'Atlanta' star Brian Tyree Henry keeps it 100 on having the right people around him
Low-key? I am an Apple fanatic - whether it’s the look and ease of Attack The Culture or the fact the homepage playlist is Apple Music-based - it’s all about my favorite technology giant. So it’s no surprise Samsung’s biggest rival is delivering solid content with its Apple Fitness+ platform with ‘Atlanta’ star Brian Tyree Henry.
‘Atlanta’ star Brian Tyree Henry keeps it 100 with Apple Fitness+
Whether it’s talking about keeping the right people around him or dishing in on his love for theater, Henry comes through with over 20 minutes of gems. The highlights are solid.
Brian Tyree Henry on dealing with self doubt and learning to always surround himself with the right people...
There's a narrative that sometimes plays in our minds that tricks us, right? There's this tape that we play over and over again that says we're "not good enough." And I'm here to tell you that the tape gets quieter, but it never really stops because it's so ingrained in us. And, like, that narrative is something we play out all the time. There's no harsher critic than yourself. There's no harsher critic. But when you surround yourself with people who come in with messages like, "Hey, why don't you give it a shot?" That, then, replaces that tape. And I always listen to that because what it also says is that these people that I surround myself with are reflections of how I want to live. These are people that are building me up, and we build each other up. There's this phrase that I heard, it was like, "If the people in your circle don't inspire you, you don't have a circle. You have a cage." And I want to always remember that everything around me, I want to be a manifestation of something that inspires me.
Brian Tyree Henry on feeling out of place growing up…
I grew up in Fayetteville, North Carolina, which is a military town. And I came along at a time that was incredibly weird because, at this point, my parents had already had kids that were teenagers. And so here I pop up, and I come into a home full of adults. Out of everyone in my family, nobody sang, nobody danced, nobody acted. And I always been wondering where this came from because, by all means, like, technically, I shouldn't be here, doing this. Like, from the images that I saw and where people came from when they become actors, I was like, "Well, how the h*** am I ever going to be that? How the h*** am I ever going to be on a billboard? How am I going to be in a magazine? How am I going to be taking a walk with you and being able to tell my story?” But what that allowed me to do was build my own fantasy of what I thought was possible for myself. I just wanted to feel like I belonged somewhere. I just wanted to feel like somebody saw me. And no one noticed. There weren't a lot of people pushing me to do things because they were already in their lives. They had to work. They had to live. My father would say, "You have clothes on your back, food in your tummy, a roof over your head. That's care." But I think that the recognition of the things that I was doing was the part that kind of, like, fell by the wayside.
Brian Tyree Henry on discovering his love of theater at Morehouse College...
By the time I was a senior in high school, all I wanted to do was leave Fayetteville. I think most of us have that thing of where we want to leave the hometown that we were raised in to find something more, and I applied to Morehouse College. And the reason I applied to Morehouse College was because there was a kind of joy that would happen to people, especially Black people in my community, when I told them I was going to Morehouse. It's an all-Black male college. I was accepted to Morehouse. What happened was, is that I took a theater class at 8:00 o'clock in the morning. And I was like, "Well, this is either the dumbest thing I've ever done in my life, or this is one of the best things I've done in my life because, one, this class is really early, and I do not want to do this, but, like, let's see what happens.” And, when I tell you when I sat in this class at 8:00 o'clock in the morning, it was like a light bulb went off. I was so excited. I was just so excited to talk about theater with all these other Black students, and my Black professor talking about theater at 8:00 o'clock in the morning. And I loved it. So, that's where I stayed for the next three years. Then someone came to me and was like, "So what are you going to do after you graduate?" And I was like, "Oh, wait. Right. Oh, man, I have not thought about that part at all. Graduation, okay, cool. Well, I'm in theater, so I, I don't know what you do with that. Like, what does one do who studied theater after they graduate?”
Brian Tyree Henry on auditioning for Yale’s graduate theater program with “Look at me, I’m Sandra Dee”...
I just remember sitting in this hallway where there were hundreds of people, I mean, like, hundreds of people warming up, going... just doing all these things. And I'm sitting there with, like, a Nutri-Grain bar and, like, in run-over sneakers because I didn't have snow boots. And, you know, like, I, I was just, like, a ragtag dude. I think I should also let you know that I didn't really prepare as well as I could've for this audition, either. So I go in. You know, you're supposed to do a contemporary monologue, and then you do a classical monologue, preferably from Shakespeare. So I had that. I remember this man, this wonderful man, Ron Van Lieu, who was the chair of Yale, who's like, "Great. Do you have anything else?” And I'm like, "What?" It's like, "Wait a minute. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. He said, they said a contemporary monologue, I did that. Classical monologue." So the "anything else," I wasn't prepared for. But I had just finished a play by Anna Deavere Smith called "Twilight: Los Angeles," where I played five different people. So I was like, "Yeah, I think I got something.” So I pulled one of those monologues out. He's like, "Great. You got anything else?" I was like, "Sure." So I pulled another monologue from that. He said, "Okay, cool. You've already done... you got anything else?" I was like, "Okay," and so I pulled out something from, like, my speech and debate. And so I leave. And before I can get to the door, he's like, "Great, do you have a song?" So, let's explain fear. Let's explain, like, true, true crippling fear. People tend to say, "Oh, well, you seem really fearless." And I'm like, "Are you kidding? I'm afraid of everything." Like, I'm afraid of everything, but the biggest thing I'm afraid of is not giving myself a shot. And so, the only thing I could think to do was to sing a song from the last thing I saw. The last thing I saw was "Grease," in my hotel room. The only song I knew all the lyrics to was "Look at Me, I'm Sandra Dee." And so here I am in this room with this man, this man who is like the acting Yoda, and I am singing "Look at Me, I'm Sandra Dee" to him. And let's also talk about acceptance because, like, that was the moment that I realized that you have to just do it. And you have to accept the fact that this was what you chose to do. You lay it down. You sing it at the top of your lungs. And then I looked at him, and I was like, "Hey, there's a Black man singing 'Look at Me, I'm Sandra Dee.' Do you want me to continue?” And he's like, "No." I was like, "Cool." I was like, "Well, thank you for your time." And I walk out to this hallway of people, and I look at all of them. I was like, "Well, good luck. I didn't get in.” So then I return back to Atlanta, where I had not yet graduated, and I get a call, and it is from Yale. And it's Ron Van Lieu, and he's like, "Hi, I just wanted to see if you wanted to come to Yale." And I hung up the phone because I thought it was my friends playing a prank on me. I was so certain that I had not gotten in, that this man calling me was a joke. Then he calls back, and he's like, he's like, "Hey. I think we got disconnected. I wanted to extend an invitation to Yale." And I was like, "You have to stop playing with me."
Brian Tyree Henry on the confidence he felt from having his college professors believe in him...
It made me feel seen, for real. Like, it really made me feel seen. When you feel seen, you feel powerful. Your spine stands up a little bit straighter. And it's a feeling that you're never going to want to let go of.
Brian Tyree Henry on the advice he gave himself when he started his MFA graduate program at Yale…
When I got to Yale, it's incredibly overwhelming. It is an Ivy League institution that, by all means, didn't reflect me. I went to all-Black institutions from kindergarten all the way to college. So this was kind of a huge culture shock for me when I got to New Haven, Connecticut, in the dead of winter. And I just remember telling myself, I was like, "The same way you went in, make sure you come out the same way. Take the tools that they give you, but leave you, like, because that's why you're here.
