Sterling K. Brown discusses his new role as a Secret Service agent on 'Paradise,' his time on 'This is Us,' struggling as an actor in the beginning and his family life in Parade's exclusive cover story.
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00:00She's like, Brown, you don't even audition no more.
00:01You don't know what it's like.
00:02And I'm like, hey, man, I've been there.
00:04So don't try to front on your boy like I'm disconnected
00:06from the people.
00:08I'm still a man of the folks.
00:14It was 2006 or like 19 years ago or something like that.
00:21Gordon Walker, right?
00:22Yes.
00:23That's my guy.
00:24You know when people know you from Supernatural,
00:26they're like, yo, you're my dude.
00:28I had a blast.
00:30Jensen and Jared are two of my favorite people on this planet.
00:34Incredibly kind, warm.
00:36They make you welcome on that set because it's hard nights.
00:40There's a lot of nights in the days
00:41because you're shooting a lot at nighttime
00:43and trying to maximize the sun being gone.
00:46But it was so much fun.
00:48And I'm telling you, the rabid following
00:51of the Supernatural fans.
00:53I did one convention, and one convention
00:55I had several women ask me to bite them.
00:59You know what I'm saying?
01:01You get weird, weird stuff that happens,
01:04but weird born out of a complete and total adoration
01:08for the product that they put out into the world.
01:10So it was dope.
01:11And I think if I had not wound up booking
01:14Army Wives as a series regular, I probably
01:17would have recurred on that show for a little bit longer.
01:19As fate will have it, your boy had to get beheaded.
01:22I don't think I thought about anything
01:24other than wanting to pay the bills by acting.
01:27The first 15 years or so of my career,
01:30I was blessed to do exactly that.
01:31Pay the bills just doing this acting thing.
01:34Then the OJ came along, and then the trajectory of it
01:38shifted in a very delightful and surprising way.
01:42To be able to have some sort of choice in the projects
01:45that you want to be a part of, to have people
01:48want to be in business with you, who are asking you
01:50what kind of projects you want to do,
01:52rather than just taking crumbs from the table of joy
01:55and being happy with what you get,
01:57it is an incredible privilege.
02:00And I live in a house with a woman who I'm married to
02:03who reminds me all the time.
02:05She's like, Brown, you don't even audition no more.
02:06You don't know what it's like.
02:07And I'm like, hey man, I've been there.
02:09So don't try to front on your boy
02:10like I'm disconnected from the people.
02:12I'm still a man of the folks.
02:14Well, I would say that Randall and his perfectionism
02:20are something that I probably dealt with
02:23before I met Randall, because I used to think
02:27that there was such thing as being perfect.
02:31You know, you're a high-achieving sort of individual,
02:34fortunate enough to go to Stanford University
02:36and go to NYU for acting or what have you.
02:39And so I hold myself to a pretty high standard in general.
02:44But I think I've learned a certain level of grace
02:46in the midst of those high standards,
02:49and that one does not counteract the other.
02:52I think, you know, in order to have the desire
02:54to achieve at a level that I wish to,
02:57you also have to have a level of grace
02:59that if you fall short of the mark, that it's okay.
03:02You get a chance to pick yourself up and do it again.
03:04Because if you don't have that level of grace,
03:06anything that doesn't measure up to your own standards
03:09could be debilitating.
03:11I have beat myself up from time to time.
03:14Don't get me wrong.
03:15But the amount of time in which I do it has shortened
03:19and become less and less,
03:19and I'm able to get to the other side of it
03:21much more quickly.
03:23So I'll say that that's a good lesson from the show.
03:27This is an interesting sort of thing.
03:28I remember season five of This Is Us,
03:31which we got delayed
03:32because it was in the middle of the pandemic
03:35and George Floyd's murder.
03:40And when we finally came back to the show,
03:43you know, I was having these conversations with Dan.
03:45Like, are we going to address the world at large?
03:46Are we going to act as if This Is Us
03:48takes place in an alternative reality?
03:50He's like, I think we have to talk about it.
03:52Like, I think we're in a unique position to talk about it
03:54in a way in which people can relate to it, right?
03:57And there was this really wonderful conversation
03:59between Kate and Randall,
04:02about Kate feeling sad and being sorry
04:04about what's happening in the world with George Floyd,
04:07and that must be so hard for you, Randall.
04:09And Randall's sort of telling him,
04:10like, this is not the first time a black man has died
04:12at the hands of law enforcement.
04:13And like, why are we talking about it right now?
04:17And normally I would hug you
04:18and I would tell you that you did all the right things.
04:22I would try to make it all okay for you.
04:24But if I did that, Kate,
04:26if I made things better for you,
04:27then where does that leave me?
04:33I'm sorry, but I can't do that.
04:36That has been my pattern all my life.
04:39And honestly, Kate, it is exhausting.
