Variety Cover Story: Andre Braugher's Laugh Track

For this week's Variety magazine, I talked to Andre Braugher about a career that has gone in interesting directions, while he also paid attention to what matters most. We also talked about "Brooklyn Nine Nine," and how the cop comedy will need to address the times we live in.

I write:

Cop roles are prevalent for actors, given how often law enforcement is the story engine in film and television. But now, in the wake of a nationwide conversation about systemic racism and police brutality — following the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and so many others — the creative community is starting to reflect on its role in perpetuating the “heroic cop” narrative without any nuance. Braugher, among the preeminent Black actors known for these kinds of roles, admits he’s taking a look at his past projects with a new lens.

“I look up after all these decades of playing these characters, and I say to myself, it’s been so pervasive that I’ve been inside this storytelling, and I, too, have fallen prey to the mythology that’s been built up,” he says. “It’s almost like the air you breathe or the water that you swim in. It’s hard to see. But because there are so many cop shows on television, that’s where the public gets its information about the state of policing. Cops breaking the law to quote, ‘defend the law,’ is a real terrible slippery slope. It has given license to the breaking of law everywhere, justified it and excused it. That’s something that we’re going to have to collectively address — all cop shows.”

Read the full story here.