Nicholas And Derek talked to Gilbert about how moving to New York from Jamacia inspired him to pursue a career in the Fine Arts.

This is Film Center, your number one show for real entertainment industry news.

No fluff, all facts.

Now, here are your anchors, Derrick Johnson II and Nicholas Killian.

Welcome to

Film Center, I'm Derrick Johnson II.

I'm Nicholas Killian.

And what are we doing today, Nicholas?

We are interviewing a very special guest today.

Can you please introduce yourself?

Absolutely.

Hi, my name is Gilbert Glenn Brown.

Hey, Gilbert, how you doing?

I'm doing great.

I'm doing great.

We're so happy to have you here, man.

It's we appreciate you, coming in.

My pleasure.

Totally.

My pleasure.

Yeah.

So one thing I really just want to ask you, friend, when it comes

to When it comes to, because you have this like gravitas to to

your voice and stuff like that.

Oh, thank you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So where are you from?

Okay.

So I'm good.

Okay.

So I'll give you the story.

But even with that, it won't really.

Totally explain my voice, but I'm appreciate, but I'm appreciate actually.

No, it probably will.

So I'm was born and raised in New York, born in Brooklyn, grew up in Queens,

spent a lot of time in the Bronx.

Okay.

And nice.

Everyone thought out so much.

So everyone thought I was from the Bronx.

I was like, no my parents are actually from Jamaica.

And so I'm first generation.

Yeah, I'm first generation here in the States.

And so I went to, I also went to a school in New York, college in New

York, and I went to NYU and in, in the class, you got people from different

around the country, around the world.

And I always would always get asked the question, Hey, where are you from?

Where are you from?

I'm like, I'm from here.

I'm from New York.

And I'm like, but you don't sound like you're from New York.

I was like, what is that supposed to mean?

I was like, and I never really thought about it.

I was like, no, I was like, this is just how I've always spoken.

I said.

Alright, what makes me sound like I'm from New York?

Okay, if I say New York and water and I switch and I go back and it's Oh,

I was like, It's so stereotypical.

Yeah.

But yeah, that's yeah, but that's Scott that's my background it's it's it's good

that you say the city cuz sometimes I'll have some we'll meet some people who

are like Oh, I'm from New York, too.

But I'm not from New York, but we have from New York.

Oh, really?

I was trying to put it on a front for some reason and it's like where

exactly Albany see It's I guess like the whole thing with New York, it

has, it also has this mystique and a certain level of respect that you don't

perceive respect that comes with it.

Look, I love New York.

New York will always be home.

New York has its own rhythm, its own pace, its own, even with all

the changes that are happening there that have been happening over the

past few years, still has its, The heart and soul of New York is there.

That being said, you'll know really quickly if somebody is saying, let me

say, if they don't say what borough they were from, the chances are they're

probably from upstate or somewhere else.

And there's nothing wrong with, I've been a new Rochelle.

I've been around, so it's nothing wrong.

It's just.

I think that there's just something when you say New York and also

people subconsciously go, Oh, you're, Oh, you're from Manhattan.

No, I'm not.

No, not from Manhattan.

Get specific.

, I watched this TV show called impractical jokers growing up, right?

It was really great, but They used to say that everybody disrespects

people from Staten Island.

What's the deal with that?

Staten Island, there's nothing wrong with Staten Island.

It's just that because it's like, it's all the Brooklyn, Queens, even Long Island.

I love Long Island.

I live right there.

Long Island, like I said, Brooklyn, Manhattan.

the Bronx.

There is.

They're either connected, literally connected to each other, or

it's only separated by like a bridge, which is a train ride.

So it's easily accessible.

It's not an island.

However, it's literally an island that you got to drive across a

bridge or, and it's actually closer, technically closer to New Jersey.

Can't you take the ferry over there?

That's the other part.

You got to take a boat over there.

So it's a different, It's a different, it's different, but

it's still a part of New York.

So I think that when people say Staten Island, it becomes like

it's way it's feels far away, but it's really not, it's not that far.

It's literally just because it's not connected.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Wow.

So your parents are from, both of your parents from Jamaica.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What made them come over to the States?

I think the the immigrant dream is always that.

Coming to the States means more opportunity, a, the streets are

paved with gold, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, until you get

here, exactly, until you get here.

