Aldis Hodge the long-time respected actor, visionary producer opens up on his proudest role, talks being raised by a strong single mom, shaped by adversity, driven by purpose and why he's unapologetic about using his voice and craft to uplift culture.

Cross star Aldous Hodge has been acting since the age of three, but the person who sits with the pivot today will never play a character. The tales of New Jersey play out like a movie as he recounts them to us. Run-ins with the KKK, homelessness, bus rides to New York for auditions, and long walks through New Jersey in a shopping cart as his mom pushes. Their life wasn't easy. His mother was the steadying force, though. She put education first, and she made both her boys keep one thing in mind, acting is a privilege, never the priority. And that's the way that they've approached their careers ever since. He's a watchmaker by trade, so he always wanted to solve puzzles. One he continues to focus on is the way that Black actors are seen and portrayed on screen. This next season of Cross allows him to show more grace, more intelligence, more elegance than ever before. He's starting to become exactly who Morgan Freeman thought he would on the set of Brian Burns. Before he leaves, though, he tells us about his world, his baby girl. She changed him. She took a tough Jersey boy who came up rough and was once a martial artist and now a leading man. And he's been melting in her hands since she was born. This is one that you can't pass up. From Leverage to Brian Burns and now to Cross, Aldous Hodge knows exactly who he is. And now, after this sit down with me, Chan, and Freddie T on the pivot, you'll know exactly who he is as well. Just limitless, nigga stomach gaping in it. I'm father here to witness it. Come up, you feeling militant. What up? How you doing, man? We finally made it happen. Man, finally made it happen, man. What's up, man? What's up, man? Pleasure to really meet you. What's up, bro? Sure, dog. It was good, Freddie. That fella's solid. Don't let it all be cast him as a police man. Old fella. Yo, John, you know. Hey, in the back, I said, oh, oh. No, you can't play a football player, baby, He's skinny running around like my man on All-American. Yeah, man. I grew up, man, I try. I got to keep it in shape, man. The knees is trying to go out. I grew up a competitive martial artist. So I try to stay as nimble and nimble and put together as possible. Yeah. Well, his knees gone. Chad and Crowder, Fred Taylor, Ryan Clark, Aldous Hodge, man, please and thank you. Welcome to The Pivot. Really excited to do this. I've been trying. I mean, it's been years. No, yeah. Hold on, hold on. Do we really look alike? Yes. Y'all dress alike, too. I love this outfit. I love this outfit. Thank you, man. When you told your mom you wanted to be in the box, right, when you told your mom that, where did you imagine that dream would land you? You don't really understand what it is you're asking for at that point. I was just following my big brother, Edwin, and his, sort of his dreams. You know, three years old, you know, him, I want to be on the Cosmos show and all that. So we took it sort of like as an elective or like a sport. You know, my mom made us earn it. If we didn't bring home A's and B's, we couldn't go on auditions. It wasn't like, she did not care. She said, you don't get this education, okay? So for us, we came into it at an early age, but we were at a space where we were learning our passion at the same time we were learning who we were in a business that was trying to dictate who we were. So thank God for my mom. I mean, she's a brilliant woman. She laid down the foundation for how we wanted to see ourselves, how we wanted to see ourselves dictated where we wanted to see ourselves. This business will tell you everything about you that makes you perfect is wrong. So you have to fight for that. You have to fight for who you are. And knowing what I've gone through, going to auditions with them telling me that, you know, I'm too dark for this role, too black for this role. I speak too articulately, so, you know, you can't get this role because this is not how we see black people. And I'm like, what the hell is wrong? Do you know who we are as a people? I'm black. Do you know what we do? It's not a monolith either. No. But I mean, you still see today the reflections of ignorance and bias permeates what the culture is. It has never gone away, you know, so we have to still stand in our own values. But figuring out what this business was for me started with having to figure out who I was to myself and owning myself in it. You know, my approximation of success is getting to a place where you can do more for others than that which you can do for yourself. Because if you are helping others get to a position, obviously you are in a position of influence and affluence. That's why for me producing is paramount. Writing is paramount. Moving into the director's chair hopefully later this year. If I finish the daggum script. But it's all about like creating opportunities because back in the day we had to create opportunities for ourselves. We never had them. And any opportunities we got people would work as hard as they could to take them away. So long winded answer but you know the dream from there to now grew because I grew into what my place was in it. You just think I want to be on movies, TV, all that. get that you do it is not fulfilling and then you set a goal you reach it and you realize it's just a small piece to a bigger picture and it's up to you to define how you want to pursue that bigger picture you know do you want to limit your potential do you want to go further right now i know the picture is very large and wide and uh i feel like i'm in prime position for where i need to be today to get to where I'm trying to go tomorrow. What are you chasing? We have a goal in football. It's Pro Bowl, it's Hall of Fame. You can't go past the Hall of Fame. What's the next step past the Hall of Fame? Like, you a Hall of Famer? Yeah, most of them dead now. Like, who? I'm dead. So I'm chasing Ray Lewis. He chasing, you know. Walter Payton. Walter Payton. Jim Brown, the boys. Jim Brown. Yeah. Night in Miami. You played with the dude. You was chasing Troy. Yeah. Wait, are you, do you chase somebody? Is there somebody that you were like, can you mold yourself and say, I want to be him? Not on screen, but that's the goal. That's the Hall of Fame. Actually, initially a lot of us do chase other people, but it gets to a place where you realize, I have to chase myself. Because you can chase somebody else's accomplishments, but once you learn and study their pathway, you understand how they did it, and then you start studying other people like them, and everybody did it differently. The only reason they are where they are is because of their individuality. That is your primary power that everybody has. So, you know, people are like, oh, well, what makes you special? It's like me, goddammit. It's me. That's it. Don't ask me that question. You know, because they'll push you. They'll test you in this industry and try to make you, they'll try to beguile you to lose sight of what makes you valuable, right? so they can be in charge of telling you what makes you valuable, so they can control how you see yourself, so they can control the limit to which you feel you are valuable when it comes to a negotiation or when it comes to going for a job or standing up for yourself in a tough