Clarke Peters: From ‘The Wire’ to ‘The Boroughs’

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So the next time someone says, "Did you see that?" You can say, "Yeah, copyously. Follow NPR's pop culture happy-hour wherever you get your podcasts." This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross. So many of us became aware of what a great actor Clark Peters is from his role in one of the best TV series ever made, HBO's The Wire. He played police detective Lester Freeman, who helped track down

the drug dealers that detectors were looking for, though his research and his analysis of wire taps. The series was co-created by David Simon, who also co-created the HBO series Trim A, said in New Orleans shortly after Hurricane Katrina. Peters co-starred in that too, as a Mardi Gras Indian chief who returns to his damaged home and tries to rebuild his life. In Spike Lee's film Defive Bloods, he was one of the four of Vietnam vets who returns to Vietnam

decades after the war. Now is one of the stars of the Netflix series The Burrows. Clark plays one of the residents in the retirement community that promises an almost utopian chapter of your life. But some of the residents start dying while others start experiencing some very disturbing, inexplicable encounters and visions. Something's going on, and it seems to be something supernatural. Clark Peters grew up in Englewood, New Jersey,

but moved to Europe in the '70s and settled in London where he continues to live and is speaking to us from. He's been in London stage productions of the musical's "Guys and Dolls, Porghy and Bass" and Chicago as well as dramas. He co-wrote and co-starred in the original

production of the musical Five Guys Namoe, which was first staged in London. It moved to Broadway

where it was also a big hit. Clark Peters, welcome to Fresh Air. It's such a pleasure to have you. Thank you. That was a lovely introduction. I did all that. You did a lot more than that. I figured let me keep my intro short so we have more time to actually talk. I could have gone on. I left out a lot of series and movies. So let's get to the burrows. So the cast is largely in their '60s and '70s because it's set in a retirement community.

You yourself, as Clark Peters, you're in your mid-70s. What kind of roles do you think you would have been offered at this age? When you started professionally acting professionally in the 1970s? Well, I picked this profession so that I would have longevity.

I could still be acting at 100 if it comes to it. But starting out, I always played old people.

“So in driving Miss Daisy, for example, with Dame Wendy Hiller, I think I was in my late 30s”

playing Hoke, who was well up into his 80s and I looked at a diary that I'd written. And in one one paid it was, I'm tired of playing old guys because there's no future in it. But I'm still playing old guys. What have you had to you about the role on the burrows? To tell you the truth honestly, I didn't want to do the burrows because someone had likened it to Stranger Things, which I hadn't seen before this offer came through. What I didn't want to

be doing was acting as I'm chasing monsters until I'm 80 years old. But then I read the script and I thought, oh, I can resonate with this journey, with the quest that that art is on. And then I looked at the cast and I thought, oh, there's just no way I can, I can say no to this. There are roles for older people where, especially sometimes when the cast is all about older people, where I send something condescending. They're either like, oh, it's so cute. They're on an adventure.

You know, oh, it's so cute. They're still walking. Oh, it's so cute. They're still breathing. There's still breathing. Oh, it's so cute. They fall in in love.

“You get to offer roles like that and what do you do?”

Yes, I try to let people know that just because we live in a society where we take the elderly and we hide them away. It doesn't mean that they're not valued or that they have something to offer and I like to at least have that conversation, you know, that the elderly

You know, and yes, we do fall in love and just we do have adventures and there are still things

to discover, even at this age, I'm not going to slow down just because I'm a step to genarian. There's that just does not make sense. That's the furthest from my mind and hopefully from my body. You know, so finding roles that are like the boroughs, you know, where there's a group of people who are the same age, having an adventure, I like that. Otherwise, you know, I've been somebody's dad, somebody's grandfather, you know, I just like to be somebody's brother, somebody's

“lover, you know, and just carry on as life is, as it really is. I hope you're not tired talking about”

the wire, but it is one of the best TV series ever made, maybe the best and you were one of the stars. So can we talk about that just a little? Sure. Talk about a lot. Thank you. So you played police detective Lester Freeman and you're the detective who finds clues through like online research and files through contacts, wire taps, and you can put two and two together and synthesize the clues that you found into some kind of path. But you start off in this series, working the

pawn shop beat. And I want to play a scene from early on in the first season. You've just found

an important clue that no one else on the investigation has been able to find identifying who Avon Barkstale is. Yes. And so he's one of the two major drug dealers in the series. So here's

“a scene where detective Jimmy McNulty comes to see you in your office. He's impressed with the”

work you've done, but when he walks in he finds you putting together miniature models of furniture. And McNulty is played by Dominic West and he speaks first. So you're a police after all. You know what you're doing, but you ain't been doing it. Along you've been in the pawn shop unit. There are two years and four months, 13 years and four months. I gotta ask you. Well, exactly, there's a police officer assigned to the pawn shop unit, do.

