THE PROGRESSIVE INTERVIEW GIANCARLO ESPOSITO
Epstein, Robin
THE PROGRESSIVE INTERVIEW Giancarlo Esposito 'Being an actor doesn't shield you from having a conscience/ BY ROBIN EPSTEIN Giancarlo Esposito is probably best known for his portrayal of Buggin'...
...a lot of money but it was a short life...
...Q: Do blacks get stereotyped as villains more often...
...I started thinking that I have a responsibility to young people in America not to do this all the time...
...Finally the windows came down...
...Q: How did you wind up on the college circuit...
...What they didn't get over was the fact that I came from the best of both those worlds...
...It was a horrible experience...
...In that school, they were outcasts too, so that worked out okay...
...ESPOSITO: The roles that I got were few and far between...
...This kid loved that character, but he didn't realize that it was just that—a character...
...Q: Do they realize that in some ways they're attacking you...
...It was hard to understand that because of the color of my skin, people wouldn't accept me...
...It wasn't until my school years that I started to feel like an outcast because no one wanted me...
...I've played roles where I've been a pimp and beaten up the woman that's supposed to work for me and told her to get back out on the streets...
...If I play negative roles for a long period of time, I'll start to feel the emotional stuff that's going on with that character...
...I can feel the black kids wanting me to get involved in their revolution...
...And there are brothers who look at me and see I'm wearing a suit and tie and they can't get with that, because I'm supposed to be Buggin' Out or Big Brother All MighTEE, or Left Hand Lacey...
...Basically, it was financial...
...Q: What led to your decision to stop taking roles that stereotype blacks...
...I didn't even think then about how many thirteen-year-olds would see that...
...After that I did Lost in the Stars, which was about South Africa...
...Q: Do people think you are Buggin' Out in the way the kids in Detroit thought you were Adonis...
...ESPOSITO: Yes, I still go through that...
...At that time I had no idea that was not a great thing to do...
...That's what viewers are used to...
...I had realized right away these kids were drug dealers...
...Q: What kinds of audiences do you draw...
...It was based on Cry the Beloved Country, about how a black young man kills the son of a white man and eventually is hanged...
...I can feel them wanting me to pick a side...
...After that I was in The Me Nobody Knows, which was a show about ghetto children...
...Was that frightening at first...
...I say to them, "Well, hey man, I'm for a revolution, but a revolution of spirit and spirituality and understanding...
...I was using a urinal and a very tall white man walked in on us...
...Other black actors tell me I'm crazy...
...I got shot about five or six times...
...They don't think that kind of consciousness belongs in show business...
...That's not to say I'll never play a bad guy again, but there are certain kinds of bad guys I will never play again...
...They're not films that have a message...
...That character dies in the end, shot by the police...
...Q: You would play an inside trader...
...And I told him that in the real world, he's black and is going to be looked at as black...
...What we need is a different kind of film, a film that makes us think, that deals with us on a deeper level...
...It's a challenge to be mean and nasty when you're not really like that...
...They were wearing the $2,000 sweat suits, the gold chains, the hat pitched to the side, the whole bit...
...I hope that these people start to show us as we really have been...
...That's the incident that really started the wheels turning...
...They just want to make them laugh about chicken bones and all that stuff...
...They were really hip...
...On the show, I sold .45s and .38s and 9 millimeters, but now the young kids are selling Uzis...
...I've stolen cars...
...I talked with Esposito in September, when he kicked off the University of Louisville's Celebration of Diversity...
...That really frightened her because she knew we were coming to America...
...Q: What does it do to actors to play roles that stereotype them as oppressed characters over and over...
...ESPOSITO: My mother is black, from Alabama, and my father is Italian, from Naples...
...I tried to tell them they were poisoning other ghetto children by doing this, and they didn't care...
...There were a few whites in it, but the whole cast was basically black and Hispanic...
...They say, "That's just not the way it should be and I don't approve...