George Carlin said, the only way you can believe the American

dream is if you're asleep.

They woke up real quick, if they were, they woke up really quickly

when they got here because it's, and it's, and I think that it's the hopes

and dreams of not just, What you want for yourself, but what you want for

your Children and your descendants.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

And so I think that's what primarily their desire to come here.

And I would say that with any parent that the hope is that you just the

word I want to use, I will not use because I want to keep this clean.

You just hope your hope is that you mess up less.

Then you were messed up so that eventually at some point that cycle is broken, but

parents don't know what they're doing.

Nobody knows what they're doing.

So since they're coming over as immigrants, they obviously probably

have a pretty strong work ethic because we moved to another country.

You gotta be busting your hump.

And yeah, and they did that.

They definitely did that.

And it afforded us definitely another.

A life that they didn't necessarily have, which we, which is the whole idea.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

So did you, so when you were young, did you get a lot of opportunities

to express being creative?

Huh?

New York.

I'll be for real with you.

I have a cousin who lives in Queens and every time I visit her, some of the New

York people are just some of the most creative people ever in my entire life.

It's like the whole city is covered in art sometimes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's like you, you can find art just about everywhere.

I've.

I'm just imagining, I'm just, I'm thinking about like how I grew

up and what I was able to, what I saw, I don't think it's changed.

I'll say that it's changed.

I won't say it doesn't exist in the same way.

It just changed and everything evolves.

But I'm sorry, your question was?

So so when you were younger did the city like influence you being creative?

Did they give you did you have any opportunities to really do that?

Or were you focused on something else coming up?

The city itself definitely there, there was music everywhere.

There's whether it was graffiti or whatever, there was art everywhere.

There was always something.

The first thing that pops in my mind, Rose growing out of concrete, that was

what this, that's what the city was.

There was always something you could see that was beautiful.

And my parents specifically, and their desire to expose us to other things

would allow, would like expose us to, I saw my first, it was not Broadway,

but when I saw my first musical.

And I remember the name of it when I was like about seven or eight,

and it really their desire to really expose us to different things was

was just like really prominent.

So I got a chance to do that, but they saw it as just exposing us to thing little

did they know exactly little did they know that I would decide to become an artist.

Now, I always, I'm one of, I'm the middle child of five.

And, I wait, three, exactly?

Yeah, I'm right in the middle.

Wow, it'll get And they, I always had this, I was always creative,

whether it was, I got into comic books and I would draw and I would

say I created like a bunch of characters, a bunch of characters.

What's some of your comic books where you're like, it

was mainly just DC and Marvel?

It was primarily DC and Marvel initially because they were the most popular.

But then I got someone, a friend of mine gave me like this book.

Excuse me, I think I still have it too.

It was an old comic book.

I'm even surprised that he even gave it to me.

Because this was like back in elementary school.

It was a print of, randomly, I don't remember this stuff.

It was blue, the original Blue Beetle, and the question.

Oh, the question.

Wow.

Question comics.

That's interesting.

This will be interesting.

I didn't like I've had never at that point with elementary school, I think

he probably got it from his, either his parents probably got it from his parents,

but I ended up with the comic book.

I still have it to this day.

And it was like, and it wasn't DC.

It was something, I can't remember who it was before, who they were with

before, but that's easy to find out.

And then there were others.

Liefeld went off and formed his own comic book company, some of their books.

There were also some books that, I don't even think they're, the more independent,

some independent comic book companies.

I don't even remember, I just remember a character's name.

Armor was one and Megalith was a was another character and I just like the

artwork You like looking at the visual.

I like the visual but I also was very much Into story.

I was probably like one of the few kids.

I was okay playing by myself because I was like, okay We're not I can't just

sit here and smash toys together for an hour because this is how we're fighting

I need to understand Who is this?

Who is this person?

I would never keep the name, the actual name of the action figure.

I would change the name of the action figure and create.

Making your own little story.

Exactly.

So that's the story arc here.

What's where do we go?

What are we after?

What are we trying to do?

What's the conflict?

What's it.

And I'm pretty sure some of my friends were like, yeah, you do.

You just playing.

We're playing with he, man.

We're playing with GI Joe.

That's either the transformers.

I don't understand why you're over there.

