Sterling K. Brown Says Hollywood Pressured Him to ‘Shed Intelligence’ to Be Seen as Castable in Early Career

This Is Us and American Fiction actor Sterling K. Brown is an Emmy and Golden Globe winner and an Oscar nominee and also someone who can hold a room captive with his delightful gift of the gab. But if you hear him talk about his beginnings in Hollywood, you’d be surprised at the feedback he received.

Last year, Brown was nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the Oscars for American Fiction, a satire on racism and the publishing industry, which highlights certain pre-conceived notions that people hold about persons of color, in this case specifically, a Black male novelist in America (played by Jeffrey Wright). 

Recently, during his appearance on an NPR podcast, the host asked Brown whether he had ever had a similar encounter. And the actor opened up about his early days in Hollywood and how he was told he couldn’t be his smart self if he wanted to score a role.

“I found it definitely when I got to Hollywood in the early 2000s that the idea of being intelligent was something that I needed to shed. Many casting directors [were] like ‘He’s got this smart guy thing. If you can lose that, then he’ll be much more castable’,” Brown revealed.

The American Crime Story actor further elaborated on why that could’ve been and it rang true with the themes explored in American Fiction. Most people found it easier to characterize Black people in a certain way, as underdogs and coming from certain socioeconomic backgrounds, instead of a nuanced portrayal because that seemed more in sync with the kind of stories that were being told about them.

Related: Angelina Jolie Reveals She Became an Actress to Fulfill Her Late Mother’s Dream: ‘It Made Her Happy’

“… with regards to the kinds of stories that folks were willing to put money into had to deal with Black folks overcoming certain adversities and dealing with certain traumas. And I think that that was also linked to a certain socioeconomic [sic] that they thought was appropriate for how Blackness needed to be portrayed in order to be ‘authentic’.”

Interestingly, before graduating from Stanford University with an acting degree, Brown had plans to major in economics and even interned at the Federal Reserve because, as he revealed in the podcast, he wanted to give back to his community and thought financial resources were the best way to do so.

However, we’re glad Brown chose to go into performance arts because it has been a steady rise to the top for him, a trajectory that must certainly make his community proud. From doing theater, smaller roles in TV shows like ER, Boston Legal, NYPD Blue, and Supernatural (he played vampire hunter Gordon Walker), and guest roles in The Good Wife and Masters of Sex, he went on to scoring roles that brought him into the spotlight and earned him critical acclaim and accolades.

The actor now has three Emmys and a Golden Globe award to his name, as well as an Oscar nomination, all for playing nuanced Black characters on screen, like Christopher Darden in The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story, Randall Pearson on This Is Us, and Reggie in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Brown also starred in major Hollywood films like Black Panther, Frozen II, and American Fiction.

In 2017, Brown became the first African American to win the Golden Globe and SAG awards for Best Actor in a Drama Series, and the first Black actor in 19 years to win the Outstanding Actor Emmy for  NBC’s This Is Us.

Ironically, Brown was giving one of the wittiest speeches at the 2017 Emmys for his win – talking about everything from Andre Braugher’s Emmy win from 19 years ago to his This Is Us cast members as “the best white TV family that a brother has ever had” – when he was played off with music for going overtime.

And all anyone thought of at the time was, “Let the man be his smart, candid, funny self on stage, please!”