With his Broadway return postponed, one of Americas most accomplished actors reflects on his career.
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Its not about the starry-eyed shit, he said.
Im not comfortable with this wordstarormovie star.Im comfortable with being an actor.
Im comfortable with being an artist.
Rockwell is somebody Ive admired for years and always wanted to work with.
So now were doing that.
What do you think you need for it?
Yeah, theres no audience; that doesnt matter sometimes.
Sometimes you just do it for the sake of doing it.
Is that paradoxically liberating?Yes, it is.
Its brought a lot of joy into my life.
It gives me something to look forward to.
It seems you revisit it as a pilgrimage point throughout your career.Absolutely, making the Hajj.
Youre not at the mercy of technology.
Youre not in the hands of an editor.
Youre collaborating with other actors.
Youre collaborating with your creative team, director, lighting, sound, stage, all of that.
I think the most important thing is youre in communion with an audience.
Youre in communion with a group of human beings.
Its a ritualistic happening.
That sense of the community and doing something live for the enjoyment of other human beings is really special.
Two Trainswas also when your co-starRoscoe Lee Brownestarted calling you Laurence instead of Larry.Yeah, that was the shift.
I was Larry as a child.
The only people that called me Laurence were my mother and my father, basically.
By the time we got to doingTwo Trains Running,I was 30.
And what most people want as adults is to be taken seriously.
Larry Fishburne was a kid; Laurence Fishburne is a grown man.
So I go to the Philippines.
Im 14 years old, and everybody looks like me.
Everybodys brown, yellow, red.
Theyve got Asian eyes, and Im no longer a minority.
I looked quite Asian when I was a boy.
My grandmother called me China boy because of the shape of my eyes and because of my hair.
Are you part Asian?Ive done the DNA thing; it doesnt appear so.
looks like I am mostly West African, English, Irish, and Scottish.
But the West Africans there was definitely trade between West Africa and China.
Then I come back to America, and now Ive got,Oh, this again.
And you were older.I was 17.
When youre no longer in a minority, suddenly you stand up a little straighter.
[Gestures to himself.
]Oh, fuck.
And these guys are artists.
If Im associated with these guys, then I must have some gifts.
I must have some value.
Im not trying to blend in; Im trying to stand out.
Im trying to say, Look at me.
Theyre like, No, motherfucker.
If you dont sit your Black ass down, you will go to jail.
Was there a specific moment when you understood that?A couple of really important things happened.
I met them because Emilio and I became best friends in the Philippines.
Now, they had only started acting in their teens; I had started acting when I was 10.
I watched them all star in their own movies in their 20s.
That didnt happen for me until I was 30, but it was really important.
At the same time, theyre my friends, so Ive got to be happy for them, too.
I cant be like,These guys suck, because they dont.
Theyre doing their thing, and its great what theyre doing.
I just dont get to be included.
That was about the color of my skin; that wasnt about my character.
But it was good because it humbled me.
I think it made me a better human being.
I could have chosen just as easily to remain bitter about it.
I chose to look for the high road.
I came back to New York, and I went back to work in the theater.
I did seven years.
I did a play calledSuspendershere with a guy that directed me at theNew Federal Theatredowntown.
It was a two-hander, and it was written by one of the guys from the Last Poets.
Its this white guy and this Black guy in an elevator, and the elevator gets stuck.
The white guy has gone into this freight elevator to kill himself.
He runs into this janitor, me, who helps talk him out of killing himself.
That was the first play I had done in about seven years since leaving New York to go doApocalypse.
So was everybody else who looked like me and who looked like you.
That shit wasnt fun, but it was real.
It was our reality, and we had to figure out something to do about it.
Its what I spent a long time doing.
I had been married for about five or six years.
My wife said, My husband is one of the baddest motherfuckers in New York.
Randy arranged for me to meet Abel, and I met with the two of them.
He was like, Nah, I got Jimmy Russo.
Hes going to do the thing.
I was like, Okay.
Hes not going to be available because theyre not going to be finished in time.
I went back to Abel and was like, What about me?
He was still hoping that Jimmy was going to get away, but it didnt eventuate.
So, I said to him, Do me a favor.
Let me come in.
I have an idea for the character.
Let me present this to you.
He was like, Oh, shit.