...THE PROGRESSIVE INTERVIEW Giancarlo Esposito 'Being an actor doesn't shield you from having a conscience/ BY ROBIN EPSTEIN Giancarlo Esposito is probably best known for his portrayal of Buggin' Out, the bespectacled, exuberant sidewalk agitator in Spike Lee's film Do the Right Thing...
...There were a couple of things that clued my mother in to the fact that there were some problems with the way we were raised...
...I know Eddie Murphy has his own production company...
...We're so used to violence in films, and drugs, and killing, and excitement...
...ESPOSITO: In some events sponsored by black student unions, whites don't come...
...When I first started to make a name in playing bad guys, I thought it was great...
...Q: When you were a child actor you didn't play villains, but were the roles still stereotyped...
...That doesn't make any sense to me...
...I think that's a major problem because no one talks any more...
...We don't have films of people interacting with people, and that's something that blacks still don't see blacks as doing...
...But this white guy didn't realize that our father was white...
...So that's pretty strange...
...At that point, my father walked in...
...Especially a young person who doesn't really know the difference will say, "Wow, that guy—he was really cool...
...Once they accept themselves and learn how to love themselves, they can start to learn how to love other people in the world...
...There's a lot of pressure at college to be in the popular group...
...He was an African cat, from the Ivory Coast, so he was really dark...
...You start to live within that world...
...I remember my father beating the crap out of this guy, and we left...
...That's kind of a drag...
...They say it makes them sick when they see a black person and a white person together...
...There will be girls out there who will say, "You're not as good looking as you are in a movie...
...Do you know how I feel like a second-class citizen...
...He has been to about sixty so far...
...ESPOSITO: I don't take it personally...
...The money being made is black, but it's like the exploitation movies in the 1960s...
...A lot of the black students really relate to that particular character in Do the Right Thing because he's hip and on the scene...
...So he asked me how much money I got paid for that kilo of cocaine I sold Don Johnson...
...ESPOSITO: I do...
...And then I realized that I was a role model for them...
...It was around the time that Do the Right Thing came out, and of course that was a very hot issue...
...But he just wouldn't buy it...
...ESPOSITO: In my show business years, I didn't correlate that the characters I was playing were little black kids and the white man was quote-unquote superior...
...ESPOSITO: I encourage them to speak to each other, to get it out...
...There was a period when I was pretty miserable because I couldn't hang out with either group...
...ESPOSITO: It eats away at your psyche...
...It was wonderful for me as an actor...
...I had this Italian name—Giancarlo Guisseppi Alessandro Esposito—so the Italian kids were immediately threatened by that...
...I did four different roles in Miami Vice...
...I just try to get them to understand that they're not God, that when it makes them ill to see that, then there's something wrong with them...
...Not a character...
...I had to start to research and look for films and television that had something else for me...
...ESPOSITO: Constantly...
...ESPOSITO: I think we're in a strange place...
...So there again, I was playing a character who is less than I really am...
...People look at me and think I'm kind of square...
...He just wanted to know how much money I made for that kilo of cocaine...
...I told him why, and he thought that was really cool...
...I sold guns on the street...
...ESPOSITO: Exactly...
...ESPOSITO: I did an Equalizer in which I was a young gun runner...
...Just because we're black...
...I took a lot of time with him trying to explain that was just television, and that's not what I really do, that I'm an actor, and that the character is completely different from who I am...
...Q: So when you began speaking at colleges it was just you up there, right...
...All those roles that have to do with crime on television are basically relegated to people of minority status...
...The change for me came about really gracefully...
...Blacks need to start controlling distribution, having our own movie theaters, being producers and being directors...
...These two guys had to be about fifteen years old...
...Since the Italians didn't want me, and the blacks didn't really care for me—I didn't have a great game of basketball— my best friends were Jewish...
...Now, it's hard to convince someone who's hanging out with the black student union...
...ESPOSITO: Yes...
...ESPOSITO: Yeah...
...I had no idea I was moving into a predominantly racist society, that America was this way...
...A lot of our youth are doing that too...
