you feel in your time as an actor
03:26that you've had any sort of parallel experience
03:29where you've had to take some similar sort of stand
03:31or find a way to navigate a situation where it's like,
03:35okay, I'm in this position,
03:37but how do I navigate something
03:39that does not feel right on a racial level?
03:42Well, Revae, you know,
03:43you and I have both been black all of our lives.
03:48And we're relatives of people.
03:51You know, I can see you're a Howard grad, right?
03:54So you successful person, you successful black woman.
03:58So, you know, as a successful black person,
04:01you have some challenges that are presented to you
04:05under the, you know, let's call it the umbrella
04:07of white supremacy, white racism,
04:08whatever you wanna call it.
04:10And you know, you have to deal with those things, right?
04:14So, I mean, I'm not a stranger to that
04:16in any way, shape or form, just like Doc isn't, you know.
04:20I'm faced with those kinds of challenges as an actor
04:23and have been as an actor since the beginning.
04:25You just figure out a way to deal with it.
04:28Yep, we're all charged with that.
04:31I do wanna ask you-
04:31There's no roadmap.
04:32There's no like, you know,
04:33you have to adapt to the situation
04:36as the situation develops and evolves.
04:41Overall for this particular story.
04:43And I mean, we all know how it kind of wrapped up.
04:45I mean, generally.
04:47I'm sure there's new information
04:49to a certain generation of people, absolutely.
04:51But what do you feel, in a nutshell,
04:54is the overall takeaway for the audience
04:56from what happened in this firestorm of everything?
05:01Again, this is a question I always hesitate
05:03to try to answer,
05:04because it's not my business what the audience takes away.
05:08My business is to entertain the audience,
05:10to deliver a good performance.
05:11That's my business.
05:13My having an expectation of the audience
05:15is ridiculous.
05:16The only expectation that I have, you know,
05:20I have to fulfill the audience's expectation,
05:22which is to deliver a performance that is believable.
05:26After that.
05:32Well, being that you are such a chameleon
05:33and you've played just such a variety of roles,
05:35I don't even know how many years,
05:37my whole life, absolutely.
05:39How are you able to get in the headspace
05:40to kind of cast yourself aside
05:44and put on these different roles
05:47and these different characters,
05:48especially in this situation, a real person?
05:49How are you able to get that?
05:50I'm fortunate.
05:51I'm fortunate in that I have a kind of range.
05:53I have that kind of ability
05:54where I can actually remove myself
05:57from the equation to a certain extent.
05:59You know, obviously I can't completely erase myself,
06:02but I can.
06:03I try not to impose my own personality on characters,
06:07because that's just not the way I work.
06:09But for other people, that does work.
06:11It's like they lead with their personality
06:14and mold the character to them.
06:15And sometimes that's great too, you know?
06:20But yeah, I, again, with this particular piece,
06:25Doc, when I met him,
06:29I had an opportunity to invite him to a party.
06:32And another friend of mine,
06:34Wynton Marsalis was there at the party.
06:35And the late Bill Russell had just passed away.
06:39And the two of them sat down
06:42and were debating whether or not Bill Russell was,
06:45as some people claimed,
06:46the greatest basketball player
06:48who'd ever played the game or not.
06:51And they both came at it from different sides.
06:53So I was able to observe him
06:55talking about the thing that he loved,
06:56that he has dedicated his life to,
06:58which is the sport of basketball,
07:00intelligently with another black man
07:04and somebody who's, you know,
07:06very knowledgeable about basketball
07:07and the history of basketball and even Doc's career.
07:09So it was really interesting.
07:10And I was able to extract some things
07:13in just observing him
07:15that I could use in portraying him as a character.
07:17Awesome.
07:18Well, thank you so much for your time today.
07:19That's my time.
07:20And truly appreciate it.
07:22Bless you, dear.