You intake reports from registered pawn shops and all items valued over $50. Then you make an index card for that item. Then you file that index card. If someone wants to find out if something stolen has been pawned, we'd love to see if we have an index card. If we do, we do. If we don't, we don't. You did that for 13 years and four months. Why do you ask out of homicide? No, ask about it. You got the boot. What you do to piss them off? Police work.

I think I need to buy you a drink. Just one.

“I heard you say, as we were listening to that four month. Just one. You remember the lines from that?”

I remember the scene. This was one of your first scenes, right?

Is that also why you remember it? No, I didn't remember it until we started to hear it. And then it came back to you. And then it came back to me. I'm not one of those actors that holds on to this stuff. I'm amazed when Ian McClillen, for example, were all of a sudden out of nowhere started reciting reams of Shakespeare that is appropriate to a particular moment that we're living today. I don't have that kind of mind. But when I hear something like that, it's like playing music.

You know what, you know, a key you're playing. And you figure I remember this melody. Yeah, so you pick it up from there. Is Lester the role you auditioned for? Did I audition for Lester? No, I don't think I did. But I was quite happy to land in in Lester's lab, so to speak. He's the guy I want to be when I grow up. Because he does do police work. You know, he doesn't have access to the internet.

You know, it was old-fashioned research and you went through volumes and of tones of information, whether it was banking or whether it was in this particular instance, real estate records. And then having to cross reference that, you know, my mind likes that kind of agility. You know, and I liked that being applied in Lester's Lester's life. Did you only know the scenes you were in or did you also get to see what was happening behind the scenes

did you get to see their scenes or did you just know what you would know as your character?

No, back then, you know, we would get the whole episode and you would read the whole episode. Nowadays, you know, you get to see and you have no idea the context of the scene and you're

“asked to audition. I can't do that. I refuse to do that. I think that that really makes”

our job as actors very difficult. When we have the whole story, then we can see how we fit into that story and how we can either enhance that story, sell it or whatever, you know, at the end of the day, the star of any story is the story you're telling. It has not the person, you know, who's at whose name is above the title, you know, and when that becomes more important than the story that we're telling, you know, then we just, we as actors just become commodities. You know, I

push back against that. I really do. You know, and as far as like reading every episode,

I couldn't wait until the next episodes came and I was always looking for that moment that said,

“Kima may be saying something to McNulty. Like, did you hear what happened to Freeman? He”

caught one while he's trying to get us, you know, I never expected to be there that long, you know, but thank the Lord I was. What did you think of the police when you were growing up and did playing a police detective give you an empathy for police that you maybe didn't feel before? I grew up with great respect for the police because in Anglewood, Anglewood, New Jersey. Anglewood, New Jersey, we knew the police, we went to school with their children, they knew our parents, you know,

and so it was almost something that you may want it to aspire to. Going through the 60s and 70s, I lost total respect for the police because of their abuse of power. I don't have a lot of respect for them now before that same reason. Yet for those who are walking that beats and who are trying to do the right thing, I have the greatest respect for and I know that we can be in a society that is police in the proper way where the community as well is part of the health of that community

with the police. I know that it took you years to actually watch the wire. So my question is,

what's wrong with you? I never had time to slow down long enough to watch it and there's nothing

wrong now, now that I was well done. You surprised at how good it was. Yeah, I was. I actually binge-watched all five seasons. I had a double knee replacements and I was recuperating and