...We just sort of view the tube and that's where we get all our information...
...I think it's important for black students to tell white students, "You'll never understand what it's like to walk in my shoes or to be in my skin, but let me help you understand what it's like to be black in America...
...Young people want to see me as that...
...But which side am I going to choose...
...I really wanted to work...
...I wasn't raised that way...
...Q: Do you try to get people to talk to each other in addition to listening to you...
...But because a lot of whites have seen Do the Right Thing, I get a lot of mixed audiences...
...I was at a Horn & Hardart restaurant when I was very young, and my brother and I went to the bathroom...
...What we see on television we believe to be true...
...I have no problem with people who are radical and revolutionary, except they don't want to really share how they feel...
...I have to filter through a lot of anger that I have from being in America, from having to deal with both sides of this prejudice issue...
...It was really a sad show...
...He questioned if the film really depicted minorities as being horrible...
...I thought they'd never call me again, but they called me a week later to play a police officer...
...I often wind up screaming in the middle of the street, "But you're black...
...It was a wonderful scene, one of the best deaths I ever did...
...Like I'm not worthy to be here...
...Q: It sounds perfect, but it wasn't...
...Not perfect at all...
...And while I was in the act of going to the bathroom, he bumped me out of the way...
...ESPOSITO: All the characters that I played were very low in the class structure...
...And of course a big fight ensued...
...I had to learn that I would be discriminated against...
...Finally, he just looked at me and said, "Listen, man, I make more in one day than you make in a week or a month...
...I started to get work as other kinds of characters...
...They want prestige and if they can't get it in a positive way, they'll get it in a negative way...
...They think that being an actor shields you from having to have a conscience, that acting is a whole separate thing, that you should be willing to do anything...
...Q: Do you draw on that experience when you talk on college campuses...
...When I walk downstairs on 43rd Street and try to get a cab, I get passed up two or three times...
...I pulled off into a gas station, and these guys stopped behind me, so I went back to see why they were following me...
...Q: Has working with Spike Lee made it easier for you to turn down villain roles...
...Then I'm emotionally damaging myself, and you shouldn't get hurt doing what you do, especially when it's what you love to do...
...Because if I'm the only black person in the film and I'm playing a heroin addict, then that's what a black person will relate to...
...The work I do is broadcast to such a wide audience, especially to our young people, who watch TV more than anyone else...
...I don't think they do realize that they're sort of saying I shouldn't be here...
...When those types of things happen to a child, it leaves a real impression on you, and you start to understand maybe I'm not good enough, maybe something's wrong with me...
...But many people are so caught up with the fact that this makes money...
...They had visions of what they thought would be the romantic life of selling drugs on the street...
...I try to encourage them to understand how they grew up and accept that for what it is, whether it's racist or prejudiced or whatever...
...He's been acting professionally since childhood, but he didn't always play such compelling roles...
...They think that when you're a young actor trying to get ahead in the business, you take anything and you don't really care about your social responsibility...
...Do you know how I feel inferior...
...Everyone knew I was a little different because I was in show business, but I think they would have gotten over that...
...I have so many stories that deal with this...
...The danger is people who are just commercializing on the fact that blacks go to the movies...
...Q: From both sides...
...It's starting to open up a little bit, but even today I still get calls to play drug addicts and nasty kinds of people...
...I was living in a neighborhood that was completely Italian and black, and of course that's the exact mixture that I am...
...However, it started to get really tiring after a while, because all I could look forward to was playing a better and bigger and nastier and meaner villain...
...Do you know what I have to go through...
...I told him you have to be yourself, and he didn't know what that was...
...Q: But at that time, in your real life, things weren't black or white...
...These guys were a lot of fun and I just knew that in a couple of years they'd be dead, more than likely...
...I had to learn how to be myself up there...
...They look at me quizzically and don't understand that it's not fair for them to want to control someone else's life...
...My brother and I ran into a closet and started saying, "Schwartzer, schwartzer, schwartzer...
...My mother looked at him and said, "I can't believe it...
