*Tyler James Williams and Anthony Mackie chopped it up during a recent edition of Variety’s Actors on Actors series.
During the conversation, Williams discussed his roles on “Everybody Hates Chris” and ABC’s hit sitcom “Abbott Elementary.” Meanwhile, Mackie unpacked his characters in Peacock’s video game adaptation “Twisted Metal” and his portrayal of the Marvel character Falcon.
At one point during the conversation, Mackie told Williams, “You was a weird-looking kid, and you grew up to be, like, a good-looking dude.”
Williams responded, “I want to say we were all weird-looking kids.”
Check out additional excerpts from their chat below, which you can watch via the X clip.
Anthony Mackie to Tyler James Williams: “You was a weird-looking kid, and you grew up to be, like, a good-looking dude.”
Williams: “I want to say we were all weird-looking kids.” #ActorsOnActors https://t.co/8eG10uxrAJ pic.twitter.com/3z8N7UGh2c
— Variety (@Variety) June 8, 2024
MACKIE: You’ve been doing this for a long time, and in a way that a lot of actors have not been able to. Looking at your career, there’s a certain dignity that came with it. You’ve been in it since before “Everybody Hates Chris.” How did that work, blowing up at a young age and transitioning to a professional adult actor?
WILLIAMS: I had to fight for my career to survive, and I feel like if that wasn’t the case, I wouldn’t have gone as hard as I did. I was fighting for staying power — fighting to say that I wasn’t just a cute kid who could land a joke every now and then. I didn’t really start to feel stable in it until we did “Detroit.” Everyone has that period when you have a role here and there to “No, I’m going to consistently work with great people.” You made that transition really well. I remember [Spike Lee’s] “She Hate Me.”
MACKIE: A lot of people hated that movie. And my first movie with Spike, nobody saw it: “Sucker Free City.” One day on set, a Volkswagen dealer came and goes, “Yo, you’re the lead of the Spike Lee movie? Here, take this.” The whole time I’m in San Francisco, I have this Volkswagen that ain’t even out yet. I’m living. Then the movie came out, and it was just silence. While we were shooting that, Jeffrey Wright was supposed to do “She Hate Me.” One day Spike goes, “Man, Jeffrey’s not doing my movie. What you doing after this?”
MACKIE: How was it going into “Abbott” and emerging as the hot piece of ass on the show? You’re street meat now. How do you feel about that?
WILLIAMS: Part of the transition of getting the industry to see you as an adult is that you gotta become sexy at some point.
MACKIE: But a lot of people did it in the wrong way. In the ’90s and early 2000s, when we actually had Black shows with kids and families, everybody would come off those shows like, “I gotta kidnap babies on ‘Law & Order’ so you see me as an adult.” You did it in a way that’s mature.
WILLIAMS: The goal here is not to be sexy. The goal is to show your heart, and there’s something sexy about that.
Read the full interview at variety.com.
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