“thought, you know, I've only seen the first two episodes of each season because that's what they”

would show before we finish shooting and then I'd come back to England. It wasn't being shown in England and I would start work until the next season of shooting. So I never got a chance to watch the whole season. But then we were sitting there with this ice pack on both of my knees. I just binge-watched, I thought this is really good. I think I may even watch a twice. It's just to really get the nuances of different people's performances, but also the information that's being imparted

concerning our society. That I found very, very insightful. Yeah, agreed. You were one of the stars of Spike Lee's 2020 film, The Five Bloods. And so this is about four Black Vietnam vats who returned to Vietnam decades after the war. They want to bring back the remains of the unit leader, Norm, who was killed in the battle. He helped them and survived and was also like a really good friend to these four vats. So they were turning after having not seen each other for years and they're going

to bring back the remains of Norm and they're going to search for the gold bars that they discovered and buried, hoping to bring them back and and cash in. So this is your character talking about Norm and the squad leader who's remains they're going back to find. What many brothers who made squad leader, man was using bloods for cannon fodder. They put our poor Black

five fights trained us in the way of the jungle made us believe that we would get home alive. That was a scene from Spike Lee's film The Five Bloods featuring my guest Clark Peters. You were an antiwar activist and you served in part as kind of like a medic helping people

“who were tear-gassed or injured by the police. Can you describe your objections to the war?”

What you thought of the war and what you were willing to do to avoid the draft and avoid being

sent to the war. First of all I was with a group of students from Boston University. We had

taken a bus down tour for the I think the last moratorium I'm not too sure and as a medic I was asked to not just look after the protesters the demonstrators but also if the police were hurt to look after them as well which seemed to make a lot of sense to my spirit. When I was arrested my thoughts of America went down a notch. What were you arrested for? I was arrested for obstructing police lines after John Mitchell came on the top of the department of justice and

asked everyone to leave in 20 minutes and gave us explicit directions on where to go. I followed those directions we all did just to find that we were being shunted into buses and taking to a holding cell in college park Maryland. It was absurd and then to go to court the following day

we weren't even processed the first the first 12 hours but then to go to court the following day

and to be put in front of a judge he said you've got to be here in my court here sometime in June

“whatever I think this happened in April you have to be here in June and I was planning on going”

to visit my older brother in Paris in June he said you're not going anywhere then bang the gavel and call for the next case you know so I felt insignificant I felt like an aunt feeling a heel of if the shadow of a foot coming down on top of me and if it wasn't for you know groups

like the ACLU and the urban league you know I don't know what I would have done I walked out of that

courtroom in a days heartbroken eyes full of tears thinking what what just happened I couldn't believe it and someone's calling my name and they're saying would you like to have your retrial now and this person guided me to another courtroom in to which when we got to this courtroom it was

“full of smoke because people smoke cigarettes back in the those days there was cheering coming”

from there from the gallery and I walked into this courtroom three tears at the top there's a long-haired hippie judge and he's got a line of people in front of him and he's processing them he's saying Jane do you you're a rest of for obstructing police lines how do you believe like guilty he slammed the gavel bolt next you know next and I'm this is all happening in less than an hour so we you gavel not guilty of course I was gaveled like guilty you know and they gave me back

my my gas mask and my things and and I high-tailed it out of there you know to be exposed to our system like that with no information as to how our legal system is supposed to work you know to be taken up and then dropped down and then saved it's it's a hell of an emotional roller coaster for the day I could have easily been you know lynched you know who would have known who would have known well at another time in another place that's that was a real possibility maybe another time

but not necessarily another place and that's my point is that you're having had that experience the scales dropped from my eyes well let me introduce you because we need to take another break my guess is Clark Peters and he's currently one of the stars of the Netflix series the burrows he was one of the stars of the HBO series the wire he was in Spikely's film is one of the stars on

stage so we'll be right back after a short break I'm Terry Gross and this is fresh air

“so you you settled first in Paris and then you moved to England largely because of”

England's great reputation for great theater and you got roles there you even got a role in

here which you had auditioned for several times in New York and never got so what's your theory

about why you were getting more roles in England on the stage than you got in New York first of all my career began in England my my first professional job wasn't it was in England with the what-for-drep repertoire company doing guys and dolls that's such a great show the songs are so good you've had skymaster's then right I did yes three times there and then twice with the

