Burn It Down by Maureen Ryan

Author:Maureen Ryan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-04-06T00:00:00+00:00

9

Launch Them into the Sun

The Toxic Myths Around Creativity

They’re just assholes.

—Harold Perrineau

In a career that stretches back to the mid-1980s—one of his first on-screen credits was as a dancer on the TV version of Fame—Harold Perrineau has seen a lot. A lot.

“I have had some great experiences. I’ve met some really great people who have enhanced my life,” said Perrineau, whose résumé features roles in Oz, Lost, Romeo + Juliet, and the Matrix films. Some of the people he’s worked with have been gems who made the work—and the spaces they moved through—better.

Perrineau has also seen a lot of terrible behavior. He’s watched actors with more power (and better compensation) show up drunk, behave abusively, use offensive language, and generally act like entitled jerks. He’s also, despite his obvious skills as a performer, routinely been passed over for the kind of lead roles that his white peers frequently get, whatever their track records on other sets. For Perrineau, who plays a small-town sheriff on the Epix horror drama From, which premiered in 2022, things are starting to shift.

“I’m not gonna lie, I feel a little bit like the beneficiary of this racial reckoning,” he said, referring to the halting attempts the industry has made in recent years to come to terms with its history of bias and exclusion. These days, producers, studios, and other key industry folks “are interested in even considering something other than a white male to play the lead in a show,” Perrineau told me. “Had none of those things happened, I firmly believe that I might not be playing this character, and they would’ve gone to some straight white male actor. ’Cause that’s the way it still goes down now, you know what I mean? Unless it’s a uniquely Black story. You could try to tell the story of the Godfather of Harlem [an Epix drama that premiered in 2019] without Forest Whitaker, but you really can’t, you know?” Perrineau said with a laugh. “Adrien Brody’s not going to tell that story.”

Finally, Perrineau is playing the kind of part that white actors have always been considered for—basically, just a guy. A lawman with a difficult past in a small town beset by frightening phenomena. It’s a long-overdue starring role that amply displays Perrineau’s ability to channel quiet resolve, wounded yearning, and determined resilience all at once. And it marks a notable milestone: After decades in the industry, when he walked on to the set of From, it was the first time Perrineau had ever been the most important actor in a production. He waited for the transformation.

“I was really excited to be Number One on the call sheet, because I was curious about whether something happens to you,” he said. “What happens? What happens when you become Number One on the call sheet that turns you into an asshole?” There was that resonant laugh again.

To be clear, not every Number One in Perrineau’s past was unprofessional or phenomenally irritating. But over the years, enough fellow artists

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