position with a professional superior. All of these mind games are kind of sewn into the fabric of what this industry is, not just this industry, it's business in general. You know, a lot of different industries have these games, but they'll make you chase the wrong thing when at the end of the day, all you had to chase was you. My mother brought my brother and I up with the understanding that we never competed and that there was no such thing as competition in this game. Because once you go into that audition room, regardless of how good you are, it ain't up to you. There are so many surrounding, you know, sort of existential factors that determine somebody's career, getting the job, this, that, and the other. So whoever got a job in our house, it was everybody who won, you know. And a lot of times you lose friends because everybody's, because we all chasing that thing. And then you start seeing people get competitive mindsets, stop talking, stop kicking it, stop hanging out. The problem with that is you're losing your community. Because your community, you build that strong community, and when you get to positions, I'm calling homies now that I rely on to build. Because I don't see competition because you can't compete with me. I can't compete with you. I need you to win. I don't want you to win. I need you to win. That's it. Yeah. So just chasing myself and chasing what my purpose is in this business and what I'm supposed to be doing. Going back to your childhood, though, you grew up in a Marine household. Yeah. Right. You mentioned that your mom, she really pushed you guys. Is it true that you were taking college courses at 14? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was homeschooled up until, I guess, technically, it was supposed to be the ninth grade. I, yeah, you know, when I turned 14, just I had my credits, but because in homeschool, we always did extra work, like through the summers we did school. It wasn't a crazy house where we had no fun. We had a great time, you know, but mom was about that school. She was not playing. So, yeah, when I was 14, my brother and I, we took entrance exams at a community college and we got in. and that allowed us to skip high school because as far as work goes like you got as a child actor people give you two options either you're going to graduate early so that you can then work extended hours and you know or you're going to get emancipated and mom was definitely not about that emancipation that is not happening up here okay but we you know school was always a priority outside of the industry just because of the nature of life. She always said, you can make all the money you want, but if you can't read them contracts, it don't matter. So for us, growing up in Jersey, it was rough. We'd been around a few spots that were tough. I mean, we grew up in Trenton, Hackensack, and Clifton. Oddly enough, Clifton was probably the roughest because we actually lived around the KKK out there. And yeah, we dealt with them on a regular basis. That's why I'm not, like, surprised by what's happening today. I'm like, guys, the problem has never been fixed because it was never addressed. So, kill them. You can't go past you dealt with the KKK, would you? I need some kind of something with that. What does that mean? What does that mean? Man, as a kid, I remember, like, we used to put up Christmas lights but they cut our christmas lights three years in a row so we just stopped putting them up they would throw trash on the lawn uh and we would have to clean that mess up i remember they tried to kidnap my mom one time she had to run through and cut through different buildings to get home uh we just you know in that part of town it was just like it was crazy i remember i was probably like eight years old when I realized exactly how this country sees me because there was this Yugoslavian kid who called me the n-word in school my mom said don't start nothing but something happened you're gonna finish him all right cool so called me the n-word we in the lunch line now You know, he starts a fight. So I'm like, cool, I'm with it. I start winning, you know what I mean? And I'm sitting there, you know, I'm holding my mans up against the wall, keeping them up off me. Three white lunch ladies beat me down off of that kid. And then they call us cops to school. They want to him me up, you know what I'm saying? Like, you know, got me all, you know, apprehended, shy, arrested, whatever. They got me on the side. They want to expel me, but they don't want to do nothing to this young white brother right here. And I'm like, I'm in trouble for defending myself? How does this make sense? I'm eight. I'm a child. What's going on? You know? And my mom, she intervened, obviously. She came down. She wasn't having it because she would have flipped the whole school upside down. But after that, she actually started working in the school. She was one of the lunch ladies because that was her way of being able to be present while we're in school, but I actually have some eyes. Everybody loved my mom because, like, they would be stingy in the lunch. But my mom, she ain't about to let a kid go hungry. So, you know, a kid come through, one little extra scoop. You know what I mean? My mom don't care. She's going to feed the babies. But, yeah, we went through a lot, man. And then, you know, there's a lot of people, particularly now, who don't understand how to have empathy because they don't understand what the impact is, societal impact or cultural impact of that which they represent, even if they feel like they're not directly complicit. And you don't have to be to understand that your reality is not like somebody else's. So, you know, the old adage, seek to understand before being understood. I think that could help a lot of people right now because really just in life, first of all, lot of people tired. There's a lot of people who live in third world conditions in this supposed first world country because they live under subjugation. And you have to understand that when you're dealing with people, everybody got different realities. But I knew very early how this country sees me. It has never changed. I've never seen a difference. I've never seen real progress. I've seen nominal steps, but also I see the goalpost move and change. But I see within it great people and great fighters still keep getting produced. So that is where my faith is kind of found in, uh, yeah, that's where my faith is found in, in where we're at today. I don't know how we got on this. So I, I, I mean, cause that's where we are though. Like that is, That is the life as black men, as our community, that we live in now. Now it's louder, right? Now it's been empowered. Now we see it in a way that those who used to tell us it's a figment of our imagination can no longer say it's a figment of our imagination. Now they just excuse it. Yeah, it's a figment of their imagination. Right, that's where we are. So for you, though, when you grow up like that, and I'll be honest, man, the first time I ever really locked into you, away from you and your craft, was when you talked about survival and growing up on survival. And it does make happiness and joy all foreign things. I think in some ways, because you're waiting for it to be taken from you, but like you said, the vulnerability piece of it, as you've gotten older and you understand that about yourself, how have you worked to be more open about being vulnerable so you can find happiness