{"id":192460,"date":"2018-12-04T05:29:38","date_gmt":"2018-12-04T10:29:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=192460"},"modified":"2018-12-04T05:29:38","modified_gmt":"2018-12-04T10:29:38","slug":"brian-tyree-henry-i-feel-everything","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/12\/04\/brian-tyree-henry-i-feel-everything\/","title":{"rendered":"Brian Tyree Henry: ‘I feel everything’"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cI wouldn’t change that because it means I’m present. It means that I see you,\u201d says Henry. \u201cBut then at the same time I need to figure out how to flip it so I see myself too.\u201d (File Photo<\/a>: briantyreehenry\/Instagram<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NEW YORK \u2014 When Brian Tyree Henry filmed his scenes in \u201cIf Beale Street Could Talk,\u201d he wept. When he saw the finished film, he wept again.<\/p>\n

In Barry Jenkin’s lyrical adaptation of James Baldwin’s celebrated novel, Henry plays Daniel Carty, the just-out-of-jail friend of Fonny (Stephan James). When Fonny and Tish (KiKi Layne) run into Daniel on the street, they retreat to Fonny and Tisch’s apartment to catch up. The intimate conversation aches with the pain of incarceration: Daniel’s past, Fonny’s future. It’s a devastating but beautiful crescendo: two vulnerable black men, contemplating a world pitted against them.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was sobbing. I was like: Why am I crying at myself? Is that weird that I’m crying at myself?\u201d says Henry. \u201cIt really, really, really sat with me. That could be me talking to my friend, me talking to my nephews, me talking to my brothers.\u201d<\/p>\n

It’s no surprise that one of the most moving and profound scenes of the year happens to be one with Henry in it. On stage and screen, in big parts and small, the 36-year-old actor’s soulful sensitivity and vast range has been on display with remarkably regularity.<\/p>\n

There is, of course, his aspiring, oft-irritated rapper Alfred Miles, aka Paper Boi, on \u201cAtlanta\u201d: the stony, eye-rolling face to the series’ surrounding absurdity. Its second season earned Henry his second Emmy nomination in two years. (His first was for a guest appearance on \u201cThis Is Us.\u201d) The Broadway revival of Kenneth Lonergan’s \u201cLobby Hero,\u201d in which he played a conflicted security guard, won Henry is first Tony nod. And a few weeks before \u201cBeale Street\u201d hits theatres, Henry made an equally potent, if far more menacing impression as a politician in Steve McQueen’s \u201cWidows.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI just don’t want to lie on them,\u201d Henry says during a recent interview. \u201cThese characters need a voice and I don’t want to be a person to lie on them. It’s sounding all deep but it’s true. I have a special connection to every single character that I’ve been blessed to touch and I just want to make sure that I don’t lie on their journey, that I don’t lie on who they are, that I don’t lie on their hearts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Henry has a deep reservoir of emotion that never feels very far from the surface, and he speaks volubly, sometimes nearing tears, about the fictional lives that people his brain. Henry simply feels a lot \u2014 maybe too much so.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel everything,\u201d he grants with a knowing grin. \u201cThese past two years have been a topsy-turvy thing for me. I never in a million years could have imagined something so fantastic happening in my career. But I need to let ’em go, these guys.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat’s been kind of a problem as of late,\u201d Henry sighs. \u201cI tend to wear them as badges of honour, which they are.\u201d<\/p>\n

Henry grew up the baby in a Fayetteville, North Carolina, family; his sisters were already adults. His parents divorced when he was young and after graduating sixth grade, he was sent to live his father, then in his 70s, in Washington D.C. After attending Morehouse College in Atlanta, he got his masters from the Yale School of Drama. Acting, he says, saved his life because he allowed him to express what he observed.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of my life, at a very young age, I got to see what it was like to be surrounded by the lack of care \u2014 to see that people are human, that no one is impervious to pain, that pain hurts, that it takes time for things to heal,\u201d says Henry. \u201cI spent most of my life constantly trying to hold on to the things that mattered.\u201d<\/p>\n

His Broadway debut came in the original cast in \u201cThe Book of Mormon,\u201d but it’s been \u201cAtlanta\u201d that catapulted Henry’s career. Along with lending his voice to the upcoming \u201cSpider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,\u201d he’s already shot four films due out next year (including an action comedy alongside Melissa McCarthy). At the moment, he’s shooting the Brooklyn-set indie \u201cThe Outside Story.\u201d<\/p>\n

Henry’s ascendance has partly paralleled Alfred’s more humbling, fitful rise on \u201cAtlanta\u201d \u2014 a comparison not lost on Henry.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlfred, this season, I had a time. I was like: This prom date sucks right now. But I had to confront it,\u201d says Henry. \u201cIt is imitating my life, in a way. That’s why I’m glad that Alfred found me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAtlanta,\u201d particularly in episodes like \u201cBarbershop\u201d and \u201cWoods\u201d (which was a tribute for Henry to his deceased mother), has given the broadest platform for his talent. But films like \u201cIf Beale Street Could Talk\u201d have showed how much Henry can do with just a handful of scenes. His presence instantly adds depth and gravity.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe came onto set, maybe he was there for a day in a half,\u201d marvels James. \u201cHe was already a huge Baldwin fan, but what he was able to bring to that moment … You talk about black love; that’s another form of it. Black love between brothers. That brotherly bond where we’re sharing our deepest, most intimate fears, the things that have broken us, how do we maintain our strength through these moments.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jenkins has said those scenes solidified the whole project. For Henry, they capture the duality of life as a black man.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere’s always a constant audition process, I call it, of having to prove to people that you belong where you are,\u201d says Henry, burly and broad-shouldered, remembering when Yale students would assume he wasn’t a classmate. \u201cI’ve been very fortunate to come to this point in my life where I’m done doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Henry lives in Harlem, just a few blocks from where \u201cBeale Street\u201d was filmed. It’s almost as if his characters are encroaching, ever closer, on the actor, despite his best efforts to leave them at the door. But he’s learning to live with his hypersensitivity.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wouldn’t change that because it means I’m present. It means that I see you,\u201d says Henry. \u201cBut then at the same time I need to figure out how to flip it so I see myself too.\u201d<\/p>\n

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NEW YORK \u2014 When Brian Tyree Henry filmed his scenes in \u201cIf Beale Street Could Talk,\u201d he wept. When he …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":192461,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-192460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","mauthors-jake-coyle","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192460\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/192461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}