[PODCAST INTRODUCTION]
Welcome to Right For The Role, the podcast. I'm your host, John Frank Levey. Thanks for joining me as I sit down with friends and colleagues to explore the journeys they've taken to discover the roles they're right for, both professionally and personally. As you listen, it's my greatest hope that you'll find inspiration, motivation, and embrace the roles in your life you were always meant to play.
And now I'd like to introduce my guest, Eriq La Salle. He may be best known for his groundbreaking role as Dr. Peter Benton on ER, for which he received three NAACP Image Awards and nominations for a Golden Globe and three Primetime Emmys. But those 171 episodes are just a small sample of the game-changing work he's done over nearly four decades.
Eriq is a multi-faceted talent whose work behind the camera as a director and producer is prolific. He's directed feature films, made-for-TV movies and popular TV series including Chicago PD, CSI Cyber, Law & Order, and countless others. And he's a writer. Not only did he pen an episode of The Twilight Zone, which made WGA's list of 101 best-written TV series, but he's also a critically acclaimed author of a trio of thrillers in his Martyr Maker series, which includes Laws of Depravity, Laws of Wrath, and most recently, Laws of Annihilation.
[THE MARCH ON WASHINGTON]
John Frank Levey: Eriq, I'd like to start off first just by saying I'm so glad that you are here and open to doing this. We recently got to see each other at a wedding of a mutual friend, and I had such a great time catching up with you.
Eriq La Salle: Absolutely. Same here.
John Frank Levey: I'd like to start off by telling you a story that's in my book that I've told before, but I think it sets up the context for the kind of conversation I'd like to have with you. Sixteen-year-old Johnny was in Harlem in New York City getting on a bus with people from the Congress of Racial Equality to go to the March on Washington in 1963.
We left probably around eight o'clock at night. It was dark, and the whole bus ride to Washington, we sang all of the civil rights songs. And I'm sorry for all the people who were sitting near me because "Johnny One Note" was actually written for me. We were up all night singing and laughing, sharing that camaraderie and excitement about the event.
We got to the site in front of the Lincoln Memorial very early in the morning - the sun was just coming up. We were among the first groups to arrive, so we got a place - I'm a theater nerd, so I would say right down right of the podium where the speakers were going to be. We spread our blankets and sat down. There were some preliminary speakers and some musical performances.
And then finally the great Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. got up on the stage. He began to deliver what, for my money, is the most important speech of the 20th century - and sixteen-year-old Johnny promptly fell asleep. So I was having a dream the same time that Dr. King was. In a funny way, this morning when I was thinking about talking to you and about how, in some of the research we've done and just knowing you, race has been an important part of your triumphs and your obstacles.
I thought it was a perfect metaphor because even sympathetic white people are really asleep about racism and its impact because they have no personal experience of it. And I was hoping that you'd be open to putting race into the conversation we have today.
[EARLY DREAMS AND INFLUENCES]
Let's start at the beginning. You grew up in Connecticut, in Hartford, and you were one of four siblings. But you were the one who had a creative dream. Can you tell us a little bit about where that dream came from?
[DISCOVERING THEATER]
Eriq La Salle: I think one never really knows where a dream comes from, but the dream becomes significant when all we want to do is excel at something. When we excel at something, whether it be sports, arts, engineering, numbers - whatever - it makes us feel special.
Growing up in a predominantly black neighborhood - pretty much an all-black neighborhood - there was a sort of preconception about being an athlete, that expectation. I was honest enough with myself back then to know I didn't have that passion for it. I loved playing ball recreationally like everyone else, but if it was raining outside, I didn't really need to go out and play. People like Jordan, that's their passion - nothing phases them.
When I was fourteen, I auditioned for the theater department, which had been non-existent at my high school. It had been disbanded years ago, and they were trying to revive it. I had started writing around nine years old - poetry, little short stories. There was a creative bug there, which I hadn't quite identified yet. It was still sort of like larvae.
I had this great plan that I would write this amazing play and they would perform it and I'd become famous. But I show up and the drama teacher, Paul Zions - he and I are still in touch - he says, "No, I need you to audition. It's for a play called 'A Raisin in the Sun' by the late, great Lorraine Hansberry." He was basically like, "I'm not interested in whatever fantasy you have about writing. This is what the deal is."