Okay, so we're going to start this epic journey and we're

going to go up the mountain.

And so I would pick and choose when I would.

Institute that kind of information, insert that kind of

information into our playtime.

And so I was very, story was always important to me.

Character development was always important to me.

Being creative across the board because I also, and I was also very active

because I was very small for my age.

I didn't start growing until I got into high school.

So I was literally the same size through.

through most of elementary school, middle school, and then I shot up.

It's when I got hit 16 and high school.

I was the same way.

I was like 4'11 until like my sophomore year of high school.

Yeah.

He's always a son of a gun, except for me.

I see.

But for, it's quite interesting that you hear some people be like,

Oh, I got interested in something else because I was smaller.

And then when they, guilty pewter high school, something like that.

They're like, Oh, okay, cool.

I'm still interested in this.

Okay.

And I think my parents initially, I'm jumping around just a little bit.

And if it doesn't make sense, let me know the, I had all, I didn't

think of being an artist or being creative, being an actor, being as a

career, and neither did my parents.

They just thought it was something that I was interested in.

Cause I like a hobby.

It was a crazy outlet.

You say, Hey, here's something to do guitar, play the guitar

for a little while and it's okay.

That's cool.

And then I'm going to do this.

Exactly.

Exactly.

And I wrote a lot.

I wrote a lot.

I just, this is a random story.

I remember my first girlfriend, we would have, we would do

rap battles back and forth.

Cause she wrote, she's, we're still connected now just as friends,

but it's she's a writer also.

Yeah.

Which is ironic, which is funny, but she, we would actually take a beat, play it,

write a rap to it, record it, give it to the, give it to each other as a response

and go back and forth and respond to it.

Wow, that's interesting.

But those, have you ever listened to them back?

Man, I don't know where those things are.

I don't know.

It's funny that you say like things that when you're young.

Somehow come back around to influence you later on.

When I was when I was in middle school, Me and one of my friends, Ty Vaughn, his

dad was Everyone knew he was the rich kid, cause his dad was a brain surgeon.

No one else was getting dropped off in a a Lamborghini.

By there.

So when he got dropped off, he was like, All right.

Bye mom.

And it's Hey, this car is cool.

It's an awesome car.

He loved to draw.

And I like to crack jokes.

And so we made this like a little book called like a random world because

it sounds like it's only a middle schooler come up with all full of.

Inappropriate robot chicken style jokes.

Nice.

I remember we made this booklet.

We didn't, we just took a whole bunch of paper out of the,

of that teacher's printer.

We used to pass it around.

We thought it was funny.

X, Y, Z.

And I remember we got caught one day and our teacher took it up and she

was like, Okay, I'm going to hold on this because this is inappropriate.

Doesn't that?

And we're like, Oh, because you also thought she wouldn't tell her parents.

Apparently some of the jokes were, they were bad.

They were pretty bad.

It was pretty incriminating evidence.

That's because we signed our names in the back of the book.

So that part too.

What I remember is we did that.

And then the next day we're like, Oh gosh, we're gonna be so much stronger today.

She gives it back to us.

And I was like, Hey, I actually went through this.

Some of this is funny, but you're not allowed to do this anymore.

But it's interesting that things we do when you're young can influence

what you do when you're older.

Oh, absolutely.

Absolutely.

Cause like my, my, like my parents, their hope was I being an

attorney, a doctor of some sort.

And to be honest, I had an interest in law.

I had an interest in psychology.

I had, I was like I'm not, I wasn't like, I was not interested

in going to medical school.

That was one thing.

And I exhibited some of those traits early on.

So I always did well in school and they encouraged that, but it got to a point

where it wasn't interesting enough for me.

So What was your canon event then?

What was, Oh, like Spider Man?

Yeah.

The canon event was, in high school, when I shot up, I was, I also, it was actually

two, it was actually two, two tiered.

One was an English teacher that I had.

Remember her name?

Ms.

Sean Mill.

I'll never forget her.

Barbershop Mel was her name.

I was in advanced placement classes.

And so I was, had her as my English teacher as a freshman, all the

way through to my junior year.

And then we took, and then I took college courses in my senior year.

And so she had, she was able to track my work and my activity

in class and things like that.

And so what happened was.

I got to high school.

I got to excuse me.

