Entertainment

Why William Jackson Harper of ‘The Good Place’ Can’t Quit the Theater

Before he snagged the role of Chidi, the dithery moral philosopher of “The Good Place,” William Jackson Harper had been acting off-Broadway for a decade. Brainy, meticulous, stealthily madcap, he racked up credit after underpaid credit. It was fun. Then it wasn’t.

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Why William Jackson Harper of ‘The Good Place’ Can’t Quit the Theater
By
Alexis Soloski
, New York Times

Before he snagged the role of Chidi, the dithery moral philosopher of “The Good Place,” William Jackson Harper had been acting off-Broadway for a decade. Brainy, meticulous, stealthily madcap, he racked up credit after underpaid credit. It was fun. Then it wasn’t.

The theater had started to feel, he said, “like a bad friend who was mean to me, but who every now and again would take me out for a couple of beers.”

It is a relationship that Harper, 38, cannot quit. “We’ve broken up, but we still hook up a little bit,” he joked. During the hiatus between the first and second seasons of “The Good Place,” he starred in Lincoln Center Theater’s “After the Blast.” And as the third season begins, Harper’s first play, “Travisville,” will have its premiere at the Ensemble Studio Theater. Previews are to start Oct. 3. A drama set in the civil rights era, “Travisville” follows a group of black preachers and parishioners weighing activism against incremental change.

Speaking by telephone from Budapest, Hungary, where Harper was filming “a weird cult film sort of thing” from writer-director Ari Aster (“Hereditary”), he discussed — with occasional dithering — morality, courage and why a sitcom set in hell makes people so happy. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

Q: What inspired “Travisville”?

A: The civil rights movement in Dallas, which was sort of nonexistent. I read this book called “The Accommodation,” with all these really interesting points of view espoused by civic leaders and church leaders. It definitely got my mind working.

Q: Were you raised in a religious tradition?

A: Yeah, I was raised COGIC, which is Church of God in Christ, a very conservative, very strict denomination of Christianity in the black community. I think all my neuroses come from having been religious.

Q: Do you practice now?

A: Not really. I hit a point of very studied agnosticism. I kind of like to believe in nothing and everything.

Q: So what do you think it means to be a good person?

A: That’s big. Just trying to put as much good into the world as you can from the lens that you have. Let me rephrase that. I don’t know if I agree with what I just said. I think it’s probably to put as much good into the world as you can, given the information that you have. I definitely just lock up and I’m like: “Well, I’m not sure if this is right. What if I’m wrong?” So something I’m trying to do now is to act on the information I do have until I get new information. Otherwise I’m just largely ineffectual and I’m trying not to be. What I actually need to do is volunteer a lot more.

Q: Everyone must joke that feeling locked up sounds exactly like Chidi.

A: I got the part and I explained it to my girlfriend. She said: “Oh, well that’s just you. Always locked up and paralyzed and never sure what to do next — that’s just you, man.”

Q: The characters in “Travisville” are good men and good women stuck between what’s safe and what’s right, what’s responsible and what’s brave. Do you tend to make brave choices?
A: I mean, I try to artistically. I try to make the weird choice. In life, I’m pretty safe. Wait. That may not be true. I mean, I ride a bike in NYC, and that’s definitely not the safest choice. Q: Off-Broadway pays terribly. How did you go so many years making so little money?

A: By keeping my overhead low. I always had a ton of roommates and I just learned to go without. The thing that theaters bank on is that people onstage are addicts for it. When a show is going well, there’s nothing like that. I started to develop an unhealthy relationship to it, where if I was working, I was valuable, I was contributing. And if I wasn’t working, I was nobody, I was nothing. I made my peace with being done with theater for a while.

Q: How does it feel to come back to the theater as a playwright. Do you feel jealous of the actors?

A: Oh, I don’t feel jealous. I did sort of think, Oh, I should write something for myself. But as I kept going, I kept thinking of other actors who would be better than me in all these parts. So I’m really just excited to see these actors take on the play.

Q: Do you have more plays in you?

A: I’ve tried to write some other things and most of them are straight garbage. I have a desktop full of things that are gobbledygook, that make no sense, that are incredibly boring or just dumb. So we’ll see.

Q: Can you spoil the third season of “The Good Place”?

A: I can’t. I need to keep my job. But I can say that the show gets weirder and weirder and weirder.

Q: I know that “The Good Place” is ostensibly set in hell. Why does it feel so hopeful?

A: That’s the thing, right? It is an optimistic show. People are nice. That’s not to say we’re making a bubble gum candy mess. We deal with some real things. But it’s OK to have a show be warm, to have people looking out for each other.

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