So I auditioned, and then the bug hit me. Wow. I found something that I did better than most people around me.
[EARLY INFLUENCES]
John Frank Levey: You know, it's funny that you mentioned Lorraine Hansberry, because when I was in high school, I also auditioned for the senior play and the director was Lorraine Hansberry's niece, Shawneil Perry Ryder. I think she'd probably be fired or maybe arrested in today's political climate. We used to fool around a lot in the acting class, and she took three of us into her office and cussed and slapped us. And then I went on to be an Emmy-winning casting director, my friend Mickey went on to be an Emmy-winning cinematographer and filmmaker, and my friend David ended up being a prominent Canadian cinematographer. So maybe it's okay to yell at your high school students when they're being jackasses.
Eriq La Salle: It was a different time in terms of how we were disciplined. But at the same time, there was a lot of love. I feel sometimes people didn't necessarily know how to express it. My mother, a single mother trying to herd all these kids while working two or three jobs - my mother needed us to fear her to keep us in check.
When I became 18 and we talked about it, I learned my mother lived in a constant state of fear raising little black boys and little black girls. She needed that control. Even she said sometimes she was a little harder on us than she needed to be.
[EARLY CAREER CHALLENGES]
John Frank Levey: You know, it's interesting because in an interview I saw, you talked about how directors and producers have control and actors don't, and that control was an important thing for you to get. Maybe that's one of the things you got from your mom.
Eriq La Salle: Well, I got needed control. My mother didn't understand the arts. I come from a very blue collar family. It was instilled in you that you grow up, you go to high school, maybe go to college, but you get a good blue collar job. It's about stability.
When we talk about race and the influence of race in one's journey, it starts so early. It's not just a matter of what roles you get - before I even got into it, there weren't many people that looked like me.
John Frank Levey: That's one of the things that's really changed. Now a young Chinese American girl will see Lucy Liu on television.
[EARLY REPRESENTATION IN MEDIA]
Eriq La Salle: Exactly - Lucy didn't see it. Back then there was Sidney Poitier, Bill Cosby, and the late great James Earl Jones, who throughout my journey has made several appearances and I will always love him for that. In the seventies, we had the black exploitation films - the Pam Griers, the Tamara Dobsons, Bernie Casey, Richard Roundtree, all the old school actors. But we really didn't have this legitimate thing that allowed us to aspire to.
So I went to school, got really good training at Juilliard and NYU. At Juilliard, there were just two of us - me from Hartford, Connecticut, and another guy who was biracial but identified as white. One of the first things that happened, a white guy from Rhode Island comes up to me at one of the freshman welcome events and introduces himself. He literally says to me, and he didn't say it with malice, although it was filled with a lot - he said, "You're only the second black person I've ever met besides my maid."
John Frank Levey: You know, that's fantastically weird, but here's the funny version of the same thing. I got to the University of Rochester in 1965, and my first roommate was a guy from the dairy farm country in New York State. He literally, again without malice, said that I was the first Jew he had ever met. And he wanted to know if he could feel where my horns were. I didn't even know that Jews were supposed to have horns. I thought maybe he was hitting on me.
Eriq La Salle: But that's where I think college is important because you start being exposed to different things and different people of different orientations and cultures and backgrounds. At the same time, you have to be strong because there are going to be people that don't understand you. Again, things have changed dramatically. Now we've had a black president, we've had all these changes, but I can only speak to when I occupied that space and that time.
[COMMUNITY AND EXCELLENCE]
John Frank Levey: You talked earlier about the concept of excellence and how it frees you up to feel special. One of the things that I loved about being part of the community we created for ER together was that sense of community. We trusted each other - each of the department heads in the concept meetings, in the production meetings - we trusted each other and we knew that each of us was going to do our damnedest to make that episode great.
That sense of community gave us all the opportunity to be more excellent than we could possibly be by ourselves, which was fantastic. I wanted to ask you about the first big film you did, Coming to America, which is the thing I saw that made me interested in you for ER. Interestingly, it had nothing to do with Dr. Peter Benton. What was the audition process like for you on Coming to America?
[THE COMING TO AMERICA AUDITION]
Eriq La Salle: It was unique and impactful. To this day, I've incorporated certain things from that particular audition. John Landis was at the height of his career - Animal House, Trading Places - he was huge. He kind of called the shots. This was 1987-ish, and directors had more power then - they were truly the captains of the ship.
