The Expurgated Bits: Carl Lumbly

In which Lumbly expands on his 'South Central' and 'Supergirl' experiences and also discusses 'Men of Honor,' 'Little Richard,' 'Southland,' and 'Everybody's All-American'

After promising it on social media, not to mention in the comments section of the A.V. Club, the time has come to unveil the remainder of the anecdotes that Carl Lumbly blessed me with during his Random Roles interview. This includes four completely new roles, along with two expansions of anecdotes that he told during the course of the aforementioned Random Roles conversation.

If you find yourself reading these additional anecdotes and thinking, “Man, this is good enough to pay for,” and you don’t already have a paid subscription, then this would be the perfect time to remedy that situation, and it would be greatly appreciated.

South Central (1992)—“Ali”

Carl Lumbly: I think it was one of the roles that allowed me to understand that you can't dismiss anything. Not as a character, and not in life. James Baldwin said, "You have no idea of the road I've traveled to be where you think I am." Especially when you do work like this, people tend to feel good about you and imagine that it just kind of unfurled for you and now you're here in this position, and people either like your work or they've seen you a lot. It's kind of six of one, a half-dozen of the other. Whether you're famous or you're good, it kind of doesn't really matter. It's, like, "If I've seen you before, then you're good and famous." [Laughs.] But it's one of those films where I learned a great deal.

As it happens, there were people who had been incarcerated who were on the set, working as extras, so they brought some pretty chilling stories. The gentleman who had written the book, who was a teacher, described how he wrote the book because he was tired of finding dead bodies of young black men, either dead because someone had killed them or because they'd taken their own lives. And he wanted to speak to that and address that. So when you're in a project like that and you realize how much it means to someone who created it that it's happening, you do everything you can to contribute to that, and you realize that there's a great responsibility in doing this work.

Men of Honor (2000)—“Mac – Carl’s Father”

CL: Oh, yes! That was good. That was one of those huge little roles. I told friends of mine who said, "You're in that?" "Yes, but do not blink for the first two minutes." [Laughs.] "Because I'll be there, but I'll be gone...in a way." But I think the beauty of what George Tillman did was, he allowed the character to carry his father with him, much as I carry my father with me. There are times when I'm really, really tired, and I think, "No, I'm gonna let that go." And then I hear my father's voice saying, "Slack. Get up and go do what you must do." So I do that. I get up and I go do what I must do!

That man was living inside a destroyed dream that he couldn't give up on, because it was the only way... [Hesitates.] You know, sharecroppers essentially worked at the whim of whoever they worked for, and that whim was sometimes more benevolent, and that whim was sometimes really crushing. But if that's what you have, and that's all you have, then you give it everything. But it's not something you can tell your children, "When you grow up, you want to be like me." You don't.

I have a son, and the hardest thing for me was when he went away to school. Which he had already prepared us that he was going to go away. [Laughs.] And we thought he was going to go as far away as possible, but as it turned out, he went to Southern California, so we didn't freak out. But what you want for your children is obviously more than what you feel you have for yourself. So to be staring your son in the face and saying, "Never come back here," it wasn't a situation where he knew, "Well, I'll be able to come visit you." It was, "You can't come back here because there's nothing here that I see for you for the future." He was love personified, and he was also similar to my father in another way: the work. Work is great. Hard work is good work. And it's true. I was raised to believe that that's why you're here: to do work. And you do work on yourself, you work for livelihood, you work for other people...and work is a joy. And, yeah, work is tiring. It's supposed to be! [Laughs.] And work is what helps you define leisure. So when it's time not to work, you're real clear on that!

So, yeah, I loved Mac. And I also loved the opportunity to fill that character with experience in a very short period of time. I remember there was a mule, and there was about five or six acres of dirt which was combined with Mt. St. Helena ash, and that's where I was. Whether I had scenes that day or not, I was in the field, pulling rocks and carrying them to the edge of the field, so that when it was time to plow in the scene, everything would be clear. Obviously, there was also a skilled team of professionals who prepared the plowing ground. [Laughs.] But my job was to prepare the entire field. So that was how I approached it, and it was humbling. It was great to have dirt under my fingernails and to realize that, yeah, they'd be calling lunch for me in another 20 minutes, but for Mac, this was sun up to sun down. I like those experiences. I like those things that infuse a sense of credibility in the role.

Little Richard (2000)—“Bud Penniman”

CL: Another father figure. And I had met prior to that - and, of course, subsequently - Little Richard. He knew my late wife, and he was... Little Richard was a force. Little Richard was a very, very spiritual individual. A lot of people who had come out of the church - gospel singers, even some child preachers - went into entertainment at some point and then had to struggle with this whole sense of "this is not what people expected, this is definitely not what you would think someone would do after coming out of the church." But I think sometimes, and I think Little Richard made a great case for this, it's the church coming out of the person. Not coming out and going away, but being rooted in a sense of human spirit to such a degree that it's beyond any denomination or any religious form. It's literally raw spirit. And that was Richard.

My father was not...enthusiastic about me becoming an actor. And I think not as extreme, but Little Richard's father had any number of...challenges in dealing with his son. And one of the things that I felt when my father rejected the idea of me being an actor was that it had to do with not loving me enough to embrace what I wanted to embrace. And I think the opposite was true. Loving me so much, he did not want me to take part in something that he thought was either less than I was capable of achieving or something that might hurt me terribly.

