Acclaimed actor Andre Braugher came to Evansville and predicted his own future
EVANSVILLE – One minute Andre Braugher was hopeful. The next he was pessimistic – or maybe just realistic.
The warring emotions made sense, because the then-27-year-old actor arrived in Evansville at a huge crux in his life. It was February 1990, about a week before his film debut “Glory” would hit theaters in a wide release.
He played Cpl. Thomas Searles, a fictional member of the real 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, one of the first all-Black collection of soldiers to fight in the Civil War.
Searles was an intellectual whose bravery outshined his actual skill as a soldier. And unlike others in the regiment, he was a free man who never had to endure the horrors of slavery. He’d even been boyhood friends with his white commanding officer, Col. Robert Shaw (Matthew Broderick), putting him at further odds with fellow soldiers like Tripp (Denzel Washington).
Braugher came to Evansville to attend an early screening of it with the local NAACP and talk about the often-shameful history of roles for Black film actors at an event at the Evansville Museum.
Characters like Searles were rare, he said.
“This is the best time so far,” he told the Courier & Press. “But this time still isn’t so great.
"… Everyone in the industry is beginning to realize that there’s nothing monolithic about Black culture. It’s formed from a mosaic of different intentions, classes and cultural imperatives.”
In the next four decades of his career, Braugher went a long way toward proving that. He built a mountain of Emmy nominations and won two of them in a career that saw him play everything from cops to thieves to Henry V.
The acclaimed actor died Monday night at 61. No official cause has been released, but his publicist said Braugher had suffered from a “brief illness.” He's survived by his wife, three children and millions of fans.
After studying at Julliard and bouncing around Shakespearian festivals in the 1980s, the working class Chicago native nabbed a role as Telly Savalas’ detective sidekick on a reboot of “Kojak.” That launched a long career of playing cops – something he was conflicted about. But he didn’t play them like anyone else.
He excelled at it in both dramas and comedies. In “Homicide: Life on the Street,” his detective Frank Pembleton was simultaneously angry, cool, skilled and self-destructive. In the sitcom “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” his Raymond Holt was a highly cultured, openly gay captain both strait-laced and helpless in the face of ridiculous competitions and pranks.
Braugher delivered off-the-wall lines without ever winking or breaking a smile. It only got funnier when he finally let Holt’s façade drop. One highlight was his boiling hatred for Madeline Wuntch (Kyra Sedgwick).
“Hello Raymond,” Sedgwick says in one episode. “You’re looking old and sickly.”
“So nice of you to greet us Madeline,” Holt replies. “I thought surely you’d still be crushed under that house in Munchkinland.”
“Sticks and stones, Raymond.”
“Describing your breakfast?”
Of course all that success was still on the horizon in 1990, when 27-year-old Braugher stood outside the doors of a Showplace Cinemas theater, greeting everyone who stepped inside.
He was a young actor who had just completed a movie with two of his heroes – Washington and Morgan Freeman. It would go on to win five Oscars and place him among the best actors of his generation – all while he refused to play characters like those who came before him.
“The stereotypes,” he told the Courier & Press back then, “are dying before our very eyes.”
Contact Jon Webb at jon.webb@courierpres.com
This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Andre Braugher came to Evansville and predicted his own future