I remember auditioning - they didn't even let us on the lot at Paramount. I had to park on a street off of Melrose. It was around 4:30 and already turning dark. I go in and everybody's there. I noticed he's spending more time with me than usual - and actors are very aware of that.
John Frank Levey: I was always very conscious of that. Sometimes you're only with somebody for as long as it takes because you go, "I don't want to mess him up because what he just did is perfect." And then everybody else thinks that we hated you, but in fact, we loved you. So it goes both ways.
Eriq La Salle: But when you're a young actor, you're definitely aware of that time spent. He worked with me, did some things, kept laughing, and then he just turned to me - and this is the part that still impacts me, something that I do whenever I can - he just turned to me and said, "Okay, I'll see you on set."
I said, "What do you mean?" He goes, "Yeah, I'll see you on set." I was just dumbfounded because I think it was the first time in my career I met someone that had that much power. He didn't have to check with the committee. He didn't have to get approval. His word was word.
He finally just turns to me like, "You idiot, you have the role. See you on set. That's it." And I'm like, "Oh," and now I'm thinking let me get out of here before I blow it. I just remember leaving there and damn near skipping to my car and hollering.
Now as a director, whenever I can - of course I work primarily in television so there is always a process - but when I was running Chicago PD, I would often tell people in the room right away if they got the part.
[THE PATH TO ER]
John Frank Levey: You know, the only person on ER who got the job in the room was Parminder Nagra. John had seen Bend It Like Beckham, and then he asked me to set up a meeting. I was just dumbfounded when he said, "Well, we're going to make a part for you." She similarly couldn't quite grasp it.
But that brings me to our mutual connection and our wonderful community and success that we all shared and contributed to - ER. You and I have had lots of laughs over the years about the obstacle we had to overcome: a famous casting executive who ran Warner Brothers and was my boss, Barbara Miller, who had rules. And casting is much too mercurial to have to live in a world of rules. But one of her rules was that if somebody was interested in an actor for another show in Warner Brothers television, no other Warner Brothers television casting director was allowed to pursue them.
[THE ER CASTING STORY]
Eriq La Salle: Here was the problem I had with Barbara - and this is why I was so angry for so many years. On Under Suspicion, I was a glorified extra on that show.
John Frank Levey: Weren't you supposed to have a bigger part when you started and then they diminished it for budget reasons?
Eriq La Salle: No, I was always one of many. It was basically about a woman at the heart of a homicide team - it was her story. Peter Coyote played her boss, I believe. The rest of us just had like ten lines per episode. I was horrified. And so the main issue I had with Barbara was this: ER was a career-changing role, and I wasn't even a regular on Under Suspicion - I was recurring.
Everyone was going in for ER. My best friend, Michael Beach, was the first one who called me in Portland and said, "Man, I just went in for this audition for this show called ER. It's amazing. You got to read it." Usually he and I were neck and neck going in for roles, and I hadn't even heard of it. And then there was just all this pushback, which I had never experienced. I had a really good agent at the time, so I was getting into auditions. I never understood the pushback until I think you might've been the first person after I got the job to break it down.
John Frank Levey: You know, one of my favorite parts about my job and my career is that I was an advocate for things. I felt confident enough to tell Barbara - and not ask, but jeopardize a little bit of my stature with her - to just tell her, "This rule is F-ing stupid." The important thing was that this show gets the greatest cast because it had the greatest upside, maybe of anything that we'd ever do.
We tested your best friend, Mr. Beach, and I don't know if you know this story, but we were told, "You have the best four-fifths of an ensemble on television and you can have Michael if you want to, but we're not completely convinced." That was Don Ohlmeyer, the president of NBC.
So Wells and Les Moonves and I were walking down the hallway after that and they were like, "Don't pick up his option, don't pick up his option." And I was like, "Okay, but I gotta get Eric in." I went back to Barbara's office after that test and said, "Look, we can't pick up Beach's option. I gotta get Eric in for this."
Cut to you lying in the hallway in Building 140 in scrubs - I think they were purple, but I could be wrong - and you're stretching like James Worthy and Magic Johnson did on the floor of the Forum back then. And you came in and you made me right.
