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- [00:00]
Terry Gross
This message comes from Capella University. That spark you feel, that's your drive.
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David Biancooli
For more.
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Terry Gross
Capella University's Flexpath learning format lets you earn your degree at your pace without putting life on pause. Learn more at capella. Edu. 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 he played police detective Lester Freeman, who helped track down the drug dealers the detectives were looking for through his research and his analysis of wiretaps. The series was co created by David Simon, who also co created the HBO series Treme, set 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 Da 5 Bloods, he was one of the four Vietnam vets who returns to Vietnam decades after the war. Now he's one of the stars of the Netflix series the Burrows. Clark plays one of the residents in a 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 as 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 musicals Guys and Dolls, Porgy and Bess and Chicago, as well as dramas. He co wrote and co starred in the original production of the musical Five Guys Named Mo, 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.
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Clark Peters
Thank you. That was a lovely introduction. I did all that.
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Terry Gross
You did a lot more than that. But 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. And 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?
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Clark Peters
Well, I picked this profession so that I would have longevity, so that I could still be acting at 100 if it comes to it. But starting Out. I always. I always played older people. So in Driving Miss Daisy, for example, with Dame Wendy Hiller, I think I was in my late 30s playing Hoke, who is well up into his 80s. And I looked at a diary that I'd written, and on one page it was, I'm tired of playing old guys because there's no future in it, but I'm still here playing old guys.
- [03:16]
Terry Gross
What appealed to you about the role on the Burroughs?
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Clark Peters
To tell you the truth, honestly, I didn't want to do the Burroughs because someone had likened it to Stranger Things, which I hadn't seen before. This offer came through, and 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. I can resonate with this, with this journey, with the quest that. That art is on. And then I looked at the cast and I thought, oh, this. There's just no way I can say no to this.
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Terry Gross
There are roles for older people where, especially sometimes when the cast is all about older people, where I sense 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.
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Clark Peters
Oh, it's so cute they're still breathing.
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Terry Gross
They're still breathing. Oh, it's so cute they've fallen in love. Do you get offered roles like that and what do you do?
- [04:27]
Clark Peters
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 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 remember the past, you know, and if you want to move forward, you better talk to some older people, you know, and yes, we do fall in love, and yes, 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 septuagenarian. That just does not make sense. That's the furthest from my mind and hopefully from my body. So finding roles that are like the Burroughs, where there's a group of people who are the same age having an adventure. I like that. Otherwise, I've been somebody's dad, somebody's grandfather, you know, I'd just like to be somebody's brother, somebody's lover, you know, and just carry on as life is, as it really is.
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Terry Gross
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?
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Clark Peters
Sure, you can talk about it a lot.
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Terry Gross
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, wiretaps, 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 the series working the pawnshop 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. Who Avon Barksdale is.
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Clark Peters
Yes.
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Terry Gross
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's played by Dominic west, and he speaks first.
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Clark Peters
So you're police after all. You know what you're doing, but you ain't been doing it. How long you been in the pawn shop unit? 13 years and four months. 13 years and four months. I gotta ask you, what exactly does 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 look 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 4 months. Why'd you ask out of homicide? Well, no ask about it.
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Terry Gross
You got the boot?
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Clark Peters
Uh huh. What'd you do to piss him off? Police work. I think I need to buy you a drink. Just one,
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Terry Gross
I heard you say as we were listening to that. Four months. Just one. You remember the lines from that?
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Clark Peters
I remember the scene, yes.
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Terry Gross
This was one of your first scenes, right?
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Clark Peters
Yeah. Yeah.
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Terry Gross
Is that also why you remember it?
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Clark Peters
No, I didn't remember it until we started to hear it.
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Terry Gross
Oh, and then it came back to you?
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Clark Peters
And then it came back to me, yes. Yeah. I'm not one of those actors that holds on to this stuff. I'm amazed, you know, when Ian McClellan, for example, will all of a sudden, out of nowhere, start 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. When I hear something like that, it's like playing music. You know what key you're playing and you figure, I remember this melody. Yeah. So you pick it up from there.
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Terry Gross
Is Lester the role you auditioned for?
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Clark Peters
Did I audition for Lester? No, I don't think I did. But I was quite happy to land in Lester's lap, so to speak. He's the guy I want to be when I grow up. Because he does do police work. He doesn't have access to the Internet. You know, it was old fashioned research and you went through volumes of tomes 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 life.
- [09:52]
Terry Gross
Did you only know the scenes you were in or did you also get to see what was happening behind the scenes in city politics and, you know, among the drug dealers and the corner. The corner boys? And did you get to see their scenes or did you just know what you would know as your character?
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Clark Peters
No, back then, you know, we would get the whole episode and you would read the whole episode. Nowadays you get a scene, 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 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, whatever. You know, at the end of the day, the star of any story is the story you're telling. It has. It's not the person 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. 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 pumping gas. You know, I never expected to be there that long, you know, but thank the Lord I was.
- [11:33]
Terry Gross
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?
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Clark Peters
I grew up with great respect for the police. Because in Englewood.
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Terry Gross
Englewood, New Jersey.
