Unless someone told you, it would be easy for you to miss the fact that Brian d'Arcy James is on a hot streak of starring in some of the most buzzy and controversial works of the last few years. He's the guy who originated the role of King George during Hamilton's low-key Off-Broadway run, he played journalist Matt Carroll in the Oscar-winning film Spotlight—one of the real men and women who unearthed the Catholic Church's sex abuse scandal—and most recently, he played the father of Hannah Baker, the girl whose suicide lies at the center of the plot (and controversy) of Netflix's hot teen drama 13 Reasons Why. Oh, and he'll be playing an FBI agent in the upcoming film The Silent Man, a biopic about Mark Felt, better known as Deep Throat, the whistleblower involved in the Watergate scandal.
That's James' lane these days, it seems; star of almost freakishly prescient projects, although you'd never guess that by his demeanor. James possesses an unassuming aura of chill utterly at odds with the confrontational nature of the work he's been associated with lately; a stark contrast to the guy he is onstage in Hamilton. That is, the most pompous and flamboyant part of one of the biggest Broadway shows ever.
That's why I'm here, though. To tell you. Once I catch my breath.
Brian d'Arcy James is training for a marathon. The Chicago Marathon, this October. Like a lot of people who get roped into marathons, James became a participant following a bit of chummy small talk that someone (in this case, his brother-in-law) decided to suddenly take very seriously the next day. If you've ever been friends with someone who decided to run a marathon, you probably know all about this—I don't, mostly because I tend to stop talking to people roughly around the time they decide marathon running is a thing they want to do. James is much more accommodating than I in this regard. I'm trying to be a better person, though, so I tell him sure, I'd do "a quick two miles" with him in late May.
They're trying to draw this thing out as long as possible.
"I don't spend a lot of time evangelizing," James says, clearly not wanting to appear fanatical about running. He just wants to be healthy, you know? He's a middle-aged guy; your body starts doing weird stuff if you don't start trying to take care of it. "I just try and get people like you to come and go running with me!" he says, clapping me on the shoulder. I want to tell him that is precisely what evangelism looks like, but I really need a sandwich in me and I'm trying to play it cool.
It's an unseasonably cool and cloudy day on the Upper West Side, the one neighborhood in Manhattan where dogs could conceivably outnumber humans by 2030, and James has a few hours before he has to be back at the Richard Rodgers theater for that night's performance of Hamilton. In mid-April, he returned to the production for the first time since the show's original Off-Broadway run for the summer. In the interim, Hamilton moved to Broadway and became a phenomenon, sweeping last year's Tonys and becoming a generational touchpoint.
"My time now with the show is now almost equal to the time I did it before," he said, reflecting on how things have changed. Mostly, he says, it's the energy of the crowd and the size of the space, a palpable sense of expectation that wasn't there the first time around. Which, to him, is a funny bit of irony, because he spends most of his time backstage trying very hard to hate on all the talented people on stage when he's not, so he can perfect his royal shade-throwing.
"It's fun to try and match the energy of a revolution in the presence of a single character, and try and overcome that. In attitude, in stature," James says. "Once the show starts, I find myself having an antagonistic view of everything I'm hearing to prepare myself for whatever I'm doing. So I'm constant trying to prepare myself for being able to dwarf them as these dirty little rebellious types."
It's hard to say that any one thing is the best part of Hamilton, a pitch-perfect show that, even after two years of hyperbolic praise and a sweep of the Tony Awards, still delivers. But everyone who sees the show is very much looking forward to King George, bursting into applause the moment he appears on stage.
James is much better at talking during aerobic exercise than me. I shouldn't be surprised—the man is a trained singer and actor and easily rattles off biographical details while we jog at a respectable pace: He came to the city in the early nineties after going to school at Northwestern University; he lived on the Lower East Side back then and reflected on how much it's changed compared to the relatively static Upper West Side. I raggedly huffed questions at him, apologizing now and again for being a treadmill-favoring, angrily-plod-and-pant sort of guy.