Thats how I wound up getting that part.
Did you wear the bowler or the Kangol?I had a bowler cap.
I had a Cash Money thing.
They had those knockoff tracksuits that said MCM on them, so I had one of those.
It was like some beat boy walked into his loft and was trying to sell him crack.
Lets just put it that way.
Hes taunting me: Come out, stand up, be a man, face me!
Theres a thing that he has where hes taunting me with, I got some chicken here for you.
The chicken thing, it just kind of happened.
I mean, he was cracking on me.
Wheres my chicken at?
Much of whats in that movie is ad-libbed.
And my character is correct: Black people are still catching hell all over the world.
Why did they burn down the pizza parlor and not the Korean grocery market?
It felt a little disingenuous to me.
I mean, listen, a lot of people think the movie is great, and I get it.
There are great things about it.
It just wasnt for me.Pulp Fictionwasnt for me.
Why not?I just had a problem with the way the heroin use was dealt with.
I just felt it was a little cavalier, and it was a little loose.
I felt like it made heroin use attractive.
For me, its not just my character.
Its,What is the whole thing saying?
I understand why Spike wanted me for Raheem.
I just didnt feel like I could carry that with everything else that was going on.
It didnt connect up for me.
I get it connects for the audience.
When the audience sees the movie, it makes sense.
When I read it, it just didnt jive for me.
I didnt believe it when I read it.
When I saw the movie, its like, Oh, this is great!
It wasnt about my character inPulp Fiction.
It was about the way in which the heroin thing was delivered.
And the whole fucking thing with the hypodermic and the adrenaline shot?
Fucking Sam [Jackson] walks away with the movie!
What are you talking about?
Its a great part.
It wasnt about the part.
Just because you get raped, doesnt make you any less a man.
Everythings not for everybody.
That was about money then.
I had a whole lawsuit that went for two years against Cinergi Pictures behind that.
Oh, I didnt know that.Yeah, well, it wasnt public knowledge.
How did it end?There was a settlement.
I got compensated for that.
I never took it personally like that.
It wasnt about Sam.
It was about how they had a deal with me that they reneged on in the 11th hour.
Im all good with Sam.
That was the best thing that ever happened.
Thats what came out of that.
I havent written one since.
Maybe I just need to lose another couple of jobs.
If I could play them two motherfuckers, I dont have nothing to prove.
I was curious if you think it holds up in the current context.I hope it does.
I would hope that her story is relevant because we know this is still going on.
As long as were living with domestic violence, I think it should hold up.
And thank God for the day when it doesnt, really.
I was trying to humanize him, because in humanizing him, you deepen her.
Can you say why?Well, its really simple.
She finally got that part of it settled.
And because its so violent, really, you dont want to do it too many times.
You cant just do something like that without hurting yourself emotionally.
I was like,Four takes.
you’ve got the option to be out there, but you cant come in here.
Do you feel she was protected on that set?Well, I turned the movie down five times.
The reason I said yes finally was because Angie was going to play the part.
Cicely Tyson was also supposed to be in it.
It didnt get made, and then we didBoyz n the Hoodtogether.
We had that great scene in the restaurant.
But once I got to be about 26, 27, it wasnt that hard anymore.
Because it was hard to get a job, and jobs were far and few between.
You always felt better when you had a job than when you didnt have a job.
There are a lot of projects that have never happened that sounded fascinating.
One was detective Pharaoh Love.Im still trying to figure out Pharaoh Love, dude.
I feel like now is the time.
Do you still have the option?Yeah.
You just keep redoing it.
In fact, Im thinking that were going to use a model that we just did.
We did this thing calledBronzeville, which were developing now, with Apple TV.
It was a podcast.
Its a radio play, really.
Its a 1940s Chicago gangster thing on the South Side of Chicago.
Your Cat Is Deadabout this closeted gay homicide detective in New York in the West Village in 1966.
We just thought,This is Felliniesque.It would make great movies.
I just thought this is cool shit.
Ideally, I would love Laverne.
By the time book three comes around, hes in full drag, and hes performing.
Andre Benjamin was great as Jimi Hendrix.
I would have loved to do that.
Was that a rights issue?
[Pause] Well talk about it later.
It sounds like acting is a moment where you could be free.