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Clark Peters
Englewood, 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 wanted to have 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 beat 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 policed in the proper way, where the community as well, is part of the health of that community with the police.
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Terry Gross
I know that it took you years to actually watch the Wire, so my question is, what's wrong with you
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Clark Peters
work? I never had time to slow down long enough to watch it. And there's nothing wrong now, now that I've seen it. Well done.
- [13:02]
Terry Gross
Were you surprised at how good it was?
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Clark Peters
Yeah, I was. I was. I actually binged watched all five seasons. I had a double knee replacements and I was recuperating. And I thought, you know, I've only seen the first two episodes of each season because that's what they would show before we finished 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. A whole season, you know. But then when I was 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 it twice, you know, just to really get the nuances of different people's performances, but also the information that's being imparted concerning our society, you know, that I found very, very insightful.
- [14:03]
Terry Gross
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 vets 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 the men survive and was also, like, a really good friend to these four vets. So they're returning after having not seen each other for years. 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 cash in. So this is your character talking about Norman, the squad leader, whose remains they're going back to find
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Clark Peters
wasn't many brothers who made squad leader. Man was using Bloods for cannon fodder. They put our poor black on the front line, killing us off like flies. Storming earned his name, was in all kind of firefights, trained us in the way of the jungle, made us believe that we would get home alive.
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Terry Gross
That was a scene from Spike Lee's film Da 5 Bloods, featuring my guest, Clark Peters. You were an anti war 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?
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Clark Peters
First of all, I was with a group of students from Boston University. We'd taken a bus down toward, 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.
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Terry Gross
What were you arrested for?
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Clark Peters
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 taken 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 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 or 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 ant feeling a heel of 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, I don't know what I would have done. I walked out of that courtroom in a daze, heartbroken, eyes full of tears, thinking, 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 into which when we got to this courtroom, it was full of smoke because people smoked cigarettes back in those days. There was cheering coming from the gallery. And I walked into this courtroom, three tiers at the top, there's a long haired hippie dress and he's got a line of people in front of him and he's processing them. He's saying, Jane Doe, you are arrested for obstructing police lines. How do you plead? Not guilty. He slammed the gavel. Boom. Next, next. And this is all happening in less than an hour.
- [18:54]
Terry Gross
So were you gaveled not guilty?
- [18:57]
Clark Peters
Of course I was gaveled. Not guilty. You know, and they gave me back my gas mask and my I hightailed 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 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?
- [19:34]
Terry Gross
Well, at another time, in another place, that was a real possibility.
- [19:38]
Clark Peters
Maybe another time, but not necessarily another place. And that's my point, is that having had that experience, the scales dropped from my eyes.
- [19:51]
Terry Gross
Well, let me reintroduce you because we need to take another break. My guest is Clark Peters, and he's currently one of the stars of the Netflix series the Burroughs. He was one of the stars of the HBO series the Wire. He was in Spike Lee's film as one of the stars on Da 5 Bloods. And he's been in plenty of other things, including a lot of shows on the London stage. So we'll be right back after a short break. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH air.
- [20:16]
NPR Sponsor/Announcer
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- [21:01]
Clark Peters
It's June, and another big week in the run up to the midterms primaries in half a dozen states, including California,
- [21:08]
Terry Gross
where new congressional maps are in place
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Clark Peters
and a chaotic race for governor is wide open. We're also following gas prices and Iran.
- [21:16]
Terry Gross
So far, talk of a peace deal is just talk. We'll keep you posted. Listen every morning, up first on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. So 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 Hair, 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?
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Clark Peters
First of all, my career began in England. My first professional job was in England with the Watford Rep Repertory Company doing Guys and Dolls.
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Terry Gross
That's such a great show. The songs are so good. And you played Sky Masterson, right?
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Clark Peters
I did, yes. Three times there and then twice with the National Theatre.
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Terry Gross
How great is that? So you got to sing Luck Be a Lady and I've Never been. I've never. What a great duet. Yeah.
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Clark Peters
And also the best song in that is My Time of Day. It's the dark Time.
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Terry Gross
You are so right. And it's not in the movie.
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Clark Peters
Yes, that's right. Because he couldn't sing it well.
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Terry Gross
It's got unusual intervals. Was it hard for you to sing? Do you want to do a few bars of it? It's such a great song.
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Clark Peters
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 lamplight 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
- [23:31]
Terry Gross
it was still lovely, though. God, what a great song. And what a pleasure to hear you sing it. You have a pretty big range, right? That was like really deep at the end.
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Clark Peters
Yeah.
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Terry Gross
Down low in the keyboard.
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Clark Peters
I'm a bass baritone with tenor tendencies. That's what I like to say.
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Terry Gross
That sounds dangerous.
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Clark Peters
You know, as it came out my mouth, I thought, yes, that's probably the wrong way to put it.
- [24:00]
Terry Gross
So did that make you flexible in what kind of singing parts you got that you had, like, the bass and the tenor tendencies.
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Clark Peters
Yes, yes. By the time we got to Porgy and Porgy and Bess, that's in my middle range.
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Terry Gross
But were you Crown or Porgy?