I was forced to when I had a daughter you know because like my daughter is the light of my life I know you shouldn put all your you know all your bags and all your woes and all that kind of stuff on your kids at all, and it's definitely not intentional, but when I say my joy lives in my daughter, I mean that with every fiber of my being, you know what I mean? That's like... And we be fighting all the time. She's four. She thinks she's running the house. That little girl. She's just like me. She probably does. Just like me and her mama, you know what I'm saying? For me, in order to be a present and a good father, to teach her strengths, true strength that comes not only from a sense of protection, but also a sense of being courageous enough to feel, to be happy, to be vulnerable. You know, you got to be there. You got to be patient. You got to be softer. to be a little bit more understanding when it comes to listening. I can't lead with fear and I can't lead with aggression with her whenever she do something that she doesn't understand is wrong or whatever, you know? Or she know how to get me, man. She be like, Baba, you broke my heart. I'm like, God dang. Fine. And, you know, you have to, I think, get to a place where you say it's safe enough for me to be happy you know and you have to create that safety growing up in survival granted I still had a great childhood my mom is amazing single-parent household like to have no idea how she made it through everything that she made it through because I mean we've been through a lot man like you know a lot of people know that you know we've been homeless before we used to sleep in our car it was safer to live in the car than to go live in a shelter because of what happens in the shelter. They told my mom that when we got there. It was like, don't bring your kids in there. As a young man, when you're living through that, and we've had people on the show who have had some of those same circumstances, and those people have told us, you know, it was just our life. I didn't really understand what we were going through. As intelligent as you and your brother both were, how did you all process we're living in our car, we're going to a shelter, the KKK is a presence in our life. How did you process all of that to sort of remain and keep a piece of your childhood? What we processed was really dictated by our mom. Living in the car, we just thought we were on very long like car trip. You know what I'm saying? And so she made it fun. There were times where when we didn't have a car but we had you know at least somewhere to stay and we were going back and forth. We lived in Jersey going back and forth to New York for auditions and I could never conceive now how dangerous this was then. I get it now but we would you know she would take the bus all the way back from New York to Jersey and then when we got off walked to the grocery store because because it was very close by, she'd get a shopping cart, put my brother and I in the shopping cart and push us all the way home. You talking about like, you know, six, seven o'clock at night, sometimes later, for a single black woman running through Jersey? Newark? Patterson? You know what I'm saying? Like, nah. But she was brave, man, because she was fighting for a better life. So my mom created this visage of value and beauty, and, you know, it takes a little roughness. you know, to create substance in somebody. And we had, you know, cousins and all that kind of stuff around. So we was always out there playing field trips, everything. My mom was brilliant. The reality we grew up in was what we knew. So that was our normal, though. We didn't know anything outside of that. So there was nothing to compare it to. You just say, OK, it is what it is. You know what I mean? I remember in Trenton, it was like a young kid, teenager. We thought he was the coolest cat. You know, he's always on the corner every day, go to, chilling. You know, you grow up and you realize, oh, He was a street pharmacist. No question. That's what you call him? Yeah. No question. But my mom got us away from all of that, and she fought every single day, every single day, to get us away from that. And as a kid, all I'm seeing is that mom needs help. I just wanted to make mom laugh, keep mom happy, because you don't understand everything, but you can understand the feeling. and when mom was happy she was happy but when she needed help and she's doing it by herself you create this protective shell you know we grew up in you know i would say a state of hyper vigilance because we always had to protect ourselves from you know wherever the threat was coming and mom was always the person who was blocking the threat first off but you know as a eventually you get wise to see a mom take enough shots, and you're like, nah, it's time for me to take them shots. So I was real scrappy, like, around eight, nine years old, you know what I'm saying? Oh, yeah, about my mom's, you could get it. Dude, Shane came in here and Shane was like, hey, whoa, you know what? I'll let you tell me what you told me about him and the things you'd seen. Okay, we sitting here now. You seem very different. But I work with an asshole. And you're... Who said you? Okay. And I told J.J. Redick this as well. J.J. Redick's an asshole. So I meet people. You know what I'm saying? You meet people. You're a big fan of your. You've seen all the movies, all the work you've done. But offscreen, you an asshole. Do you know that? Like, do you know that your persona comes off as an asshole? as asshole? Yeah, because he didn't know until he knew. J.J. Reddick knew. He was like, oh yeah, I'm an asshole. Do you understand that, like, you know, you're a nice person, you're very talented, but you're an asshole. I'll tell you, you know what, man? I will own it if that's what it is. So hold on. But I gotta understand, because I'm not, like, very aware of my... I'm not aware of my presence or my outward influence by any measure because in my head, all I see are the things that I still need to go and get and accomplish. So I'm on autopilot because I got people to feed. You know what I'm saying? I got things to do. And like when it comes to certain things, as I've gotten older, I realize I've left myself to open to certain engagements. So I'm learning to set healthy boundaries and to protect myself, but also protect my family, protect what we have, because we're in an age where everybody feels entitled to your space. They feel like they have agency over your autonomy. I'm just not that dude. I'm a nerd. I'm introverted. You know, I say I'm an extroverted introvert because I had to learn how to be a little bit more social just to, but you know, man, I'm a science nerd. Like, bro, I grew up like legitimately, you know, the reason I design watches is because I love complexity. I love figuring out hard, you know, equations. Puzzles. Puzzles. And, you know, human beings are the only puzzle I can't figure out. You go crazy trying to. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, I'm trying to get, I guess, nice on, line and hand. So those are boundaries that I'm seeing. I mean, what? I don't even know. Let me know what are the boundaries. No, no, no, no. Like, people come up and ask. I've heard some, saw some interview stuff. They'll be like, oh, ha, ha, ha. No. And you just look them straight in the eye and be like, nah. Nah. With no smile. Well, it depends on what it is. Some games I'm game for. But then what I learned is sometimes people will come at you salty. And in a moment, because you're trying to submit to somebody else's ego or not make things uncomfortable, you will make yourself uncomfortable by allowing somebody said maybe an off color comment that you don't agree with. You're just like, ha-ha, all right. Or somebody does something that, you know, they might disrespect somebody else in front of you. And for me, I'm like, if I don't say nothing, you know, this right here, we all in this space or whatever, then I look like I corroborate that behavior. So I'm gonna get at you. We just had this conversation... We had this conversation last night. We were talking about the same thing. He was like, Ryan, why do you even care that this person has said this? Why do you care that they're behaving this way? And I explained it to him, and I'm not saying this is you. This is how I explained it, and I'll get into a question. I was like, the same way people who drink, right, have a visceral feeling or have a physical feeling about how much they want that drink and how much it matters to them. I said, I'm the same way about respect. Yeah, exactly. Right? Like, if I feel you've disrespected me and I shrink myself to allow it to happen in order to get along, I now no longer feel right inside myself. Exactly, yeah. You know, and so in the world that you're in, Aldous, that directness, right, that level of honesty is not always something that's appreciated in Hollywood, which can be pretentious. Yeah. How do you navigate remaining yourself, keeping your authenticity, while also understanding how to build your brand and career? So I think everything can be done with respect. And I tell people, like, especially a lot of young cats who come up, I was actually just at SCAD speaking to the students about this, and they were asking about how to approach or deal with, you know, superiors, where something might be wrong, and, you know, they don't want to ruffle around feathers, but they still got to stand on business. I'm like, you got to understand, you're dealing with people who got to where they are by demanding, by imposing. They recognize that. Demanding your respect, there's never going to be an issue with that. How you do it determines the outcome. So you need to understand what you want your outcome to be. My rule for anything, particularly with building something with design, how you start is dictated by where you want to end. know exactly where you want to end. So if I understand how I want this conversation to go, I'm doing everything in my power to get it there. And if it's not going there, I cannot control anything about what you do or how you respond. If it's not going the way that I hope it goes, I'm going to exit because I can't fight, you know, something that is futile. But you're constantly tested to acknowledge, challenge, and hold your values. And in this business particularly because people like to push their own egos as power. And people forget, like, power is synonymous with responsibility, not oppression. So if anybody's running around throwing around their positions or whatever to have fun making other people stress all day, you don't look powerful to me. You look like a coward, you know, who might need to catch these hands. Um... I... Not only do we kind of look alike, we think alike. I like them even more. I'm gonna keep it genuine with you, like, yo, because there's so much more actual power in respect. You know, the people that I admire coming up were like, I remember on leverage, John Rogers. You know, I mean, I got a shout out, you know, John and Dean Devlin and Chris Downey, but John Rogers was kind of the first person to step into the fold for me because he saw my tape, network was interested in somebody else, but he said, hold up, y'all really need to see this kid. And he's got the stuff, just... They were like, nah, we're sure we're locked in on this other... Nah, just see this kid, you know? And they saw my tape, they said, oh, we need to change our decision. I asked John, I said, John, why did you do that? He says, I'm not used to people going to extra mile, I'm not used to people risking their... I mean, he created the show, but still, like, you taking a risk, what's up? He said, nine times out of ten, the right actor for the job doesn't get the job. I wanted it to be right this time. I said okay, you know, I appreciate that. I look up to people like on our show Ben Watkins, our showrunner, our show creator. I remember the very first table read. We're all there, you know, camera's on, we doing a table read. I'm going to cut you off. This is on leverage or cross? Oh, this is on cross. Okay. So yeah, Ben Watkins, he created cross. And at the very first table read, you know, We're sitting there. Great. Granted, he is the showrunner. He, the main man, creative show. Hi, everybody. You know, he stands up. Everybody's introduced themselves. I'm this, I'm this, I'm this. He's like, hey, how you guys doing? I'm Ben Watkins. I'm one of the writers. And in my mind, I'm like, one of the writers. You are the E. But what he's doing there, because he's right, he is one of the writers. And he's leveling the playing field to let all the other writers know you are equally valuable here. And he's letting everybody else know who's watching. These people, we're all on the same level. When you give people respect, you incentivize them to do their best when they know that their best and their efforts are acknowledged and appreciated. That's how I want to lead. And when you see it and you encounter it, it's refreshing because it's very rare. And Ben walks in that. You know, we, the very first time we talked, before we even, like, got to set anything like that, it was just him and I talking on our first meeting. We were really talking about who we were as individuals, but how we wanted set to go. What is the, you know, sort of environment we want to cultivate on our set? You know, he was asking me what kind of producer I want to be and how I feel about, you know, leadership and what that means to me. And we just kind of vibed on that because I want people to come to set feeling like it's their home too. But there's rules, meaning that we got to spread that respect. You know, there's no one above, but there's no one below. When you do that, when you go to work, you don't have to worry about somebody's ego overreaching or whatever. It just makes things so much better. So speaking about Cross, because I You got the writer and everything like that. Yeah. When you was sitting on that desk in that first scene... Yeah. ...with your man and the other, he's talking about your Johnson and all. I don't even watch... We watched the whole thing, me and my wife. Yeah. That hooked me, because I was like, oh, he came with some shit early. That hooked me. But was that written? Like, how much ad-lib? Because you can't write what you were saying. Like, that was some real G shit. That was absolutely real. Every, that was all real? Every word. Here's the thing. When I read the script, I only got about like 10 or 12 pages in before I put it down and I called my team. I said, y'all need to meet Ben. Because that was, in the first script, that was the very first scene up, right? We added a scene when we went to production. But when I read it, it was the way that he composed the entire conversation, which for me was like, yo, intellect, intelligence, swag. He got some raw edge to him, Lil Hood, and brilliant as all get out. He