Common is not any stranger to centerstage. The musician, actor, and activist has spent greater than three many years within the highlight, rising from Chicago’s underground hip-hop scene to grow to be some of the celebrated and versatile artists of his generation. With an Emmy, Grammy, and Oscar under his belt, Common—born Lonnie Rashid Lynn and still Rashid to his friends—is circling the last letter of the highly coveted EGOT, making his Broadway debut as Junior in Between Riverside and Crazy, available to look at via simulcast from January 31 to February 12.
Stephen Adly Guirgis’s Pulitzer Prize–winning 2015 play opened last fall on the Helen Hayes Theater to rave reviews and a Recent York Times’ critics pick besides. But don’t ask Common what was said. “I haven’t read one review,” he tells me within the Lobby Bar of the Times Square Edition on a Friday afternoon. “Once you’re in the course of it, you don’t want it to affect you an excessive amount of where you’re similar to, Oh, we were incredible. You don’t want it to get you down either.”
In Between Riverside and Crazy, Common stars as Junior, the formerly incarcerated son of Walter “Pops” Washington, a recently widowed and retired Black policeman played by stage veteran Stephen McKinley Henderson. The unfortunately timely premise revolves around Pops and his refusal to drop a discrimination lawsuit against the NYPD after getting shot six times by one other police officer while off-duty, even when it means losing his rent-controlled Riverside Drive apartment that he shares with Junior. “Imagine being a young Black man growing up within the ’90s along with your father as a police officer, and your father not likely embracing you,” Common says while describing Junior’s plight. “As Black men—and I don’t need to say all of us—but we haven’t experienced that intimate vulnerable expression of what fatherhood ought to be to a son.”
Although he made his rap debut with 1994’s Can I Borrow a Dollar? and was a member of the experimental rap collective the Soulquarians with other artists including Amir “Questlove” Thompson, Erykah Badu, and D’Angelo, Common quickly established himself as a talented screen actor, appearing in movies like American Gangster, Suicide Squad, and John Wick: Chapter 2. Despite his quite a few credits, Between Riverside and Crazy marks his first time doing theater. “It’s so different than anything I’ve ever done before,” he says of Broadway. “I feel it’s essentially the most disciplined art form that I’ve participated in—essentially the most intimate creative experience I’ve had.”
He then delineates the nuances that separate live theater from his old flame: live music. “A concert is you directing your energy, and sources, and music, and thoughts, and words to the audience. Looking them of their eyes, especially in hip-hop. Only Miles Davis would turn his back to the audience,” says the three-time Grammy winner. “Once you’re doing a play, you, your energy, and your intentions are directed towards the people on the stage.”
The principal person he’s directing that energy toward is Henderson. Working with Henderson—a Tony-nominated titan of the stage and screen—has been nothing wanting inspiring for the theater newbie. “I’m about to soak this up, and I’m just going to listen and observe,” Common says about working with Henderson. “He is actually a master within the art type of acting. He also is an excellent human being and a extremely good, warm human being.”
Unsurprisingly, Henderson is chock-full of wisdom about acting for the stage. “Considered one of the things he said was, ‘Man, don’t attempt to get it right. Get it true. Don’t attempt to get it right. Just get it true.’” Other pearls of wisdom—like his thoughts on a pivotal scene where Pops and Junior have a heart-to-heart—Henderson keeps closer to his chest, possibly for fear of ruining the magic. “He don’t need to talk an excessive amount of while we still in it,” Common says. “But he said, ‘I’m going to seek advice from you after the run.’”