“national theater how great is that I'm so you got to sing luck be a lady and um I've never”

never I want to great do it yeah and also the I'm at the best song in that is my time of

day oh you are so right and it's not in the movie yes that's right because he couldn't sing it well it's got unusual intervals was it hard for you to sing do you you want to do a few bars of it it's great song my time of day is the dark time a couple of deals before dawn when the street belongs to the cop and the janitor with a mop and the grocery clerks are all gone and the smell of the rain washed pavement comes up clean and fresh and cold

and the street lap light fills the gutters with gold that's my time of day my time of day

“and you're the only doll I ever wanted to share it with me I was singing the wrong key but”

it's still lovely though I got what a great song and pleasure to hear you sing it you have a pretty big range right that was like really deep at the end yeah I'm a base baritone with tenor tendencies that's sort of like to say that sounds dangerous I you know as it came out about that but yes that's probably the wrong way to prove for it so did that make you flexible and what kind of singing ports are you got that you had like the the bass and the tenor tendencies

yes yes by time we got to a two porgy and porgy and best I mean that's not that's in my middle range but uh will you crown or porgy I was porgy oh wow yeah yeah I liked I love that well best of you is my woman now it's beautiful mm mm mm mm mm mm I'm not going to sing that one Terry it's that's a hard one how was being black in London different from being black in New York or other places that you'd been to in the U.S. let's go back to why I was back why I came

to England I can address that particular question um through theater okay um what England

had to offer or the way I feel I was successful in in England was first of all because I was

an American secondly because I was a black American and because the culture of America concerning entertainers in theater and in musicals is something that is already part of our culture of the American culture in England people of color here coming from the Caribbean or coming from Africa do not have that same sensibility in theater particularly at that particular point in time in musicals so it was it to a large degree it was easier for me than then um my Caribbean or African

counterpart to to get the same roles do you understand exactly what you're saying yeah I don't think musicals are like a big tradition in Jamaica no neither are they in England but a pad to mine is yes that's that's what the musicals are big in England yes they are now now they are

yes you're not for people of color at all and because the because the dynamic the political dynamic

“had to change to a larger degree I think that I was helped it was here to help facilitate the change”

or that acceptance it was a a musical called bubbling brown sugar they came in 1978 I think to London it was a huge huge success a cast of I think about 38 38 black dancers singers and

three white dancers and singers and the story is basically we take them on a tour of what

Harlem was like during the Renaissance and during the heyday of Harlem you know and so um it was a kind of it was a kind of show that you had acting dance you know do comedy

“everything and it's the first time I think that that generation had been introduced to”

this quality of a performance particularly by a black company what songs did you sing in in bubbling brown sugar I sang sophisticated ladies yes I sang the Elington's Georgia yeah the Elington gosh yes that also has some unusual intervals I guess I get them darling I get them believe me a few bars they say into your early life romance game and in this heart of yours burnt a flame a flame that's liquid one day

“and died oh wait that's really nice what a thought that lester Freeman could sing like that”

you wrote co-wrote a musical and co-starred in the original production it's called five guys name mole it originated in London but then it moved to Broadway and it was a huge success and

I never saw it but I always assumed it was based on sixties harmony groups like the jazz

oriented for a freshman or the more folk oriented the brothers for or the very middle of the road the four preps but it's actually like lured Jordan songs and there's kind of like R&B's swing songs like jump songs what was the origin of the idea the origin was back in 85 when I was in Sheffield doing and Carmen Jones I had a nine hour ride from there on a Saturday night to my home in the southern part of England and I would listen to Louie Jordan and I had done

quite a few of these reviews with a wonderful wonderful wonderful man named Ned Sharon and his co-writer Carol Brahms and so when I'm listening to Louie's songs each one of them is a

is a vignette within itself and he always came with a little um with a moral at the end of the

at the end of the song and some of these songs seem to be really talking to me so I decided to let them talk to me so I come I got as many songs of his that I could and strung them together loosely in a in a storyline and and and it starts I mean just when you think about the the the song five guys named Mo is the perfect entrance or the perfect preface to to to the story let me tell you a story from way back truck on down and dig me jack there's big mo there's little mo there's

far ad mo there's no mo and then there's eat mo you know and so just the lyrics themselves introduced the characters and the rest is history basically yeah I'm not on the cast album of five guys named Mo singing as your tay which was for i'd mo song because I slipped the disc

believe me it's a shame you don't know more than it hurts me yes yes and actually my