elegant and truly sagacious And I like yo how do you roll all this up into this one person particularly in this one scene where he putting his ego down but he doesn feel egotistical You know, there's an art to that, man, a real science. And that's what I had been looking for, because to me, that nature is truly one of the facets of who we are as a people. being able to juggle all that it's a part of the brilliance of who and what we are and maintain and manage that control and composure but it's rarely executed as such so when i saw it i said absolutely i don't need to read the rest if this is how it starts and this is where it's going yo yo let's let's get it you know what i mean you know again it's like you know like like like i said about like with my my therapist giving me a note of just in my personal life imposing your without being imposing. You know? Like, there's a science to it. And Ben got that locked in, so I was good to go. You know who else got it locked in? It's daughters. We're all girl dads. They impose their will without Ben. Right. Cat Williams speaks about what he won't do in Hollywood. You spoke earlier about being an individual and identifying that early on. Yeah. Your daughter, you said whatever job you take would be to supplement or support the future you're building for her. Yeah. Right. Does she serve as a reminder of those boundaries and roles you will do or not? Yeah, see, before it was my daughter, it was my sister and my mother. My sister Brianna, she's 10 years younger than me. So growing up, you know, and her father is not in her life, so it was like big brother and pops, you know, in varying degrees. So, you know, growing up, I used to be like, you know, she's my heart. And now I got two hearts. You know what I'm saying? But I know the things that I want to do, which I hope that I hope won't embarrass my mom or my sister. And now, particularly when it comes to my daughter, I just want her to be proud. The other day, I was on Sunset, and they have a billboard up, and showed her the billboard. And she's like, that's Bob out from TV. That's all she knows. But there are things that I always said that I wouldn't do, particularly or wouldn't represent particularly from what i've seen and what i've known growing up from real people there are certain ugly natures that don't need to be touched i feel like you know there's room for all stories to be told but i don't have to be a part of all of them and i i always want to do things that inspire that entertain it doesn't mean always playing a good human being either because depending on the nature of the character, what conversation are we having through that character? You know, we can heal a lot by showing somebody's deprivations and how they deal with that as long as there's a point to it. So if we're going to educate through entertainment, substantive quality, that's the metric for me. But if it's just simply depravative to be depravative, if it's playing on stereotypes and tropes that don't actually move the needle forward, I want nothing to do with it. When you grow up with your mother, who is such a large presence and just integral part of everything that you are, without having the male figure around to say, okay, this is what it looks like, or to get that validation and conversation for them, you know, we look at Hollywood and I'm gonna say I look at Hollywood and I'm like shoot Morgan Freeman you know something like Denzel Washington Samuel L. Jackson you know you you know you played using Die Hard you know I mean he played Samuel L. Jackson's nephew but in working with Morgan Freeman you know he went aside from you and was like hey like dude got it right like this young cat has it When someone who has been so successful, so instrumental in seeing our faces and telling our stories on the screen says something like that about you, not necessarily how does it make you feel, how do you want to make sure you're proving not only him right, but yourself right, that you can be that? Right. Well, when I hear those things, like in particular that situation with Mr. Freeman, I ain't gonna lie, I shed a thug tear, because, you know, no, no. We're here to get emotional, ain't we? Yeah, you know. We're here to get vulnerable. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. I'm trying to be in my feelings real quick, okay? You got it. I'm trying to get emotionable, okay? You spend so much time trying to prove yourself to other people that when someone of his magnitude says, oh, no, yeah, no, he got it, you know, it makes you feel seen. feel like I have been doing something right. But nowadays, I realize those are reminders for you to switch the conversation you have internally with yourself. You have to be the one to say you got it. You have to be the one to say I am good enough, and that's just what it is. And when someone else gives you that compliment, that agreeance, for me, I take it with a great deal of humility and privilege. But at the same time, I'm learning to understand that I should feel and treat myself like that every day generally. So back in the days, it was helping me to repair a fragile perspective of myself. The danger is you can't rely on that because that opinion of someone else may change, but you should not let that change your opinion of yourself. But it does help along the way when the people you look up to look at you because you're saying, all right, it's not about him being famous. It's about what it took for him to get to where he is. I know he ain't gone through some stuff. I know he's gone through what I've gone through. Probably worse. I'm for sure worse. Everybody's experience is valid. But for him to be where he's at and to look at me and recognize something familiar, that to me gives me the faith and hope that I will one day get to where I need to be because he did it. He sees the same thing in me. In my life, I'm a potential Hall of Famer, spoken by most people. And Channing asked earlier about... No, he's just gonna put that in there. It's a Hall of Fame. Yeah, yeah, I appreciate it. Thank you, thank you. And, you know, as Morgan, to you, my person was Jim Brown. What he said was, he's my best back. And, you know, and that carried me. It changed my career and it made me a better player and all those different things. You played Jim Brown in One Night in Miami. Yeah. And leading up to it, conversations with Mr. Brown or his family, the script, you know, learning the story of him, Ali, Malcolm X's, you know, their relationship. Yeah. Like, just that insight, what did that do for you that you can, you know, share? Oh, man, it changed everything. You know, sadly, I never had the chance to engage Mr. Brown directly. I do know his daughter. We spoke a lot. We know each other. I did want to meet Mr. Brown, but unfortunately, he passed. He passed, but his daughter was great. She actually, she was even on set. That's awesome. Yeah, yeah. But when it first, honestly, when it first came to the audition, I turned it down. Because when it comes to biopics, it's not just, it's, oh, I'm doing a role. Like, no, you're playing a person. I didn't feel like I was adequate enough to represent Mr. Brown in a respectful way. I didn't feel like I was the right person for that. And then I get a call from my team. They're like, yo, Regina wants to see you audition. I'm not about to tell Regina King no. OK, I'm sorry. This is royalty. Nah, she, you need, what you need me to do? Need me to be the extra? OK. So