04:43It sort of emphasized,
04:44and this was a very polarizing coming back to the show,
04:47because on social media, I can remember,
04:48there were some people who were so thankful
04:51for that episode.
04:52And some people were like,
04:53if I want to watch the news, I'll turn on the news.
04:55I came to this show to get away from all that.
04:56And I was like, hey,
04:57if and when you want to come back, we're here for you.
04:59If you don't, if you need to take a break,
05:01that's okay too, to each his own.
05:03I ain't trying to tell you how to live your life,
05:04but we're going to tell this story.
05:06And what was sort of beautiful about it
05:08is that you got a chance to see two people,
05:12black and white, who love each other,
05:15who have very different perspectives
05:17on what was happening in the world,
05:19have a very difficult conversation,
05:22but not not have it, right?
05:24And I think we've gone to a place sometimes
05:26where difficult conversations,
05:28we think are things that need to be avoided
05:30rather than to be engaged in with love.
05:34That's something that I actively remind myself of,
05:37because I am not impervious to the idea
05:42of people thinking differently than me,
05:44feeling like the enemy.
05:47And I'm trying real, real hard to get over that.
05:50Oh man, there's cameras running and stuff.
05:53What was it like?
05:54So I have to start with this sort of preamble.
05:58Paradise in no way is a reflection
06:00of the world in which we live.
06:01It is a work of fiction.
06:02Any similarities to characters that you see in real life
06:05are just by chance.
06:06That being said, people are necessarily going to draw
06:11their own conclusions as to who is so and so
06:13supposed to be in the real world, right?
06:15You wind up creating a work of fiction
06:17and then life happens and you realize,
06:19oh, it's not as fictional as we thought
06:21that it was going to be.
06:23Whether you're talking about that situation,
06:25whether you're talking about natural disasters
06:27and their impact on the world in which we live, right?
06:30Like some of these things are so dangerously close to home
06:35that it may affect the way in which the audience says it
06:37and necessarily so to be like, how close are we to this?
06:41I'll be out of town for a couple of weeks
06:44right before Valentine's Day.
06:45So it means she'll be excited to see me, which is nice.
06:49It's nice when she likes to see me.
06:50Yeah, we'll go out, we'll have a nice dinner.
06:53Hopefully I get a chance to get a babysitter
06:55so the kids are taken care of
06:57and we can have an adult evening out.
07:00There are no secrets to longevity.
07:05Everybody talks about communication
07:06and communication is important.
07:08Learning how to fight fear,
07:11learning how to speak responsibly
07:14and not reactively to one another.
07:17In the midst of things, feelings can run high.
07:19If you need to take a moment to yourself
07:21so you can speak coherently to your partner
07:24in a way in which you don't regret anything that you say,
07:27take that deep breath and come back when you're ready.
07:30Don't allow yourself to just react, right?
07:33We've grown so much through the years.
07:36I mean, and as Ryan would agree,
07:37we used to have some fights that were just awful.
07:41Absolutely terrible.
07:43Like I'm so happy with the evolution of our relationship
07:46and our ability to express ourselves,
07:48our needs, our desires, our wants
07:51without offending the other person.
07:53We've come a long way.
07:54And honestly, like I think about it,
07:56like I did not know if we would get to this place
07:59at certain points in time in the relationship.
08:01I'm very thankful that I have my partner in life
08:04to go through everything that I have with her.
08:06I love her very much.
08:07He's a teenage boy.
08:09So I think teenage boys,
08:11I don't know if they're different than girls.
08:12I have nothing to compare to except for this is us.
08:15But I'll say this, he's very close to the vest,
08:17is my oldest son.
08:19So I want to give him his privacy and his autonomy,
08:23but not I need to let him know
08:25that like your dad cares about every facet of your life.
08:28Right?
08:29So if and when you want to share with me,
08:31you can share whatever you want with your boy, right?
08:36He's a great student.
08:37I mean, the kid makes straight A's.
08:38He's a great athlete.
08:39He plays soccer like nobody's business.
08:43And he's a great friend, right?
08:45The people that he's close to, he is ride or die.
08:49So I'd have no real horror stories to report
08:53with regards to raising a teenager
08:56other than I just want him to talk to me more.
08:58That's it.
09:00There's been all kinds of community.
09:02We've been talking to each other, to Milo, to Mandy,
09:06you know, and especially, I see Mandy all the time.
09:08We've been doing the podcast together,
09:10me, her and Chris Sullivan.
09:11It's so heartbreaking, bro.
09:14You know, she just had her third baby, her baby girl,
09:17and then she loses her home.
09:19Her husband's family in the Palisades,
09:21they lose their home.
09:22So like, she's really just sort of like starting over
09:26and figuring out what to do next.
09:28And so you just make yourself available
09:30in whatever way you can.
09:31Like we've talked a couple of times
09:33since this all went down,
09:34but you give her a space too
09:36because it is such a devastating thing
09:38to sort of figure out your way through.
09:40And she's just taking it one day at a time.