“I’m living inside of an answered prayer”, Bryan Terrell Clark shares with The Queer Review about landing his upcoming role as gay Earth science teacher Mr. Tea, the “truth-telling” best friend of the title character in Diarra From Detroit, a gripping dark comedy mystery series created by and starring Diarra Kilpatrick, which debuts on BET+ on Thursday, March 21st. Ahead of that, Clark will be making his debut at the world-renowned Carnegie Hall on Friday, March 15th with The New York Pops orchestra for a night celebrating Motown. “It’s a manifestation and wish-fulfillment for the younger performer in me, but also the adult me”, adds Clark, whose first role on Broadway was originating the role of Marvin Gaye in the Grammy-nominated Motown: The Musical in 2013. He went on to play George Washington in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s record-breaking Broadway production of Hamilton and starred in the original Broadway production of Keenan Scott II’s Thoughts of a Colored Man. Before that he starred opposite Laurence Fishburne and Angela Bassett in August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Fences at the Pasadena Playhouse.
Among Clark’s many screen credits as an actor are Ava DuVernay’s 2020 Peabody-winning Netflix miniseries When They See Us, Cherish the Day, Queen Sugar on OWN, Shonda Rhimes’ Inventing Anna on Netflix, and the post-apocalyptic thriller Snowpiercer on TNT. The Baltimore native’s music career has seen him perform with the likes of Maxwell, Brandy, Ne-Yo, Anita Baker, and Michael Bublé, and co-write the track “Irreversible” on Mary J. Blige’s 2011 album My Life II.
Ahead of his Carnegie Hall debut and the launch of Diarra From Detroit, Bryan Terrell Clark speaks exclusively with The Queer Review’s editor James Kleinmann about the creative journey that has led him to this moment in his career, why he is so passionate about singing the now classic hits of Motown, and why he has long-admired fellow performers Billy Porter and Colman Domingo.
James Kleinmann, The Queer Review: when did the performer in you first emerge and how did that manifest in your life?
Bryan Terrell Clark: “Not long ago, I asked my mother, ‘When was the first time that I said I wanted to be an actor?’ She said, ‘It was before you could talk. You would walk in front of the television and your favourite shows would be on and you would just bounce!’ As my mother is an amazing teacher and a pastor, she said, ‘It’s the parent’s job to look at the natural proclivities that God has given a child and to help guide those things’.”
“My mom and dad went through a crazy, toxic time being together and not together while I was in middle school. My dad was a blue-collar worker, a man of the people, but he was secretly hiding that he was a drug dealer and was dealing to upper management at work until he got hooked on drugs himself. He was in and out of rehab for about 22 years until he kicked the habit. Now we’re best friends, but I hated him at the time. So middle school was a really hard time for me. All of my friends were changing, girls were starting to wear heels and everybody was trying to be too cool for school. The arts saved my life.”
“I didn’t have a refuge at home, I didn’t have a refuge at school, and the arts became a safe space for me. My aunt Brenda got me my first improv class in middle school and I fell in love with it. I ended up auditioning for a performing arts high school called Carver Center for Arts and Technology in Baltimore County, Maryland. I was a theatre major, music minor focus and I fell in love with the arts.”
“I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do, but I knew that I loved music because I had sung in church all my life and I knew I loved theatre because it was a safe haven and a refuge for me. I got a full ride to the University of Maryland, but I wasn’t in love with the theatre program there at the time. I didn’t know if I really wanted to do musical theatre, but then I saw a show called Rent and I lost my mind! I thought to myself, this is the perfect example of using the arts for a purpose. These people are not just singing on stage, they’re singing because the stakes are so high within these characters and within the world that they exist in that words are no longer enough, and they have to sing. So I was bitten by the musical theatre bug there and then.”
“I started skipping school to go to New York City to audition and I actually got an audition for Rent. I got all the way up to the director and producers, but then they said, ‘How old are you?’ I was like, ‘I’m 17’ and they said, ‘You’re a little young for Collins or Benny, but you’ve got some talent. Come back in a few years’. Then my mother found out that I was skipping school. She wasn’t upset because I still had a 3.98 GPA, but she wouldn’t let me keep going to New York to audition. She said, ‘You can do this for the rest of your life, but a degree and an education will be something that no one can ever take away from you’. The compromise was that I wouldn’t go to NYU and continue to skip school and audition, I’d go to Temple University in Philadelphia. So I went there and I got my Equity card at a really beautiful theatre called Freedom Theatre that was a staple of the Black theatre community in Philadelphia.”