“back is beginning to ache now and and sympathy to you know so we we talked about your singing”

and musicals in London but you also all had a small background vocal part in the 1977 hit bookie nights by heatwave which part is you the base part got to keep on dancing keep on dancing that part you know you're very sneaky they're Terry come on I got your number but even before that there's a better there's a better one uh don't I'm a trading head a and a hit with a song called love and a fashion and you're on that too that yes that that was the first that was 76 that one and your part

is oh give me a love how did you get to be on that when I came to England and I was signed as a singer is songwriter with Essex music in 1973 Joan was also there and we met we met there she was part of a vocal duet group um and we would see each other and we just got to know each other she was a sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet person and she adopted me as her as a younger brother she

said I always reminded her of of him and we just we just stayed friends and when they she called

up and said would you come in and do some backing vocals she didn't even have to ask you know on you if she said would you I'd been I'd jumped like how high so so why don't we hear that track

“and you singing bass on them with friends I still feel so it's your little doll that I believe”

it'll help me the light just take my hand if they be where you will no conversation don't wait as my guest clerk Peter singing the bass part I'm Joan armatured

things love an affection let me reintroduce you because we need to take another short break here my

guest is Clark Peters he's currently one of the stars of the Netflix series the burrows he was one of the stars of the wire and one of the stars of Spike Lee's 2020 film Defive Bloods will be right back after a break this is fresh air um so you grew up in Anglewood, New Jersey would you describe the

“neighborhood yeah my neighborhood was brilliant there must have been 15 children on those three blocks”

across the street for me was an Irish family next door to us was a German carpenter master carpenter Mr. think next door to me was a family from Columbia they had two daughters there was a family from the south and they had two boys who were baseball players you know gosh so it the whole it was a community it was it was gosh it was everybody it was everybody and I was introduced to that coming from New York from from from the projects in New York

yeah which was predominantly black and Latin to this multicultural block within four blocks of us we had the United Nations yeah what what changed in your family's financial life that precipitated the move um my father getting a job and and being promoted to the advertising manager for a company called homelight yeah they were upwardly mobile I guess is the word that was it was bantered about then how old were you when you moved I was seven what what

borough home yeah you father was a commercial artist did he take you to museums yeah he did and particularly in the early 60s when that exhibition the Egyptian exhibition came through in New York oh that was a big deal yeah yeah well we spent a lot of time there you know and my my mother's

if it was not the New York museum it was the Brooklyn Museum or they or the botanical gardens you

“know it was always always exposed to things like that part of your family is a native American”

descent and when you played an Indian chief entrepreneur did did did you relate to that role because absolutely absolutely it resonated with me deeper than I could have ever expected and particularly when meeting them and talking with some of the the older people who understood the history because it's the history of dark skinned Indians who were marginalized by Hollywood are alive and well in in New Orleans and you can see their pageantry that is not something that

came with the wild bill shows after the after this after the civil war there are accounts of people traveling from New England in the 17th century going to New Orleans and seeing people of

“color dressing up with beads and and shells and pine cones and whatever they could find you know”

as part of their ritual you know so it's a history worthwhile looking at and it's a place to definitely go and experience what the Mardi Gras Indians as they call them have to have to offer America and the American culture Clark Peters I have so enjoyed talking with you and hearing you saying thank you so much thank you thank you today and catch you the next time around hey yes all right be well and you Clark Peters is one of the stars of the new netflix

series the boroughs after we take a short break TV critic David Biancoli will review the new series Cape Fear this is fresh air Cape Fear based on the 1957 novel by John Demick Donald already has inspired two intense films about an ex convict terrorizing his former attorney now there's a new ten part mini series from Apple TV which premieres its first two episodes tomorrow our TV critic David Biancoli has this review the first Cape Fear movie was in 1962

starring Robert Mitchum as ex convict max Katy and Gregory Peck as attorney Sam Bowden Peck's Sam was heroic and strong but Mitchum's ex-con was a playful vengeful force of nature

one of the most powerful scenes in that movie was when Katy cornered Sam's wife played by