I got to my junior year and got the only way I could think of it

at the time was that I got bored.

I got bored.

Bored with school.

Yeah.

And I stopped doing homework.

You just said, I have zero interest in this.

It's not catching my attention.

I could say this now, but I couldn't say this then.

My parents would, they're not going to hear that.

They don't, they won't understand.

They ain't playing, oh, not doing homework.

So they had no idea.

So she pulled me aside one day.

She said, so what's going on?

And I couldn't, Pinpoint exactly what it was and she's I don't understand.

It's like you're not doing Homework, so you started out doing homework saying

you stop doing homework rain, but you're acing all the tests And you're

answering all the questions in class.

So clearly you're reading the material and comprehending.

So you're translating Shakespeare into modern day English.

You understand what's happening.

So you're like, it's not like you're ignoring it completely.

Why are you not doing the homework?

I was like, I was just, I just got bored and I got, and I was getting

into, I was getting into comic books.

And there was, I'd never, I was never like, like Spawn?

Oh, I love Spawn.

I have the first, I have the first issue.

Oh yeah?

The first issue.

That's dope.

That's dope.

I, the, I had, I was just getting bored and I could not, I, and

I couldn't articulate that.

I, and I, at the time it was like, as any high school kid

would be like, I don't know.

That was your response.

I don't know.

It's okay, it's okay, but we got to do something because you

can't keep doing it because we, you're going to fail the class.

So I started doing, I said, okay.

So I started doing the homework.

And she's okay, this is wonderful.

We're about to hit the midterm.

I don't know if you're going to catch up.

So we got it.

You got to continue to do the homeworks and we got to figure out something else.

And I said, Oh, he's a special project.

I said, okay, this is, I'm just going to, I'll say this

and then I'm going to go back.

While I was in elementary school, I wrote my first play.

And my first, yeah.

So in the.

Fourth grade, fifth grade, I wrote a play.

This is going to be freaking weird.

Okay.

I wrote a play about the death of Socrates.

We, I know you're about to continue.

My only question to you then is for this is, was it in a response of

something that happened in class?

Like you read something and then you were like, okay, I'm going to continue it.

You just did it on your own.

I did it on my own, but it was something we were talking about the, some of

the Greek philosophers in the class.

And so in that, what came, I thought it was interesting that he would not

renounce some of his beliefs and he was, he decided, I will take this to the grave.

And I thought that someone believing so much in something that they are

willing to die for it was something that was like, you gravitate towards,

I gravitated towards, like Why you would choose that because you believe

so strongly in what you believe in.

And so that's what I wrote about the last, his last moments.

And then in fourth grade, I'm bouncing around a little bit.

I'm going to get back to high school in a second, fourth grade.

They did a production.

They did a production of a show that was revolving around the stars the

first flag, the first American flag.

And in that.

And I went to a predominantly, I was bused to a predominantly white school.

And so I played George Washington, which at the time was just like,

Like now, when I look back at it, I'm like, wow, that was pretty okay.

Yeah.

Oh, pretty interesting for you to George Washington.

And then in fifth grade, I, they were doing musical production,

created a musical production of a Cinderella and you play Cinderella no.

That's one thing I won't do.

I can't do, but I, they, I got offered the role of the Prince

and I was like, you know what?

I don't want to play the Prince.

Okay.

I want to play.

I say, what do you want to do?

I say, I want to know, I want to understand how to build sets and sound.

And I want to understand all of that, which ties back.

This is, there's a lot of connecting dots here.

So something that my mom told me about me growing up.

And I remember just about everything, but I didn't remember this.

He said, you started walking before you crawled.

I was like, what do you mean?

He said, you literally got up one day from the floor and started walking.

And I was like, he said, you weren't one yet.

You just started walking.

Wow.

She was like, I was like, really?

It's just yeah.

She say, and then one day you decided you started crawling and then you

crawled until you call, he said, you crawled past the point that

you were supposed to quote unquote.

And then you got up one day and started walking again.

And my godmother said to me, say, it was almost like, Oh, wait a minute.

Okay.

I think I skipped a step.

Let me go back and find out what this is about, discover what this is.

And then when I get to that point, okay, now let me get back up and do this.

I doubt it's been so flabbergasting.

I imagine being a parent.