So that was my key to being Little Richard's father: just sort of brutally wanting him to do something else, just wanting to wrest him away from all of these aspects of himself that must have come from someplace else, because when he was little Little Richard, he was a joy. He was the apple of his father's eye. And that never actually changed, but the degree to which he had moved away from maybe his father's imagination of what he could be was too great. So there was a real tragedy in that. Yes, for Little Richard, but definitely for his father. And that's where I sat in playing him.

Southland (2012)—“Captain Joel Rucker”

CL: [Snort of laughter.] A madman. Oh, boy. Yeah, Rucker was... I never actually had a football coach, because I didn't play football. I played basketball. But I saw football coaches at the high school level and college level moving around, and they moved around with that sort of martial force. You didn't know it yet, but you were the enemy, and at some point you'd show yourself, and you'd have to be dealt with, and I'm the man to do it! So that was Rucker.

In my sense of it, Rucker came up at a time - and came through the ranks - the hard way, when he was black and blue. And you had to declare a loyalty, no matter what. And you were still not being treated as an equal, but at least you could be in the room to be mistreated. And there's some value for you and for the community that you believed needed to be served inside the greater community. So Rucker, for all of his by-the-book and outside-the-box behavior... [Laughs.] He believed in something. And he also could see the ways in which the same patterns were being played out from before he became a police officer. For whatever reasons, he believed he was moved to try and make a difference, to the point where he realized perhaps he would not make as great a difference as he thought, but he could not stop trying. He could not fail to put himself in those positions where he could do what he could do.

I think my favorite line as Joel Rucker is when he has these two white officers, young white officers, in his office, and one of them has punched a young Black girl at a pool party. And there's been an uproar from the community and, of course, from the force, and they've been called into his office, and he has to reprimand them. And it was an interesting take, because he's essentially telling them, "You're always being watched, so it was a stupid thing to do, because it was too obvious. You have to be smarter than that." But then he has a line to one of them, and he just asks the question: "Are you scared of Black people?" Because that is a part of what comes about in that dynamic at certain points.

And you can imagine it! Young men coming from whatever backgrounds, but young white men who have taken on the societal view of Black men and crime, and Black people, and who are put in a position where they have power and must be controlled. Not only in the way they use the power, but they must be educated about what that power is for. And right there on the side of the car, it says, "To protect and serve," so come on! [Laughs.] And that has to be "protect and serve everyone," no matter what your personal story is, or your personal understandings, or your personal beliefs. So Rucker was there was for that. I'm of the opinion that sometimes you say things that you're not sure it's going to make a difference or not, but it's really important for you to say it, or at least for you to have made the attempt.

Supergirl (2017-2019)—“M’yrnn J’onzz”

CL: I think it had probably been one for two or three seasons, and they said, "We'd like to introduce J'onn J'onzz's father, M'yrnn, and would you like to do it?" [David Harewood] is the iteration of J'onn J'onzz that I would imagine for what I had done for his voice. That's how he could have looked. So playing my own father, as his father, was joyful. There I go again, but it was joyful! It was purely joyful. What a wonderful actor. And we had good times. We had very, very good times. And again, improvisation, I keep coming back to it, because the mantra for improvisation is that the answer is never "no," it's "yes, and." Whatever you're offered from your partner onstage or in a scene, there's never a "no." You accept that that is the truth that we're working with, and if you have a way to support that, you do it. And you do that whether you're a lead or a background artist or whether you have two lines or 15 pages of dialogue. It's always about, "How can I support? What is my character here for beyond what it is that he has to say?"

But on the day, it was, "This is my son who rescued me from Mars, didn't know that I was still alive, and has brought me here to this delightfully wacky planet Earth, where...it's not exactly my cup of tea, I'd kind of like to find another planet in the universe when I first get here, but he has these wonderful friends, and they're doing this great work. And this is a planet that survived. This isn't Mars. This is a planet with potential. All of the challenges and all of the forces from outside the planet that are coming to wreak havoc, they're standing in the breach, and...that's my boy! He's with them!" [Laughs.]

So it was joyful. Again, I love doing this work, I take it very, very seriously, but I have to have fun, too! That's key. And sometimes having fun is just working until three in the morning trying to get it right. But if you feel you have, then there's a great deal of joy and satisfaction that goes way beyond whatever inadequate sum of money they're paying you. [Waits a beat before breaking into a grin.] I have to say that for my representation. They’d want me to.

Everybody’s All-American (1988)—“Narvel Blue”

CL: I took tremendous pride in the fact that, for the audition, they made me go out in the parking lot and run forties. Because Taylor Hackford had apparently been in a situation on another film where he had cast someone who said that they were athletic, and they weren't. So he wasn't going to be fooled by that again. So I went out in the parking lot, I ran forties, and then I proceeded to put in sprint workshops for myself. I ran workouts, fartleks... When I got there, I was in shape, and I was ready to run!

And I remember for one of the takes of the races running against a young man who played for LSU... In the film, Narvel is beaten by "the Grey Ghost," but I wanted to make it really hard...and I was not of an age where that was just going to happen. And I was running in boots! And I remember my point of pride was that young man coming up to me and saying, "You nearly got me." [Laughs.] And I will carry that to the Hall of Film, or whatever the chamber is in the Great Beyond, as my singular achievement.