...It took me a while to get real with that, and to understand that there will be people out there who won't like me...
...Q: Why do you think there is this confusion between the imaginary and the real...
...Q: What other kinds of parts have you played that projected images you didn't feel good about...
...They say, "If you don't do it, I will...
...We were in Germany when a delivery man came in...
...They just want to talk at people...
...They started using drugs, or they committed some robberies to support their drug habit, and they think they're living in a big movie...
...I don't look at everything from a black standpoint...
...Tired of being stereotyped and sickened by the fact that, among black actors, his experience was anything but rare, Esposito decided to stop playing thugs...
...Not only because my name will become synonymous with those characters but also because they will be looked up to if I play them well...
...I wound up peeing on the floor...
...Q: Are you confronted by both black and white students who say they are not racist but they don't think black and white people should get married...
...But that's the kind of personal bravery that it takes...
...All the stalls were taken...
...Q: How does being the child of a mixed marriage influence what you say about racism on college campuses...
...Q: What's your background...
...I really believe that people love the villain in our society...
...One recognized me from School Daze and the other recognized me from Miami Vice...
...A lot of people say if they have a white friend, people will look at them badly...
...A lot of black actors don't have that option at all and they have to take whatever comes along...
...Q: Did the decision involve a lot of financial sacrifice...
...The blacks lived on one end of town and the Italians lived on the other, and no one came into each other's neighborhoods...
...I played the nephew of a priest who was a dear friend of the white man in the same village—again, someone who is poor and doesn't have equal rights...
...For me it gets very, very deep...
...I played a couple of guys who were selling drugs in the street...
...Why can't you stop for me...
...We thought he was a ghost...
...At that time, I spoke a little bit of Italian, too...
...When you go to college campuses you want to fit in...
...But if I go in as some character, I'm not going to impart a real message to people...
...That would be something that I would do...
...Recently, he added prisons to his lecture circuit...
...It was a musical about ten orphan children in the South during the Civil War and the white woman who was taking care of them...
...I know of actors who played bad guys all the time and have then gone out in the real world and become those guys...
...But that's not the case for me...
...ESPOSITO: I say no...
...I died with my eyes open...
...Recently an old friend had a small part for me as a real sleazy drug addict, and I told him no...
...And then I eventually "moved up" and played a guy named Adonis who had his own drug business and drove a Lamborghini...
...ESPOSITO: Well, my initial instinct was to go as Buggin' Out, to wear the Forty Acres and a Mule jacket and hat and T-shirt and my Air Jordans and be cool...
...ESPOSITO: I have to negotiate both sides...
...Until a couple of years ago, the thirty-two-year-old actor was regularly cast as a thug—a murderer, a pimp, a drug addict, or a drug dealer...
...I had a solo and everything...
...It depends on how it's written," he said...
...Then, in 1989, in part to make ends meet between acting jobs but also to challenge racism, he started speaking on college campuses...
...ESPOSITO: Oh yeah...
...I've got to really talk to my boys because they don't even realize that I'm a different color from their father...
...I say you don't have to approve it for yourself, but when you don't approve it for someone else then you have a problem...
...A lot of the black kids don't want to hear it...
...Q: What happened after you made the decision to choose which roles you would accept...
...Q: Do you tell them why...
...I didn't know what the hell was going on...
...When I started to ask for the scripts first and said there were certain things I wouldn't do, people were often surprised...
...I like to break some of those barriers down...
...And that's not something I want to show our young people...
...Q: What are you hoping to impart when you go to colleges...
...I played a young guy on Another World who robs liquor stores to make his living, and he's only thirteen years old...
...We never look inside and realize we're contributing to this problem...
...They see drug dealers and addicts and pushers and swindlers and crooks as their role models...
...ESPOSITO: I try to get people to get in touch with their backgrounds...
...They accept it because their fathers and mothers have shown them that's the way it is...
...Like I shouldn't be here...
...But I like to dress up and wear ties and a clean crisp white shirt...