And I'm having a kid and Oh, Hey, my little new boy, what's up?

And he's yes, I'm just going to leave.

And he's going to walk away.

And I was like, what is this tiny man walking around?

And that was the thing.

I was like, Oh, my bad.

I must've scared you.

Let me go back to the car.

Let me go back to the car.

You all ain't ready for that.

Everybody's freaked out except me.

But so let me calm you guys down.

But I guess, and it was like, literally, it was like, I was a little man.

I was like, always seemed more mature than my actual age.

Back to high school, fast forward back to high school, the project.

What are we going to do?

And I said, during the winter break, I had created a whole mythology of

a pantheon of gods and goddesses and all of that stuff in comic book form.

And then she was like, and then she saw it.

She's okay, that's a good, great.

Okay.

But now you still got to catch up.

What are you going to do?

I said, Okay, so we are studying mythology, Greek mythology here right now.

That's what we discussed in class.

I said, okay, I'm going to do a mock trial.

It's mock trial?

Okay.

About, I said, we're going to put Daedalus on trial for the death of Icarus.

Oh, is he culpable for Icarus's death since he created the wings,

even though he warned him not to fly too close to the sun.

He warned him not to do it.

And even though Icarus did it, he's the only one who created the wings.

Correct.

Had he not created the wings, it would have never happened.

And they would never have escaped.

And not only that, he's not, it's okay.

You didn't put any sort of limitations on it, right?

That wouldn't prevent him from going high.

You just told him, don't go so high.

He's a kid.

Did you know he was gonna do that anyway?

Is he responsible enough to make those decisions?

You set him up to fail.

Exactly.

Exactly.

And I told her, I said, Okay, that's what I want to do.

She said, Oh, that's interesting.

I said, We're gonna cast everyone from the AP class.

I said, okay, great.

She said, great.

I said, okay.

And then also I was like, we're going to do it in costumes.

Everyone's going to have togas and everything.

Okay, good.

What else?

I say, I will create the evidence.

I will create the, I will, and I want to film it.

He said, okay.

I said, do you, she said, do you have a camera?

I said, my dad does.

He's not going to let me bring it to school.

It's okay.

She said, I'll bring mine.

You can use mine.

And we recorded it and we had other classes coming to watch it.

And it was great.

And it was great.

it?

No, I don't know.

I'm hopefully she hears this and she has it and she can get it to me.

But fast forward, we're done with that.

I think I said, Okay, but you still have to do one more project.

I was like, Okay, I said, All right, got it.

I'm going to interact with you as I'm an archaeologist that's researching

the pantheon of gods that I created that's researching them and I'm

going to correspond with you.

As an archaeologist, and you as a professor at a university.

This is a whole bunch of articulate writing for someone who's in high school.

Yeah, it was a lot, it was a lot.

And then she's okay, she's okay, I can't wait to see how this works out.

I bet the teacher was just like, this dude is just a If I was your teacher, I

would've been like, Either he's a genius or I'm really good at what I'm doing.

All of it, maybe all the above, I don't know.

Maybe she just kept giving you projects to be like, I want to

see what else this guy has got.

To be fair, that's what a good teacher does.

A good teacher encourages someone's, engages them.

And it's just a way that they learn, not only learning the material, but

they're producing material themselves.

Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely.

So I created this whole, Gosh, I wish I had kept this, but I

created a slongs, a scroll aged it.

My parents didn't know this.

I've burned it and did all this other stuff, but I probably should have

been doing that, but they didn't know.

I didn't burn down the house, which was right.

Aged it, created a ancient language and gave her my translations and

everything created like a tube that I would give it to her and a whole,

then some artifacts and things.

And she said, she brought it back and she was like, a plus.

I said, I had to give this to my kids to read and they're wondering when

you're going to make another one.

I was like, this is we're at the end of the year.

I can't do another one.

This is a lot.

So anyway, did great in class.

That was one of the moments.

High school.

We realize there's definitely.

Yeah, I got here.

And especially I have a desire to do this, right?

This is something that's really good.

Yeah, and Fast forward a little bit more.

I think it was actually, it was in 11th grade when this happened.

There was a musical theater company that came to my school

called the Positive Youth Troop.

Not the great, even today, I'm like, it's not the greatest name, but it grew on me.