I was like, all right, cool. Let me, let me, let me go in. I started doing my research, and I was fascinated, particularly by an interview. It's in the 60s. I think there's a speech I think he gave at UCLA that was fantastic. But there was an interview in the 60s that he did on a talk show with the governor of, I think, Georgia at the time, something like that. They were discussing, you know, issues when it came to, like, segregation, racism, all that kind of stuff. And the, I think it was the governor of Georgia, mayor of the governor, he was disillusioned by quite a lot. But Jim was just smooth and educated but cold. He was so cold in the moment. I have never, I'm gonna find the interview and look it up, because I have never seen a smoother threat laid out on TV in my life. And I was like, that's how you do it, okay. But when I sort of dug into, because the snapshot was then in the 60s, when I dug into that period, I saw everything enviable and a lot of things that were in alignment with what I had believed at the time, particularly with his, you know, outspokenness, his position on civil rights and his engagement, his participation, you know, dealing with, you know, brother Malcolm X. and what they were into. And I'm like, at that young age, they really fully understood and had awareness of the value of their positioning and their impact. And they used it. You know, they were active. You know, I mean, what was it? Didn't Mr. Brown at one time bring, like, you know, Crips and Bloods together? And it's like, yo, if you can be that OG that brings everybody to the table, that power is immeasurable. that influences the measurables. So that to me was, I was like, yeah, it would be an honor to represent him, particularly in this time frame, yeah. And speaking about the preparation to play Jim Brown, and we've seen, they always make you a police officer. You always trying to arrest somebody. Amen. You've been a district attorney, a superhero, a slave. A superhero that is actually in comic, he's a space cop. I guess you said. He's a space cop. Yeah, yeah, you a cop cop. But like, the preparation for being there, like you said, I know you do research, but like, the preparation to walk on set, and also, can you just turn a switch on and off? Like, you're a cop, and then, cut, okay, you just back to yourself. Because the story, like the Heath Ledger thing with Joker, where he got so psyched out to be Joker, and he ended up, like, it was like, psychologically messed with him. Like, acting to be able to turn off, turn on, turn off, turn on. How hard is that? I think that's your particular process. I mean, I've been doing this since I was three, so I have a really fixed process with how I approach my job, my work. You know, I mean, it's my art as well. So for me, like, I used to paint a lot. When you're just close to the picture, you can only focus on that thing. You got to step back, observe, and see everything in order to figure out where to go next. With acting, I treat it the same. When I'm in it, I'm in it. My nucleus is what is the honesty of this character and where they're at and what are they trying to get at? What are they trying to say? So I dive in there and then I'm thinking about what I want the audience to feel and how I want them to feel it And I have fun with that But when they say cut I need to step back and observe my work so I can do it better the next time So I sort of keep a foot in and a foot out because I need to be able to to Come to a point of rationale where I can assess everything and I'm not so wrapped up emotionally that I can't see anything You know, I need to be in control of my medium the same way I'm in control of my paintbrush almost my pen that I sketch with I can't fathom getting So lost in the art that I lose sight of the Goal Granted, that's not, I mean, some actors are method actors, and they have a way where that works for them. It's not my particular style. You know, we all have different styles that work for us and not, and mine is just simply that to do my best work, I'm going to go in there, hit it as hard as I can, and try these things, consciously aware of what I'm trying, so that when I go at it again, I can try something different, because I believe in constant evolution, and I'm observant of it. I'm a fan of it. And I want to execute that. I'm obsessed with it. So how can we get better and better and better? But I study it like it is a science to me. I actually met Isaiah Saturday. And when I met him, first I was like, obviously a big fan, I walked up to him. He was like, man, you got to get me and Aldous on. I said, as a matter of fact, I'll see him on Wednesday. You know what I mean? So I let him know that. No, we definitely got to go on because, yeah. And when I told him, too, though, I was like, man, there was a lot of points throughout the first season. I really wasn't rocking with you. I said, when it all came back around, I realized you was just being a great friend. I said, well, there was points during the season where you weren't my guy. I want to ask about a quote. The quote is, acting is a privilege, never the priority. Right, yeah. What does that mean to you when you hear it or when you say it, when you regurgitate it? and what is the priority for Aldous Hodge? Oh, I like that. I like that. First, since you mentioned Isaiah, I got to shout him out. Today's his birthday. Oh, okay. Yes, sir. So shout to my mans, you know what I'm saying? Isaiah, happy birthday on cross day. Isaiah, he's a hell of a brother, man. I love that man. He's an amazing partner and amazing support. You know, an amazing co-lead, star in his own right, and everything he brings to the show is exactly what helps the show work. So I'm eternally grateful to him for being exactly who he is. Acting's a privilege, never the priority, because oftentimes coming up, you know, like a lot of child actors, the parents will make the acting the priority and sort of besmirch the actual childhood. That's where people stop getting protected. That's where kids are exposed. My mom was always the person to let you know she'll run up on the set and she don't care who you could be the director or producer it don't matter she gonna yoke you up if you come at her kids the wrong way I need more parents to be like that to be active to be present privilege meaning that we had to earn it if you're gonna do this if mama's gonna spend her time you know taking us to auditions if we'll spend her time trying to get us to learn these lines and all that kind of stuff like you have to understand somebody's making a sacrifice on your behalf don't waste their time by wasting your own time earn it you want to keep doing this you have to be smart about it that doesn't mean you can sacrifice your education or your livelihood or your manners or your reputation reputation was everything she said the moment we start slipping wasn't gonna be no you know if we want it you have to figure out who you are and how you want to be in order to get it that's it the priority it's not that I walk in life and I'm an actor and that's my identity and my definition what does this do for me how does this serve my greater goal how does it sustain me just as a human being The priority is for me to understand who I am and what I want to contribute to this industry and what I want to accomplish with it in terms of putting out great work, giving out great opportunities rescinding hardships that other people have gone through You know I