“While I was at Temple, I did a class called theatre for the profession and I thought it’d be the mix that I’d been waiting for, but it was actually a how to audition for grad school class. I went to the head of the department at the time and I said, ‘We’re auditioning for all of these schools, but what about the big schools like Yale, Juilliard, and NYU?’ She said, ‘Bryan, I really think you should just focus on these schools. They are great programs and you’re going to do really well’. So I said ‘Yeah’, but I started skipping school again, this time to audition for the big ones. Then I went back into her office and she said, ‘See Bryan, I told you that you’d do an amazing job. You got all of these requests from programs that want to see you’. And I said, ‘Well, I’m also in callbacks for Lion King, and some TV show called All My Children that my grandmother watches. I also got into Yale and NYU. So now we’ve got some decisions to make!'”
“I decided to go to Yale School of Drama. I called it “Jail School of Drama” because it was so intense, but it really prepared me for a life as an artist. It takes a lot of discipline and it takes a lot of experience in different mediums and different forms of storytelling. It prepared me for a life journey as an artist as opposed to coming out to Hollywood and becoming famous.”
“All of that has prepared me for the juggernaut that is this moment in my life. I’ve got Carnegie Hall on Friday, March 15th with a 78-piece orchestra with The New York Pops and Steven Reineke. Then a few days later, Diarra From Detroit will premiere on BET+.”
“In Diarra From Detroit I play a very open queer best friend to the lead. I’m kind of her “gusband” at work. I realize that I’m filling in a role in the queer tapestry of storytelling that we don’t often get a chance to see. I feel the same thing in this role that I felt when I was younger, coming up and finding my way in my sexuality, which is that it was really hard for me to look at the landscape of Hollywood and see myself. It was either hyper-feminine or hyper-masculine characters. All of the hyper-feminine characters leaned a little bit more into a world that I admired, but that I didn’t feel a part of. With the hyper-masculine characters, if they were a gay man, a bisexual man, a queer man from cities like I’m from, like Baltimore, Philly, New York, or Detroit, all of those people on television were being depicted as DL, on the down low. So there was no me.”
“We didn’t have a lot of Neil Patrick Harrises or a lot of what I’m seeing on Fellow Travelers, these great performers. We didn’t have those as people of color growing up. So the fact that I get to offer this character in Diarra From Detroit, who feels like your brother, your cousin, your uncle—all these people I actually know—is a gift. There’s an authenticity in this role that I’ve yet to be able to play since I started in my career in 1999. So I’m really excited.”
I’m already hooked on Diarra From Detroit and I love your character, Mr. Tea. I like that we see him meet a potential love interest in the second episode, the club DJ, because so often on television the gay best friend character has just been there to deliver quippy one-liners, but we haven’t got to see or hear about their lives. What input did you have into shaping this character, because I know you’re friends with Diarra Kilpatrick?
“Yeah, we’ve been friends since 2007 and she based a lot of the character on me. It’s funny, because there are lines in the first episode that I literally said to her out loud that ended up on the page! One of the things that I thought was really important was that he didn’t fall into a lot of the tropes and stereotypes that we see with the gay best friend character. He’s not the sassy gay best friend. He is a truth-teller, so he gets great one-liners, but they’re grounded. What was really important for me was that in her group of friends, every single one of them has a love interest and I wanted to make sure that Mr. Tea got a love interest as well. So we get a little peek in this first season, not only of him having a real relationship with someone, but also his point of view around relationships.”
” I love that when we meet him, he’s so where I used to be. I’m married now. My wedding was very public, it was in The New York Times. But Mr. Tea is in this place where he’s not really into the one-on-one relationship right now. I think a lot of his life is very stable. He’s a school teacher. He’s got his friends. He was an All-American sports player and he sang the national anthem at the game that he won back in the day when he was playing. Now he’s an Earth science teacher and he’s got his life together. But when it comes to the fellas, he’s just trying to have some fun. Nothing’s supposed to be too serious. Then you get this DJ who comes along and I can’t wait for everyone to see where this goes. This is one of those relationships where Mr. Tea is like, ‘I can’t get rid of this guy!'”
“Diarra is really pushing Mr. Tea to open up to the possibility of love because Diarra is a hopeless romantic, to the point where she would actually go down the rabbit hole and look for a guy who ghosted her! Whereas Mr. Tea is the opposite. He’s like, let him go and hop on three or four or five more dicks! We don’t need to be in a situation where we’re over-romanticizing one date. But what we find in Mr. Tea’s journey is that really, deep down, he could potentially be a hopeless romantic as well.”
What was it like to create that on-screen friendship with Diarra? It’s really fun to watch.
“Thank you. I’m living inside of an answered prayer. I had these fantasies of whenever I would do a series regular role, that I’d will go to work and the ensemble cast would feel the way I felt when I saw Friends or Living Single. The blessing is that it felt like that every day at work on Diarra From Detroit. Every day I would show up and the chemistry that we all had together was really authentic and genuine because we liked each other and loved working with each. Everyone is ridiculously talented and has their own lane that they occupy. Behind the scenes, I would make sure that Diarra was okay. I’d be like, ‘You’re executive producing this, you’re starring in it, and you’re a mother. Are you good?’ And she was like, ‘I’m fine. Are you good?’ So the time to play and to have fun was actually on screen, because there was so much to do behind the scenes. So what you guys see on screen is very real. We really support each other genuinely, we really love each other genuinely, and so that was one of the easiest parts of the project.”