Yesterday, I was waiting for my longtime partner to come home so we could go out to dinner with friends, and I was messing around on Instagram - which I've become addicted to because it helped me promote my book. I went on to the ER fan page and learned that Noah was being interviewed. He said that after the pilot, when you and he were in a lot of scenes together, you were kind of reserved and serious.
[THE SPAIN STORY]
John Frank Levey: He recounted something which I thought was very funny. And also back to the race question - he apparently said to you, "Oh, LaSalle, that's an interesting name." And you said "slave name." He felt kind of intimidated by that, but apparently as soon as the pilot was done, during that period between the pilot and the pickup, you called him and said, "You want to go to Spain?"
He was completely dumbfounded because you hadn't even smiled at him during the whole pilot. He apparently said, "I'll call you back." Then he called George and George said, "Oh God, don't do it. You'll hate each other and then when we get picked up, it'll be a problem. I'll go with you."
Eriq La Salle: Right, exactly.
John Frank Levey: Someone said six weeks, but in any event-
Eriq La Salle: We were there for about two and a half weeks.
John Frank Levey: And it formed a bond that was very important to the success of ER. That beginning of forming community, that you all watched every episode together. That first year at the Emmys you took one limousine together to the ceremony. It just was such a lesson for all of us that if you create community, the sum of the parts is bigger than everybody. And if the community is made up of people who already have a lot to offer, you end up bigger than the sum of the parts - you really have that opportunity to create excellence.
Eriq La Salle: It was really important because it was just the opposite of what George feared. He made a good point - "You guys go there and have a falling out, you got to work with each other." But his own logic was, "It's a stupid idea. I'm coming!"
It had just the opposite effect because we came back locked and loaded. We had great stories, we had shared stuff, we bonded. And clearly that was your intent when you made the invitation to Noah - you wanted to create a relationship and a connection.
John Frank Levey: That was very wise.
Eriq La Salle: Let's go have a good time. We were really fortunate because the show ran so much on chemistry. We were able to establish a great chemistry and it paid dividends for years.
[RACE AND REPRESENTATION ON ER]
John Frank Levey: You know, one of the things that changed in my life is that at a certain point, Mr. Crichton, Mr. Spielberg, and Mr. Wells gave all of us on the crew and office staff a bonus. I remember his then-assistant called me and said, "Come on over to the conference room. There's an important meeting." I was like, "Oh, okay, I'm kind of busy, but do I have to?" And he said, "Yeah, yeah, come over."
I got there and they announced they were giving us a check. I thought, "Oh, well, this is cool. Maybe it'll be five grand or God, wouldn't it be cool if it was 15 grand." Then I was walking back to my office with this envelope in my hand. In typical ER fashion, a guy from the prop department was about 10 yards in front of me holding an anatomical baby by the foot, hanging upside down.
I opened the envelope and it was a hell of a lot more than $10,000. I used that money to buy the house across the street from me for my mom for the last three years of her life. I wondered if you ever had an opportunity to either emotionally or practically gift your mom for her support of your wacky, crazy dream.
Eriq La Salle: My mother has passed away, but we had a really cool relationship. Like I said, my mother didn't quite understand the arts when I first got into it, but it was great to start early - I flew her out for the premiere of Coming to America. Her being able to witness that was very important to me.
John Frank Levey: She must've just been flabbergasted, especially since she didn't understand the world. The extraordinary success that you've had, as I said in the intro, not only as an actor but as a director and producer, and now as a novelist. Where did you find the time in your busy life to write three novels? How disciplined could you possibly be that you made the time for that?
[CONTROL AND CAREER EVOLUTION]
Eriq La Salle: You mentioned a word early on - control. Control not in the egotistical sense, not controlling others, but controlling yourself and trying to have control of your destiny.
Ironically, just before ER, a year and a half before, I replaced Denzel Washington in a film where he was playing a love interest to Michelle Pfeiffer. There was this big search after he dropped out. I end up getting the role, go to North Carolina, working like crazy on it. The director comes to me as we start shooting and says, "You are doing such fantastic work. I just want you to know, I know you can't see the dailies - Michelle is one of the producers so she gets to see everything - but trust me, you are killing it."
Three days later, a producer knocks on my apartment door that they had rented for me and says, "We're looking at dailies. You look too young to play Michelle Pfeiffer's love interest. So we're going to have to let you go."