Then theres the industry, which is about money, and other peoples perceptions of your abilities.
Now, its only 30, 40 seconds, but between action and cut, its mine.
I mean, shit doesnt happen by itself.
It is show business, but the show comes before the business when you look at the word.
Now, people on the business side will tell you the business comes before the show.
My heart is in the show.
Thats where my heart is.
Thats where I really, really live.
I understand the business, and I can do some of the business.
Is my heart in it?
Can I get my head around it and can I do the things that I need to do?
I did that series for three seasons.
I would say about a dozen.
We got close to selling one, but none of them really took.
But in those first three years, I had no idea what I was doing.
Im coming in as a producer, going to the buyers, Hey, want to buy this today?
Hey, look what I got for you today.
Theyre having their Morpheus experience, theyre having their, Oh, you know who I met today?
I had that experience with that guy.
Nobody is taking me seriously as a producer.
Its, I love that movie.
Tell me a story.
This guy really wants to be in business.
Youve always been really good at mimicry.
Did you always know that you could use your voice to impersonate other people?Yeah.
I figured out really early on what I could do with my vocal instrument, yeah.
As a kid?Yeah.
It was just in front of the TV.
There were voices coming at me in the TV, and I would just send them back.
Mel Blanc, Bugs Bunny.
The little black duck.
The parents were all immigrants, so I would listen to the parents, and do their sound.
It was just my ears.
That was acting school.Yeah, definitely.
That and going to the movies.
My dad would take me to see proper movies.
He wouldnt take me to see kids movies.
He would take me to see real movies.
McQueens movies, John Waynes movies.
Then he would take me to see Poitiers movies, Charles Bronsons movies.
I mean, he even took me to seeHell in the Pacificwith Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune at 8.
What was your relationship with Sidney Poitier like?Poitier was definitely one of my mentors.
He gave me some great pieces of life advice.
When I started, I was doingOne Life to Livehere in New York.
I was 10, 11 years old, a single-parent household.
I didnt have the nicest clothes, all that shit, and I wound up on a TV show.
All the kids in the neighborhood would be like, Hey, movie star.
How come youre dressed like a bum?
That kind of thing.
Their personal life is not what theyre selling.
I felt like I was in that kind of tradition and culture.
Its about the work for me; its not about the starry-eyed shit.
Im not chasing an endorsement.
Im not trying to push Chesterfield Kings, or Wheaties, or whatever the fuck it is.
Im not comfortable with this wordstarormovie star.Im comfortable with being an actor.
Im comfortable with being an artist.
So, Im having lunch with Poitier, and were eating.
And you are a star.
At which point, Im going,Fuck.
If this guys telling me that Im a star, I just cant ignore it.
I cant act like its not real.Because he was the biggest movie star in the world in 1967.
Hes not talking about some shit he heard.
He knows what hes talking about.
I was like, You dont know what the fuck youre talking about.
Youre not a fucking movie star.
Ive got to recalibrate now.
People get really happy when they recognize me and see me.
They break out into these huge smiles.
For years, I couldnt figure out why.
You dont need to smile at me that hard.
Im not onstage performing for you.
Im trying to find the 2 percent-fat yogurt.
It was just about recalibrating and recognizing that thats not people trying to get in my space.
Thats not people trying to define me.
Thats just people seeing me and being surprised and being really, really happy that theyve seen me.
And just being all right with that.
But you never get used to it, just as a human being.
No one wakes up in the morning going,Holy shit, its me.
I was like, Yes, c’mon.
I totally got it.
I didnt need them to explain what they were trying to do.
The mentor thing happened to me before withBoyz n the Hood.I didnt realize it had happened.
What isThe Matrixabout to you?So many things.
I think the most elegant answer is its the old story in a modern context.
Ive got Bruce Lee, Ive got Muhammad Ali shuffled in there, and I got kung fu.
People confuse me with Morpheus.
I am not Morpheus.
Im not even close.
It does feel like youre often playing the wise black man.Or the magical Negro.
However you want to describe it, yes.
How does that sit for you?Its fine.
Theres nothing wrong with having a little wisdom.
Theres nothing wrong with that.
Are you doingThe Matrix 4?No.
I have not been invited.
Maybe that will make me write another play.
Im looking for the blessing in that.
I wish them well.
I hope its great.