I don’t want to give too much away because it’s so gripping, but does Mr. Tea start to get drawn into Diarra’s mission to solve the mystery?
“Mr. Tea is down for the ride for sure. Every time you have a friend who has got something dramatic going on in their lives, we all get a little drawn in. So Mr. Tea actually gets kind of dragged down the rabbit hole. It’s a real mystery and I don’t think that people of color get this kind of show often, we don’t get the kind of shows where the person driving the seat is a person of color, let alone a woman.”
“As the truth-teller, Mr. Tea is definitely going to be right by her side to make sure that she doesn’t go off the rails. But when you’re that protective of a friend, especially in these kinds of stories, you can’t help but get drawn in. This is Matlock. This is Murder She Wrote. This is a dark comedy. We get a little How to Get Away with Murder, Only Murderers in the Building. But again, we’ve rarely seen these kinds of stories told by a cast that is predominantly people of color.”
It does have flavors of all those shows, but it feels so fresh too.
“I think that freshness comes from the fact that Diarra herself is so quirky. She has also cast herself with some strange birds. All of us have got our own little level of awkwardness and quirk, and when you bring us all together, it’s this beautiful array of like exotic birds. The last time I felt this way was when I did Hamilton on Broadway. One of the things that I thought was so special about Hamilton, was that usually in a Broadway show like that, you have one exotic performer that you pull out for the 11 O’clock Number. They bring down the house and then you kind of put them away, right? Then you go back to following the everyman. But in Diarra from Detroit, like Hamilton, all of us are a little interesting and no one’s really straightlaced. Diarra’s kind of wild and crazy and Mr. Tea is trying to be the grounded force in all of this, but everyone’s a little to the left!”
You mentioned that you’re going to be performing at Carnegie Hall, what does it mean to you to be making your debut at this world-famous New York venue with this particular show celebrating Motown?
“It’s a dream come true and it’s a full circle moment. With my first Broadway show, I got a chance to originate the role of Marvin Gaye in Motown the Musical. When I was asked to join The New York Pops and Steven Reineke and Valisia LeKae, these amazing artists, to do a Motown review at Carnegie Hall I almost burst into tears because it’s such manifestation, an answered prayer, and wish-fulfillment for the younger performer in me, but also the adult me. I’m closing one chapter as I start a new chapter by going back to Motown music.”
“One thing I love about that music is that even though we all love it now, we have to remember that it was birthed in a time of great division. It was birthed before the Civil Rights Movement when this country was really torn by racial inequity. I’m getting a chance to sing this music that brought everybody together. Music is the great equalizer. There were Black people and white people all in that room together, clapping and singing to this music.”
“Motown music is classic, not only to American music, but to world music. It’s so influential. So to be able to sing this music, almost ten years after doing Motown the Musical, to be able to sing this music in an election year, to be able to sing this music as I’m starting this new journey as a series regular, after all the things I’ve done artistically, it feels serendipitous. I’m overjoyed. I’m not nervous, but I am really focused. I’ve got a lot of family and friends coming so my biggest thing is that I want everyone to feel the joy that I feel in this music. I hope it brings everybody in the room together the way it did when they first created this music.”
Finally, what’s your favourite piece of LGBTQ+ culture or a person who identifies as LGBTQ+; someone or something that’s had an impact on you and resonated with you?
“I’ll bring up these two people because they were such heroes of mine in the theatre and no one in the mainstream knew who they were, but they are being celebrated in this moment. Those two heroes, friends, and mentors who I would like to celebrate in LGBTQ+ culture are Billy Porter and Colman Domingo. These were two men who I could look up to and identify with. Their artistry, their dedication, and their willingness to share their wisdom and their journey with me as a young performer just getting to New York in the early 2010s was invaluable.”
“Now, to see them finally get their flowers makes me want to cry. Colman was nominated for an Oscar, and I know it’s not just about the awards, these manmade golden things that we create to celebrate ourselves, but I do think his legacy lives on in all of the other artists that he’s influenced and I am definitely a beneficiary. I love Billy and I love Colman and I would not be the artist that I am without their generosity and their willingness to reach back and pour into younger queer artists.”
By James Kleinmann
Follow Bryan Terrell Clark on Instagram @therealbtc.
Bryan Terrell Clark will be make his Carnegie Hall debut on Friday, March 15th at 8pm with The New York Pops’ Hitsville: Celebrating Motown. Visit CarnegieHall.org for more details and to purchase tickets.
Diarra From Detroit premieres on Thursday, March 21st on BET+.
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