And they're out of the Bronx and they were MindBuilders Creative Art Center.

So they, all their productions were based, basically the music, the, everything.

It looked like.

We just kid regular kids.

Like I was like, Oh, I was like, wow, I saw it.

And I was like, I saw it.

And I was like, Oh, this is this.

I see what this is.

This is cool.

The music, everything.

I say they dress like me.

They sound like me.

They look like me.

Okay.

They're dealing my issues.

There that we're dealing with right now, I'd like to do that.

And I was like, ah, whatever.

And I was heading and I headed out the auditorium.

And then my sister, we're like my younger sister, who's right after me.

She's two years, two years under me.

We ran into each other on the way out.

And I was, and then my, one of my best friends came over and he was

just a he'd always been a comedian.

Yeah.

And it was just like, you should, he's I should sign up.

I was like he's I dare you to sign up.

I said, yeah.

You know what?

All right.

And I dare you guys to sign up and say, okay, so we signed up.

We had the auditions, we had to sing, which I forgot about and I don't think, I

don't think I was good, but we all got in.

So we, and so what would happen is we would, after getting out of school

and this is my, I don't know how to explain this to give you a frame of

reference in terms of the distance.

So I would, after school, a couple of times a week, I would travel from

Queens to the Bronx, which is, I guess would be the equivalent of going from

here to, I don't know, maybe for the audience, we're in Westlake village.

Thank you.

To like downtown LA.

Oh wow.

Wow.

Yeah that's a bit of distance.

Yeah.

So literally we would have to go through there were bus, there's a bus, there's

one bus Q44 that will go from Queens to the Bronx, but then we would have

to either take another bus or train.

So we would have to Or we would take the bus to the train.

I live near the two fare zone, take a bus to the train, get on the E

train, take the E train to the 42nd street to the two train, and then

take that all the way to the Bronx.

That's like a, that's like a journey.

That's like a literal journey.

Like every two minutes.

And then you go there, you act in productions, you help make productions.

And you had to go back.

And then in the beginning, my parents would, they made the sacrifice and

they would come and pick us up.

But there's a point where it was like.

We got a Were the characters just as colorful as the ones out here

when you go on like the red line?

Oh, this is New York, man.

It was like you, anything that you think you could possibly see or not see.

So do you mean that was good character development?

Oh absolutely.

Because what the, what traveling on the train.

Or character study I should say.

Oh yeah, absolutely.

Because what the traveling on the train.

And I thought about this, like a buddy of mine that we both grew up

and we grew up together pretty much and we were in the same, even the

same program, same organization.

We were, we would get a chance to observe people and not only observe

people, we get a chance, we actually have time to read our scripts.

We'd actually had time to do all the things.

And we were thinking about that and we like, ah, it's like, What?

Why don't we?

I was like, because we had a lot, we spent a lot of time on the train.

We spent a lot of time being interesting characters.

What were your parents?

So when you told your parents like, oh, this is something I'm going to

take seriously, were they supportive and they as much as they could be.

Because they, it's not, they don't see it as a career because it's not a doctor.

It's not, I said, I can play a doctor or a lawyer or whatever.

I can be all these things.

I can be all these things.

Compromise.

Exactly.

And so the compromise was this, okay, but we want you to study some other things.

I said, okay, fine.

So when I got into school, got into college.

Where did you go?

I went to NYU Tisch School of the Arts and which I had to remember it was

actually my, it was my first choice.

And then there were a couple of the schools underneath that.

I won't go into that.

But when I got there, I took a sociology class.

I took a pre law class.

And it was fine.

It was great.

And I was just like, this is not, Be, I'm trying to, but I

also have a technical side of me.

So I got into a computer programming class at seven in the morning.

That's pretty early for peer program.

That's very early . That's very early.

And it was fine.

I was doing well and it didn't, it helped, but didn't help that the

professor that was teaching the class.

wrote the book that the class that we were, it was Pascal.

I believe it was Pascal.

He wrote the book about the programming, about the programming.

Exactly.

And so I was doing fine in the class, but then I saw down the line, I

was like, this is not sustainable.

I'm I, this means me traveling on the train and trying to, and on

top of that, I'm taking 20 credits, at least 20 credits each semester.

And then on top of that, I've got a part, couple of part time jobs.

