Fresh Air

Mahershala Ali

I feel strongly that we are spirits having a physical experience. And I think it's just helpful for me to sort of locate how much I think a character is in conversation with his creator.

Fresh Air

Actor Danielle Brooks has blessings to count

I didn't want to play Tasty in the beginning. Why not? You know, because she was an inmate and because I was nervous coming out of Juilliard, 21 years old, like, oh my gosh, I'm about to play an inmate and what is that, you know, saying about Black women, you know, what viewpoint am I putting out about Black women?

Fresh Air

Remembering Tim Curry

And his first note and recurring note to me is yes, that's great, it's very funny, now let's make it true. And I think that's his great gift to this material is that he's given it a great big sort of beating Arthurian heart. And that's an extra dimension that you just sort of don't expect.

Fresh Air

Best Of: Colman Domingo / Writer Leïla Slimani

I hadn't relied on those comedic chops in a long time. So to lean into that was something that felt new and fresh again for me, especially this late in my career, where the idea of doing a half-hour comedy was a challenge. I wanted to see if I could do it more than anything.

It's Been a Minute

'The Pitt' star Sepideh Moafi on being limitless

We spend our adulthood trying to cover feeling and trying to numb ourselves and distract ourselves. And so acting we get back to the source of like these raw exposed unhinged feelings

Fresh Air

‘Wonder Man’ star Yahya Abdul-Mateen II on cancellation and confidence

The homework is there to support me, not to decide what it is that I'm going to do. Often when we're acting, we're acting with other people and other factors that we're not aware of when we're doing our rehearsal process. So I like to do the tightrope dance.

Fresh Air

Actor Jon Bernthal on grit, dedication & the teacher who saved him

I love opportunities to turn my back on the audience. I love to sort of take it too far to try to push myself to a place or push the audience to a place where they can no longer be with this character, but then try to win them back through showing the fragility of their heart, showing how brokenhearted they are, showing how much pain they have, because I do think pain is a real adhesive. And I think it's the thing that really connects all of us.

Fresh Air

Wendell Pierce is a proud journeyman actor

I'm a journeyman actor. And some people say I shouldn't say that, but I actually embrace that. That's something that I wear with pride.

Fresh Air

Wendell Pierce is a proud journeyman actor

There's the joke that we have as actors of the five stages of your career. There's who is Wendell Pierce? Get me Wendell Pierce. Get me someone like Wendell Pierce. Get me a younger Wendell Pierce. And then the last and final and fifth stages, who is Wendell Pierce?

Fresh Air

John Lithgow

You look for ways you can empathize with every character. And if you're playing a scoundrel of any stripe, you just try to make it interesting. You try to figure out what made him that way.

Fresh Air

Benicio del Toro

I think actors look for characters that are layered and by that I mean may contradict themselves. They break the stereotype, let's put it that way, if they contradict themselves.