mean we do that with acting and I have a visual development studio conceptual studio called 9B Collective with my two friends and co Mike Wandi and Phil Boutte Jr., both conceptual artists, and we contract artists all around the world for work on jobs, like we did visual development for Blue Beetle, we did work on Wicked, we did work on Children of Blood and Bone, and, you know, conceptual artwork, just, you know, what the characters look like, what does the world look like, that kind of stuff. The reason we started the company was to give the BIPOC community of artists proximity to opportunity. You know, all the things that Phil and Mike went through, they don't want other people to have to go through that. So we create, it's no longer like, how can we open the door? We have to be the door. And we have to create the opportunities that never existed for us. That's the priority. With whatever I do, who are we helping? How are we helping? How many people are we bringing along? You know? Use the industry. Don't let the industry use you. Absolutely. Is that kind of what you're saying? Is that where your studio comes from? Is that? But what is that? Because it seems kind of cryptic a little bit. What does that mean? Oh, yeah. You have to use the industry to your benefit. You are not a tool of it. It is an extension of whatever your goals or your priorities are. But if you don't know how to use it, you will be used by it. We've seen people get eaten up and disappear completely. And you see people who are shells of themselves because they thought they were chasing their value through this business, letting this business define, you know, who they think they want to be. And when the business shows you the truth, you might just be checking a box. might be just another random number on a call sheet. You don't have to be, but that's up to you. What are you really chasing? It's like actors who want to get in the game, they ask me, you know, I'm trying to do this, trying to do this. I said, well, why do you want to be here? Why do you want to be an actor? If you want to be famous or if you want to be rich, I say, don't waste your time. Go somewhere else. You can get that. You can be that. But if that's your goal, that ain't it. I tell actors all the time, like I stated earlier, figure out what you're trying to contribute to the game. You know, I constantly repeat this and regurgitate this, but if you focus more on what you're trying to put into the game over what you're trying to get out of it, you inherently will get more, but you're gonna leave more. You're gonna leave a legacy. You're gonna help more people along the way. More people, people are gonna learn from your journey, regardless of whether you want them to or not. But you get to dictate what they learn from and how they get to learn from your steps. So the more you impact the, and I think this might be maybe from my inventor brain, because I'm also a conceptual designer. Again, with the watches, I was a conceptual designer for a number of years. I used to do anything, architecture, cars. I design any and everything. The center point for the sort of the inception of design is what problem am I fixing? What problem am I solving? Why am I designing this if it doesn't make something easier, something more engaging, something more informative for the consumer? So I treat acting in this industry the same way. What problems are we solving with what we do and how we do it? Because at the end of the day, there's monopoly of problems that we have to address daily. Yes. And every single job is an opportunity. And my fun, my joy, is in challenging those problems and shutting them down. Even if it's just one small monochrome of progress. That's where my pride lives. That's where I get egoic. I'm like, oh, yeah. Y'all stop talking that. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Y'all stop talking that smack, didn't you? Uh-huh. My mans couldn't get a job. Like, for 9B, I'll say it like this. For 9B Collective, we were doing some visual development work on an animation project, I'm not gonna say with who, but the studio client is, you know, very, very well-known, very doing, you know, doing big, big, big plays. And we had an artist on there, a young black brother, who was running laps around the other artists that were doing, you know, drafts and all that. all that. So the producers hit us like, yo, this artist is amazing. It's amazeballs. Where'd you find them? One of my partners, Phil Butte, he said, check your HR records. He applied to you 10 times. 10 times. You're acting like you just discovered something. That's where my ego lives. That is what I like to do. Let's solve some problems. Wow. With that, I have a two part. One is a question we always ask our guests. Your biggest pivot in life. That's that one moment you can look back on and say, because this happened to me or for me, I am who I am today. But before that, I wanted to know your biggest no that you've gotten along your journey. And what did you learn from that and if that affected that pivot or not? The biggest no, I got to think on that because I've had so many different types of no's. That's how you learn, bro. Yeah, yeah. I'm still so very frustrated by the ignorant bias of people's ill-begotten perceptions of black culture. When they see us in a space, oh, my God, I'm surprised you're here. Right. And I just had to realize it's not my battle anymore to deal with that. In the watchmaking space, people are more surprised to see a black watchmaker watchmaker of haute legerie, as opposed to an American watchmaker, we're, as Americans, are not prominent in the haute legerie space of, you know, complications and, you know, these kinds of... But people are more surprised to see a brother here. And I'm like, don't be surprised. Go do your research. Learn something about Benjamin Bannica, you know, black brother who helped actually map out D.C., self-taught mathematician, farmer, astrologist, all that. He created the very first striking clock in this country. And he was employed by George Washington to help map out D.C. when his former employee left the project, because he was brilliant. The man wrote a letter to Thomas Jefferson on behalf of trying to get him to change his opinion of black people and their intellect, their intellectual capabilities. Obviously, Thomas Jefferson ain't changed that thing. You know, that man, dear God. But it's no longer my burden, but it is the most common annoyance and frustration I deal with on my regular basis. Because as a kid, when they're telling you, you can't be this because you're black, or you're supposed to be less than because you're black, that's why I'm a watchmaker. I knew I wanted to be in the scientific or engineering field or design field of any capacity to represent the reflection of brilliance that I see through my people. Watchmaking, it's a very complicated process. I'm still learning, but the moment I accomplish it the way I need to accomplish it, and my dadgum manufacturing partner needs to, they should be done with my watch this year. We've been working for like five years, but we've been, you know, developing an original movement from scratch as a process. But just the bare bones of accomplishing this to me says, it doesn't make me special. It doesn't make me anything. It makes me a small representation of the magnitude of who we are as a culture, because we have contributed so much. As a kid, I used to say, why have we as a culture