[TURNING POINT]
Eriq La Salle: I was absolutely devastated because I was doing everything right. I had spent a bunch of money because I'd bought an apartment after the Coming to America money, but I hadn't furnished it yet. So I went on this crazy spending spree because they still had to pay me. And then I thought, "Okay, now what?"
The following week I enrolled in filmmaking classes. The reason was, it was a means of - and it's so funny now to say this, but back then I thought 50 was like super old - I didn't want to be 50 years old and still doing this kind of thing. So I needed more control. That's how I started directing.
Then another impactful thing happened before George broke out. This was early in the process, maybe the show had been on for two months. We were being celebrated, and George comes to set one day and says, "Hey, there's a film called 'The Man with the Football.' Warner Brothers has been trying to do it for years. They went out to Arnold, Mel Gibson, all these people." He said they just offered it to him, and they were going to pay him a million dollars.
That same afternoon, I got a call from my agent saying, "Hey, there's a project, first-time director, they want you to audition for the sixth lead and you're going to be paid scale." It just showed me the difference in our value, because this was before George "broke out." This was when we were ensemble and we were getting this acclaim.
John Frank Levey: And do you think that had a lot to do with race?
Eriq La Salle: Yeah, absolutely. When I say race, it simply means opportunities. It simply means that a studio didn't see the value, didn't see as much value in an African American having a lead role. That's just how the system was. The same thing can be said about women - women directors, women actors.
My point is that was another thing that showed me: no matter what you do, even if you do equal work - because at this point, we're all being celebrated - but we're not being viewed as equal by certain things. It taught me that you're going to have to have more control of your destiny. Because if you wait for the system to do it, you're waiting for a system that doesn't value you.
[CHANGING THE SYSTEM]
John Frank Levey: Whatever changes have happened have been forced by lobbying, by activism. You can't be passive and expect anything to change.
Eriq La Salle: Well, once I got into directing and then into executive producing, I started realizing when we start saying "race this, race that," it's not always directly race. Sometimes it's peripheral. What I mean is this: when I was directing, I would be in the room and I would say, "Hey, you know the judge role they wrote - why can't that be a Latina? Why can't that be a female?"
John Frank Levey: I've done that a thousand times! "Why can't that be a black woman?"
Eriq La Salle: Right. But what I discovered in those moments wasn't a racist pushback. What I really discovered was that it just wasn't how they thought. And they would go, "Oh, that's it!" And you go, "Well, wouldn't that make sense?"
John Frank Levey: But why does that seem like a miracle? I think you've hit on something really important, which is the reason that change has accelerated in the last number of years is that there are more black executive producers, more Latino showrunners, more women showrunners. As a result, they don't think it's such a weird idea because they see the world from their perspective.
Eriq La Salle: That's why it's important for us to have diversity in the room, for there to be different points of view. And so back to your original question - I make time for these creative pursuits because it's also survival. I had to become a director because I saw it as survival. I saw it as the longevity of a career as opposed to a system that doesn't value me.
Even though I'm at one point one of the highest-paid African American actors in television history, right away after ER, that value drops significantly. A few years after I left ER, I was a big fan of the show "24" and they had a role for the final two episodes. They literally made me audition. And I'm coming off of the biggest show. But it's safe to say that none of the males from "Friends" would be auditioning for a two-episode arc on another show.
[SYSTEMIC CHALLENGES]
Eriq La Salle: Again, this is not a reflection against actors or my fellow artists. I'm just criticizing the system.
John Frank Levey: And my original point was that even sympathetic white people don't see it. They're surprised when they're confronted with the reality that life is different for people of color than it is for white people. And that is something we need to wake up from.
This brings me to something that I made you laugh remembering at the wedding that we were at fairly recently. Before you were one of the highest-paid African American people in television history, you didn't have a lot of money, but then ER happened and you started getting all that acclaim that everybody was getting. All of a sudden, thousands of pairs of shoes and Hugo Boss suits arrived and you said, "Mo free shit, mo free shit, mo free shit." That made me laugh so hard at the time. When I recounted that to you at the wedding, that giant Cheshire cat smile of yours emerged.
Eriq La Salle: The ironic thing is when you're broke, nobody gives you anything free. Start making money, they give you all this. I was like, "Okay, wow. Mo free shit!"