And then also I'm also performing and I'm also in the company sleep.

Exactly.

That was the problem.

That was the exact problem.

And I was like, I can't, this is, and went to the professor.

I was like, Hey, I'm seeing this down.

He was like, you're not failing.

You're not close to fail.

I said now right now, but I'm seeing what's going to happen.

And he was like, okay.

And so it's just a weird, and I get, and I guess I understand the logic of

it, but it was just a weird at the time.

It was a weird concept for me, which was you can only drop the class if you're

passing, which makes it, when you think about it logically, it makes sense

because if I'm failing the class, you don't really get it and you need it.

But if you're passing, because I think my GPA at the time was like 3.

94 or something like that, heading towards a four.

And so I was just like, That's gonna, that's going to hurt if

I get a C or an F in this class.

And I'm seeing this down the line and my brain is not going to have, it

can't handle this, all this right now.

And so he was like, I understand.

And then he's okay.

No problem.

And he dropped me from the class and.

Gra I graduated in three years, and then from there I And even that,

my parents were What are you doing?

Exactly.

Oh yeah.

And I was just like, I said, no, I said, I need I said, I can do this.

I can do this.

And, it I think even up to a few years ago, my dad was like, so

are you going back to school?

And I was like Even a few years ago?

Yeah, a few years ago, my dad said, so are you going back to school?

So you're on CW.

And he's Oh, are you going back?

No, it was right before that.

It was right before that.

You played Martin Luther King Jr.

And your dad is still It was before that.

It was before that.

Oh, okay.

What I would say about that also, like my dad has been, he's seen me do

just about everything and it's funny because, and this is also an immigrant.

Or maybe it's just a dad thing.

I would never hear about what he thought about my work.

I would always hear it from other family members that he spoke to.

Or.

But he ain't gonna tell you.

He's not gonna tell me.

He's not gonna tell me.

The only, the first time he told me, I was doing a, I was doing it.

I was doing a tour of a piece called the the Mountaintop, which

Katori Hall wrote, it's a play.

It's a two hander with, it revolves the whole premises, Martin Luther King, last

day after he does the Mountaintop speech.

What happened that night at that night of him returning to the Lorraine Hotel.

And what happens is he's visited by the woman who works downstairs as a waitress,

pretty much, who brings him some coffee.

And we find out later that she's more than what she seems.

She, we find out that she's actually an angel and she's basically preparing

him for his transition because the next morning he's assassinated on the balcony.

And so I went And I think it was in Nashville.

We did this, we did on parts where we were in Nashville and

my father is living in Georgia.

So he drove from Georgia because we weren't doing a performance there

to Nashville and saw the show.

And you didn't know he was there.

No, I knew he was coming.

I knew he was coming, but then he was, then I didn't, after the show, I saw him.

But then after the show, I was like, where'd he go?

Where'd he go?

So I called him up and I was like where are you?

So we're.

Oh, we're heading back.

I was like, you're heading back.

I was like, I just did it.

How?

He said, we just didn't show why I haven't seen you.

And he was like, no, we are heading back.

I was like, no, I need you to, I really need you to come back.

I need to see you.

And so he comes back and he says to me, he was from my, I've heard this from

other people, but hearing from him, it took it to another level for me.

He said, so I'm a junior also.

So you named after him?

Yeah, I named after him.

And I don't hear, and it's funny 'cause I don't hear Junior unless I'm home.

So he said to me, it's like, when you walk, that's like, when

you came out on stage for the first five seconds, I saw you.

But then after that, I saw Martin Luther King because he said, I

don't think you look like him.

I don't really think you look like him.

He said, but something happened when you, after I, after that moment, that

initial moment that, and I was just like, And I completely didn't see you.

I just saw Martin Luther King.

I heard Martin Luther King.

And it must be an incredible compliment from your father, my father.

Oh, absolutely.

That's fantastic.

And I was just going to get, I hate to cut you off.

So we will be, we'll have to continue this in part two.

So guys, if you're listening, filmstar news.

I'm Derek Johnson.

Second.

I'm Nicholas Killian.

And we're here with a great, Gilbert Glenn Brown, and we'll see you next time.

See you.

Awesome.

This has been Film Center on Comic-Con Radio.

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Until next time, this has been film Center.