Pauli Bergen in a kitchen grabbed and crushed a raw egg then smeared it across her exposed shoulders as she shuddered with fear and earlier when he first tracks down Sam at a bar he sits next to Sam and enjoys making him uncomfortable you might be a drink waiter I'll be double later 12 year old my rich cousin here says nothing's too good for Max how much do you want Katy how's that again you're hurt me I said how much do you want Cassie you got to forgive me I'm a little slow

to let my first drink I assume we're talking about uh dough with that right that's right

well that certainly is hard woman the poor ex-con Dick comes to a new town looking for a fresh start and one of the leading citizens that dried out novice and financial help that's enough to renew your faith and human nature Mitchum's very verbal sociopath has provided the template for dozens of movie and TV predators since those would include most prominently the eccentric killers played by a heavy year bar dam in no country for old men and Billy Bob Thornton in the

first season of TV's Fargo and Robert De Niro of course who played Max Katy in the 1991 remake

of Cape Fear opposite Nick Nolty as the defense attorney at their first encounter after Katy's release Sam tries to talk tough but it's De Niro as Katy who's obviously in control and loving it look Miss Kay I realize that you suffer I mean I understand you problem but I mean what I mean

“I think I wish you lawyer I defended you I mean why not badges the DA of the judge”

I didn't do my job is that right look I I pleaded you out to a lesser clue to the fence

years to come into the judge of him the rapids are capital offense I mean you know you could have

gotten life you could have done death you could be sitting on death row right now the most gripping an uncomfortable scene in that version which was directed by Martin Scorsese may have been the moment in which De Niro's Katy is alone with Sam's teenage daughter played by Julia Lewis and approaches her with a mix of charisma and menace Scorsese in his Cape Fear remake kept

“Katy as evil as before but made Sam a much less noble protagonist and that's why I suspect Scorsese”

has returned as an executive producer along with Steven Spielberg to present this new expanded

version of Cape Fear this time the shades of gray are everywhere you look Nick and Taska

who created an oversaw this new Apple TV mini series has made some bold choices from the start beginning with the casting and the primary characters in the two movies Sam's wife and family were targeted by Katy purely to get revenge on Sam in this new story the main characters are renamed Tom and Anna and Tom's wife Anna was Katy's defense attorney and Tom was the prosecutor it puts her in the narrative more centrally and pays off Amy Adams plays Anna and Patrick Wilson plays

“Tom they're really really good and play their parts with shifting layers of innocence and guilt”

and playing Max Katy it's none other than Hawrier Bardem who already has embodied one

world-class sociopath here he comes again why are you here why what's funny I'm sorry as the same question every day we're 17 years old why are you here tonight I want to see you both I want to see you and you because you're right about you your little works and you them in your professional success pull and we're off Apple TV provided eight of the 10 episodes for preview so I don't know how this Cape Fear ends but I know how cleverly it updates and expands

the story it's said in today's world so there are cell phones podcasters ride shares cat fishing

“and public shaming all of which figure into the plot there are flashbacks not only to Katy's”

prison years but to Tom's childhood which is similarly fleshed out and best of all major new supporting characters are presented some which inherit the stalking behaviors exhibited by Katy in the film versions and those films are echoed with respect just a scorsese found room for Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum to appear as other characters in his 1991 remake this new Cape Fear pulls the same trick by casting someone from scorsese's film Bardem is riveting here

but he's by no means the only reason to watch the story may be familiar but this new Cape Fear rolls out one surprise after another some scenes are scary some are violent and some are creepy and part of the suspense in this new adaptation is figuring out who the creeps really are and where the evil really lies they would be uncooly reviewed the new Apple TV series Cape Fear if you'd like to catch up on fresh air interviews you missed like our interviews with the

Elizabeth prior about being Richard Prior's daughter or Maggie O'Farrill the author of the novel HamNet who has a new novel check out our podcast you'll find lots of fresh air interviews and to find out what's happening behind the scenes of our show and get our producers recommendations for what to watch read and listen to subscribe to our free newsletter at whuye.org/freshair Fresh air's executive producer is Sam Brigher our technical director and engineer

is Audrey Bentham our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Philis Meyers Roberta Chorock and Reble Denado Lauren Crenzel Theresa Madden Monique Nazareth and Abelman and Nico Gonzalez-Wisler our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nespere Susan Yucundi directed today's show our co-host is Tonya Mosley I'm Terry Gross