...Granted they were about black people and made by black people and showed black people, but they were really about money...
...At home in Apartment 33A in Manhattan, I regard myself as a human being, as a person...
...The children came home and had no parents, or their parents were on drugs on the street somewhere...
...People wanted to understand the film...
...I was up at Amherst and one student who was black and Irish came up to me and said he was having a real identity crisis...
...ESPOSITO: No, things weren't black or white for me at all...
...And I tried to get to the reason why they did it...
...But when I walk out into the world and I'm discriminated against, I immediately understand that I'm a black man...
...GIANCARLO ESPOSITO: I was doing a show in Detroit, and on my way to a lecture at a high school I was followed by a car, a Ford Escort with spoilers and tinted glass...
...We were really afraid of this guy...
...I think so often we look outside ourselves to find out what's wrong with the world...
...ESPOSITO: Yeah...
...I tried to explain to these two young guys that maybe they were making Robin Epstein is a staff writer for the Louisville Courier-Journal...
...I've played a thief...
...In School Daze and Mo' Better Blues, two other films by Lee's Forty Acres and a Mule production company, Esposito appeared, respectively, as Julian, the ultimate frat boy at a historically black college, and as Lefthand Lacey, the piano player with a French girlfriend...
...It was written by ghetto children in New York and put to music and made into a musical...
...ESPOSITO: I think we're living in a television-oriented society...
...Part of the time it's because people don't know my name so they call me Buggin' Out...
...Q: How do you think the entertainment industry is doing with the portrayal of blacks...
...I was nine years old...
...ESPOSITO: Sometimes, if they ask me...
...ESPOSITO: Without a doubt...
...His lively speech before a racially mixed crowd of 300 seemed part confession, part sermon, part stump speech, part pop psychology, and part stand-up comedy...
...I said, "You got to be kidding me," and he said, "No, no...
...I said no, it doesn't glorify drugs, but I still don't want to do it...
...Q: Do students who are products of mixed marriages come up to you a lot...
...I was raised in Copenhagen and Germany and Italy for the first years of my life and came here when I was three or four years old...
...I say to black students who don't mingle with whites that if you go through this four-year period at this college and you don't get to know an international student or you don't get to know a white student, then you're depriving yourself of a wonderful experience...
...It's a little bit different today, but most of the cabs that pass me up have black guys driving...
...I feel that a lot of these kids I talk to on college campuses come from segregated neighborhoods and learn prejudice and racism from within the family structure...
...I have to release a lot of hate and pent-up hostility...
...I know Arsenio Hall is getting ready to do some movies...
...I turned down a Spenser for Hire as a guy who robs a liquor store because I had already done it...
...I hope we start to deal with some more important issues for blacks, so our young people can start to see that we've done everything the whites have done—it's just taken a little longer and been a little harder—and can start to aspire to some of those things...
...So I started to think about what kind of role model I really was...
...I look at them and think maybe I'm older than I thought I was...
...And I was born in Europe, so I'd say, "I was born in Italy, so you may be Italian but you're from the Bronx...
...ESPOSITO: It has, because I know that I'll probably work on one film a year, which is great...
...Blacks are so hungry to see images of themselves on television and film, they'll gobble up almost anything...
...I'm not very likely going to kill my dad or go out and shoot my mother because he or she is the wrong color...
...Now I find that even if I die, more often than not young people look up to those kinds of characters...
...Like I don't belong...
...I said you have to figure out who you really are, and research your background, and stick up for yourself...
...Q: What do you say...
...Q: When he tries to get a taxi in Manhattan...
...ESPOSITO: A friend of mine suggested that I seek it out because I wasn't getting much work, things were sliding in my career, and I felt I needed to do something that would not only be fulfilling but also would help me pay the rent...
...He felt like he had to be black when he was around black people and be white when he was around white people, and I told him that's not the answer...
...In my first Broadway show I played a slave, an orphaned slave...
...On our television shows, we glorify the bad guys...
Vol. 54 • December 1990 • No. 12