John Frank Levey: Isn't there a song about that - when you're down and haven't got a penny, all your friends are there, but when you're rich, all your friends are around wanting a little help? "God Bless the Child"...
Eriq La Salle: When we talk about what is the shift, sometimes the only thing you can do - the only power you ever really have - is to say no. That's really your only power, particularly when you're a young actor starting out. If you remember, it was a similar thing when they called and said they wanted to make a deal for me to come in and test for ER. They came back and I had done a couple of pilots, I had gotten a quote, and ER came in lower than that.
[NEGOTIATING YOUR WORTH]
Eriq La Salle: I actually said no. I told my agent, "This is a principle thing." They were coming in for the pilot like $10,000 less. I said, "No. I'm tired of hearing 'Hey, we love you, but we don't have enough money to pay you because we've paid all of the white counterparts.'" At some point, black people just get tired of hearing that - people of color or women just get tired of it. So you just go, "You know what? No. If you don't value me, you don't value me."
My agent said something important. She said, "Okay, but I will tell you this - if they come back, that role is yours." I said, "Really?" She goes, "Yep." So I went and shot pool that night. This was back in the day before we even had cell phones, we were doing pagers. At seven o'clock, I'm at the pool hall, the Hollywood Athletic Club, and I check my voicemail. My agent said they came back and they came up - "Go get the job."
Sometimes ignorance is bliss. I know now that $10,000 would have cost me millions, but it's a different thing.
John Frank Levey: Yes, of course. If you had known how much money was on the table at your audition, you would have frozen up and nothing would have happened.
I just like to tell you the other side of that story. Karen, my longtime partner who you met again at the wedding, she was the business affairs executive. Obviously she was operating under instructions about where to go, but I went up to her office and I said, "I need Eric LaSalle. Find the effing $10,000 and find it now."
It was one of the times that I advocated, because if it wasn't going to be you, frankly, I don't know who the hell it was going to be. The network had already been cool about Michael. And this is a personal question - and if you don't want to answer it, we'll edit it out - but how in the hell have you and Michael maintained the deep and everlasting friendship in the context of competition and millions of dollars? It's extraordinary that he hasn't harbored jealousy. I mean, he's had a fantastic career and a great life and he's a wonderful guy. I've hired him as series regular, I think, two times, and he was great on ER when he came in as well. Can you speak to that?
[FRIENDSHIP AND COMPETITION]
Eriq La Salle: It's really simple. We met in college and one of the first things we said was, "No woman will come between us." That mentality then became "no job will come between us" because here's the thing - it's really simple. What's meant for me, no one can take away. This is where I lean more into the spiritual aspects of things. What's meant for me, no one can take away. What's not meant for me, no one can give me.
So we can say - and he and I joke - "This job is mine, this job is mine," but we say it sarcastically because ultimately you don't know what's yours. He was the one that told me about the ER script. He sent the damn script to me. We had that relationship where instead of thinking of it as competition, we were secure enough to say, "Hey man, I'm going in on this audition."
Of course we get disappointed. There have been roles that he's gotten that I've been like, "Oh fuck, I wish I had gotten that." We're honest about that, but not to a point where I want to take something from you.
John Frank Levey: But Eric, you gotta give yourself and Michael credit that you both promised that to each other and fulfilled that promise. I have actually seen two actors who were reading for the same role - I went into an audition with somebody and then came back out and they were rolling in the parking lot, punching each other. They were very close friends, and it turned out that one of their wives had been with the other one. They were just beating the bejesus out of each other. I didn't know it was part of my job description to separate angry lovers.
Eriq La Salle: You know, it's funny because we always maintain a sense of humor about everything. In 1984, that's when we were like, "Okay, no woman." And then we saw "Purple Rain" and it was like, "Okay, maybe Apollonia can come between us" and we agreed. That's fair!
[SPIRITUAL JOURNEY AND WRITING]
John Frank Levey: You just said the word "spiritual" and your novels have been described as part thriller and part spiritual quest. Could you speak briefly about that?
Eriq La Salle: I write in the thriller genre because I did a movie based on a John Sanford book years ago called "Mind Prey." I was a producer and starred in it, and that got me hooked into this whole thriller thing.