contributed so much to the world, but have received so little of the benefit? I could use a new watch. Oh, no, it's coming. It's coming. It's coming. My man. Please. We tired of seeing that cast here. I like digital, man. I know yours probably ain't gonna be digital, but... Yeah. But, you know, I mean, like, I look at guys like that. I look at guys like Tomas Sincara, you know, who founded Burkina Faso, and now we have Ibrahim Chare in his steps, carrying on the mission. I look at guys like Patrice Lumumba, you know, and everything that they were doing, and they were killed for just trying to bring their people up. But I respect it. You know, I revere it. You know, just like Dr. King, just like Malcolm, I revere it. But my biggest pivot was clearly my daughter, because the moment that I had my daughter was the moment that I had to learn... I had to start learning how to love myself. Yeah. I wasn't aware that I didn't love myself prior. And I found that out through my relationship with my wife, who is an immensely strong person, the most emotionally intelligent person I've ever met. And she's introduced me to a freedom within myself I wasn't aware of and I was afraid to even touch. So I give her a lot of grace and credit for helping me walk that path. I'ma keep it, she might be mad at me, I don't know. But I'm gonna keep it square, man, like, she dropped the coldest line on me one time. And... it still shakes me up to this day, because I used to always ask her, because, again, I didn't love myself. I used to always ask her, why you love me? Why? Why you love me? Because growing up, the people that were saying, I love you, were the people that were hurting us, Taking advantage, abusing. So growing up, I treated it like that. Anytime somebody said, I love you, nah. What you want? What you trying to do? You know? So she took it as a rejection of her love. I took it as a protection of my position. And one time she got fed up. We was at it. She got fed up. Why do you love me? She said, I don't love you. God loves you through me. Mmm. Every time I said it hits, I was like, all right. I said, OK, I'm listening. I got you. I see what's up. I see. Yeah, all right. I got you. We good. Man, when I tell you that knocked me back, bruh, that knocked me back. It still does today. How you dropping bars that cold? You know? Yeah, the pivot, you know, becoming a husband and a father teaches you a lot. But becoming a father, I know the kind of father I want to be. And, you know, I didn't grow up with my father in my life. We have a relationship now. We've since repaired the relationship. And I'm happy with where we are. But, you know, a lot of stuff I had to understand, as far as, like, what a man was, I had to define blindly. my greatest ambition in life right now is just to be the best father I can be. Nothing else really matters, to be honest. The first time work didn't matter, look, first of all, my baby, she was born. We had a rough pregnancy because she was early. She was in the NICU. It was hard. It was traumatic. It was a lot. The moment, get my baby out of the hospital, because she done been in there for a couple months now. And that whole hospital experience was nuts. Couldn't imagine that. Bro. Bro, you know, they call security on me. I'm at the hospital like... What did they call security in the hospital for? Yeah, I'm at the hospital. One o'clock, two o'clock in the morning, I'm going down to go get my wife some Snapple and some cheese, the little black thing of cheese. You know what I'm saying? We were surviving off of Snapple and cheese. And granted, now, she in the hospital about to go into labor, and I had just had my first my first of two back surgeries. So we both like barely moving, you know, I'm sitting there like this. But I'm in my like tank top, my sweat slippers. I'm walking down this long hallway to go to the vending machine. This Caucasian nurse, she passed me. And I got a hospital brand on her, by the way. She passes me up. I don't pay her no mind. I'm at the vending machine. And I look behind me at the end of the hallway. And she's talking to the security guard. She's like, all right. So I'm walking on my way back to the elevator. And he stops me. He's like, so you lost? You know where you're going? I'm a patient. Bruh, I'm a patient. Bruh, 1 o'clock in the morning, I got Snapple and cheese. Who am I robbing? What? Right. Leave me alone. But why would you even validate that woman's insanity? Do you understand what's happening? You know what I'm saying? And he happened to be a brother too, which made me mad. But anyway, back to what I was saying. It's a, there are a lot of things about the process that are horrible. So we finally get our baby. And, you know, I mean, you can't even hold him in a NICU. You know what I'm saying? Finally get my baby. But I immediately have to go to Vancouver to go shoot a movie that my brother and I wrote and produced. This is our very first, this is our thing. is the first time in my career I did not want to go. I didn't care about work because there was someone, obviously, but something else more important. And I was like, oh, this feels nice. This is a relief. So for me, really, my greatest goal in life is just to be, I would love to be a great father. I want my daughter to be proud of me, and I want her to be happy, you know? That's why, you know, when it comes to work and everything else that goes on, it's like, if it doesn't supplement the foundation for her, it don't matter. It gotta go. Yeah. I think, shoot, I even more so now am glad that we got this done, you know? I just wanted to be in the same room so people could tell and know that we ain't the same person. Exactly. Right, when I'm going through the airport. He got you. We still gotta get interest though. Yeah, yeah, got to, right? We got to, you know? Every time I take a picture, they'll be like, man, I saw you in that movie. I'll be like, yeah, it was great. That was dope. I did a great job. You know what I mean? But no, thank you so much, man. I appreciate the transparency. But also not running from the connection of our and to our community. It's important to see people who do what you do, do it in your way with that level of elegance and grace, humility, but also that says, I'm not running from where I came from and who I was. Crossed Season 2 on Prime Video Now. Every week they release a new episode. I'm going to binge it at the end because I'm not one of those people that have learned patience. And if anything, if it's anything like the first season, you got to watch all the way to 0-0 in the last episode because you will not know how it ends. Appreciate you, man. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for pivoting with us, man. Man, that was dope, man. Appreciate you, brother. Yes, sir. Because I know I've been a minute trying to get it. I've been trying, bro. I'm like, man, I don't know. But see though, that was the thing. Thank you, man. I appreciate it. Your stylist doing it. Hey, your stylist, they do everything. Oh, you do that? This is just me right now, Chelly. Oh, for sure? Yeah. I'm just telling it today. So I appreciate that even more. Thank you. That's super hard. Hey, they ain't got you like you. They don't have you like you was on Essence turned around like this. Yeah, with the cheeks out. Bruh, I swear, when I saw that, I was like. I heard what you said. I didn't even know I took that picture. No, I didn't. I was like, oh, it's Essence. OK. Bye. Bye. Bye.