As King George, James—an actor with a long rap sheet of wide and diverse theater credits in productions both classic (think Les Miserables) and unusual (Shrek The Musical)—is exactly the kind of establishment figure the Founding Fathers were rebelling against, the stark opposition to the American Dream. But James is also in a unique position of having returned to the world in a post-Trump political landscape, where its themes suddenly seem more defiant. To James, it's a sign of the show's versatility, and the potency of American history.
"In any political environment, it has so much to say about who we are as a country, who we are as a people, in so many different ways," James says. "There are a lot of obvious examples—one is [the line] 'Immigrants, we get the job done'—which even before the current administration's view on immigration, before the election, that was getting big applause. I believe they had to tweak that moment a bit in the music so they can make room for the reaction, so they wouldn't miss the next lyric.
"So whether you see it simply as an appreciation of a fact that is true, or if you see it as something that is a statement of defiance and pride in pushing back on some of the ways that laws are being legislated—the truth is it's potent no matter what. "
At this point, we're done running, having snacks on a park bench. It's as good a time as any to ask him about how he started working for Executive Producer Selena Gomez on 13 Reasons Why. He laughs.
"I didn't get to meet Selena until the premiere, and I did an interview and I talked all about my daughter being at the premiere. Did you see the headline!? " He's referring to a People interview from about a week before our run, one with the headline "Selena Gomez’s 13 Reasons Why Star Couldn’t Help Fangirling Over Her Either (Even Though He’s Nearly 50!)"
"There's no winning here!" he laughed. Then he took on an exaggerated reporter's voice: "He's nearly fifty! He's probably going to die soon! And he loves Selena Gomez!"
Being Selena-adjacent also means he's starting to get recognized a lot more outside of the Broadway circuit, his primary outlet for his 24 years as an actor. But like a lot of his upcoming work, his involvement in 13 Reasons Why stemmed partly out of his relationship with Spotlight and its director, Tom McCarthy—who directed the first two episodes of the series. James plays a father in mourning following the suicide of his daughter, who posthumously sends a series of tapes to her classmates, detailing how they slowly made her feel she should take her own life. The show swings big at raw, important topics like rape culture and slut-shaming. It's often graphic and difficult to watch, but to James, its vital that we talk about it.
"It takes leadership to do that. I think of Joe Biden, taking on rape culture in the macro view and saying, Let's have a big dialogue about this; let's start talking about what's actually happening on campuses. What rape is, what sexual assault is, what 'no' means. These are conversations that are really hard to have. So I hope that 13 Reasons Why is one of those things that is seen as being a helpful tool in that conversation, something that opens up dialogue, something that allows for awareness."
He's aware of the criticism the series has received, too, levied at the spectacle the show makes of suicide. That's been "an education" for him. Ultimately, James—who has a 15-year-old daughter—is just grateful it's a conversation being had.
"If the road can get a little bit wider, and you can have a little bit more room to room in terms of saying, How do I broach this subject?" James says, "and then having the ability to do so—I think that's good."
It's a situation not unlike the crossroads James found himself at when cast in Spotlight. What was it like for James, who is Catholic, to make such a film?
"Yeah, I mean, it's a lightning strike. And I'd be lying if I said it wasn't, for me," James says. "You do ingest this stuff, and it does become part of your perspective. Especially if you have empathy for the people that are portrayed ... how to reconcile the sins of institutional power, which were heinous and continue to be—and how I find my own path as a Catholic and as a person of faith is a tricky thing. There's a lot of rocks in that river. I guess that's the challenge of faith. As I'm trying to understand the human aspect of it, which is flawed and, in some cases, evil. And also the divine aspect of it, which is beautiful and forgiving. That is a double helix dance that is never ending and quite difficult."
He asks if I'm Catholic, and I tell him I'm not, but as a Latin American, my relationship with the Church would likely be very different. He seems to get what I mean by that immediately, and wonders aloud if the old institution will be able to make amends for sins of the past.
"It's almost impossible," he says. "I don't know."
For a moment, it's quiet, just King George and me on a park bench, heavy with salt and sweat and thoughts about God. Then I ask if he's heard anything about 13 Reasons Why Season Two. He hasn't, but he's expecting word any day now. Until then, he'll be on stage or in front of a camera, hopefully doing what he can to make more roads a little wider.
Grooming by Sacha Harford/Ray Brown Represents