This series, which is actually five books - the first three have already been published, I just finished book four and am working on book five - I always felt that the thriller genre could be injected with more depth. You don't have to just have a who's-done-it, we're-going-to-catch-the-killer, the bad guy. What happens if your protagonists are as dysfunctional as your antagonist? It's not just the focus of catching the bad guy.
John Frank Levey: And understanding the bad guy and relating-
Eriq La Salle: Because I want to make my characters very three-dimensional and human and well-rounded. Each book really follows three cops in the vein of the movie "Seven" - two detectives and an FBI agent. Each book, they get to kind of have their own highlight of their journey. One doesn't believe in God, but he goes through a case where people are killing priests and it challenges his belief. One is detached from love and he goes through this thing.
It gives a certain depth that I believe has been lacking in most thrillers. I think the Attica Lockes of the world, the S.A. Cosbys, Don Winslow - a great white writer, I love his stuff - they've elevated the genre. Don Winslow doesn't write straight thrillers, but he does some really cool suspense stuff. I felt we could elevate thrillers, and that's what I want to do.
I'm getting ready to start my next series after I finish up these other two books. The goal is, after five books, to turn them into a streaming series - five seasons. So I'm waiting for that to really go out and start shopping it. Because again, I have to create my own opportunity because the system that we're in doesn't necessarily create it for me. So all of this stuff is necessary - directing, producing, writing novels - all of it, because it gives me more opportunity to live up to my potential of what I see as my career.
[CLOSING THOUGHTS]
John Frank Levey: That's fantastic. You know, I don't know yet who our audience is going to be for "Right for the Role" podcast, but I expect it's going to be a lot of young actors who are trying to figure it out. I said in the introduction that I have this hope that this will be motivating and inspirational. The discipline and forward thinking and planning that you called survival that has been at the root of your career is really remarkably inspirational.
I hope that the potential audience will see both how much work it takes, how much care it takes, how much protection it requires. It's extremely hard, but it is a wonderful way to make a living. It's so satisfying to be part of a community and to be in a collaborative, respectful situation.
I want to go back to ER for just one minute and give you one more accolade. I was always really impressed by how you took the importance of playing a black professional into the work and also into your advocacy for yourself and the character of Peter. I know John really well, and he is a kind and generous person, but I imagine you two were occasionally at loggerheads because of this idea that I presented at the beginning - that even the most sympathetic white men might resist being told that they're making a mistake or they're shortchanging something. Did you and John occasionally have...?
Eriq La Salle: Oh, absolutely. Because sometimes people will make these fights about something bigger than what it is. I'm just fighting for equality. We can define equality differently, but if this is an ensemble show - they refused in the very beginning to ever have my character go on a date with a woman. I was always at the hospital or at my apartment, and in the meantime, my white counterparts, mainly George and Anthony, they were going on these great dates. I used to say, "You know, black people go on dates as well," but it didn't quite register. Ironically, they would send them to jazz clubs. I'm like, "Okay, so not only do you not write [dates for my character], you even take our music!"
The black relationships that I had with women were so dysfunctional and so imbalanced - they lacked romance, they lacked true intimacy, they lacked just basic things. Then they put me in an interracial relationship [with Alex Kingston]. Now all those things that I wanted are happening. I'm taking this white woman on dates, showing a gentler, more tender side of myself. Whereas with the black women, we were always arguing.
I was not comfortable perpetuating this false perception that we don't communicate. So what happened was, because they didn't listen to me and give me a balanced black relationship, it inadvertently sent a message that a black man will work harder when he's with a white woman than he will with a black woman. I said, "Look, that might be your point of view and your perspective. I will not be the face of that."
Once they put me in this interracial relationship, which I absolutely loved because our chemistry was amazing, I simply said, "Now you have to end this interracial relationship, and I want a positive relationship with a black woman." Then I brought in Michael Michelle, and we got to enjoy a lot of the things that I had been asking for for six years, for six seasons.
[THE FINAL WORDS]
John Frank Levey: I'd like to end with one little thing. When I was a little boy, my mom used to say, "Hey Johnny, say three words that describe who you are." Hey Eric, say three words to describe who you are.
Eriq La Salle: Driven, flawed, and authentic.
John Frank Levey: Great. Apparently when I was six, I said, "I'm me, I'm Johnny, and I'm a boy." I didn't have any gender issues! Oh gee, Eric, thank you so much for this. It's been a wonderful conversation, and I very much appreciate it.