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Clark Peters
I was Porgy.
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Terry Gross
Oh, wow.
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Clark Peters
Yeah. Yeah. I liked. I loved that.
- [24:22]
Terry Gross
Well, Bessie, who is my woman now is beautiful.
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Clark Peters
I'm not going to sing that one, Terry.
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Terry Gross
That's a hard one. How is being black in London different from being black in New York or other places that you'd been to in
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Clark Peters
the US let's go back to why I was back, why I came to England. I can address that particular question through theater. Okay. What England had to offer or the way I felt, feel I was successful 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, to a large degree, it was easier for me than my Caribbean or African counterpart to get the same roles. Do you understand what I'm saying?
- [25:53]
Terry Gross
I understand exactly what you're saying. Yeah. I don't think musicals are like a big tradition in Jamaica.
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Clark Peters
No, neither are they in England. But a pantomime is. Yes, that's.
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Terry Gross
Musicals are big in England.
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Clark Peters
Yes, they are now. Now they are.
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Terry Gross
They weren't then.
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Clark Peters
Well, they weren't for people of color.
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Terry Gross
Oh, I see what you're saying.
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Clark Peters
Yes.
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Terry Gross
Yeah.
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Clark Peters
Not for people of color at all. And because the dynamic, the political dynamic had to change to a large degree, I think that I was here to help facilitate that change or that acceptance. There was a musical called Bubbling Brown Sugar that 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 it was a kind of. It was a kind of show that you had to act, sing, dance, you know, do comedy, everything. And it's the first time, I think, that that generation had been introduced to this quality of performance, particularly by a black company.
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Terry Gross
What songs did you sing in Bubbling Brown Sugar?
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Clark Peters
I sang Sophisticated Ladies. Yes. I sang the Ellington song. Yeah. The Ellington. Gosh. Yes.
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Terry Gross
That also has some unusual intervals in it.
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Clark Peters
Absolutely. I get them, darling. I get them. Believe me.
- [28:01]
Terry Gross
A few bars
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Clark Peters
they say into your early life romance came and in this heart of yours burned a flame. A flame that flickered one day and died away.
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Terry Gross
That's really nice. Who would have thought that Lester Freeman could sing like that?
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Clark Peters
Oh, that's cute.
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Terry Gross
You wrote. Co. Wrote a musical and co starred in the original production. It's called Five Guys Named Mo. 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 60s harmony groups like the jazz oriented for Freshmen or the more folk oriented the Brothers Four, or the very Middle of the Road the Four Preps. But it's actually like Louis Jordan songs and they're kind of like R and B swing songs, like jump songs. What was the origin of the idea?
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Clark Peters
The origin was back in 85 when I was in Sheffield doing 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 Louis 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 Lou's songs, each one of them is a, is a vignette within itself. And he always came with a little. With a moral at the end of the, at the end of this 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 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 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 Out Mo, there's no Mo and then there's Eat Mo, you know, and so just the lyrics themselves, introduce the characters and the rest is history, basically. Yeah. I'm not on the cast album of Five Guys Named Mo singing Azure Tay, which was Four Eyed Mo's song, because I had slipped the disc and I was out of the show when they were, when they were recording that.
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Terry Gross
That's a shame.
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Clark Peters
Believe me, it's a shame.
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Terry Gross
It hurts you more than it hurts me.
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Clark Peters
Yes, yes. And actually my back is beginning to ache now in, In Sympathy,
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Terry Gross
you know, so we talked about your singing in musicals in London. But you also had a small background vocal part in the 1977 hit Boogie Nights by Heatwave. Which part is you? The bass part.
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Clark Peters
Got to keep on dancing. Keep on dancing that part. You know, you're very sneaky there, Terry. Come on. I got your number. But even before that, there's a better one. Joan Armor Trading had a hit with a song called Love and Affection.
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Terry Gross
And you're on that, too.
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Clark Peters
Yes, that was the first. That was 76, that one.
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Terry Gross
And your part is
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Clark Peters
oh, give me love.
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Terry Gross
How did you get to be on that?
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Clark Peters
When it came to England and I was signed as a singer songwriter with Essex Music In 73, Joan was also there, and we met there. She was part of a vocal duet group, 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 younger brother. She said I always reminded her of, of, of him. And we just, we just stayed friends. And one day she called up and said, would you come and do some backing vocals? So she didn't even have to ask, you know. You know, if she said, would you? I'd been. I'd have jumped, like, how high?
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Terry Gross
So. So why don't we hear that track and you singing bass on it with friends? I still feel so insecure. Little darling, I believe you can help me a lot. Just take my hand and leave me where you will.
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Clark Peters
No conversation, no way, Good night. We'll give you love. Just make love with affection.
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Terry Gross
Sing me another love song but this time with a little dedication. Sing it, sing it, sing it, sing it. You know that's what I love. Once more with the feeling.
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Clark Peters
Give me love, give me love, give me love.
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Terry Gross
As my guest Clark Peters singing the bass part on Joan Armatrading's Love and 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 the 5 Bloods. We'll be right back after a break. This is fresh air on NPR's Wildcard podcast. John C. Reilly says he believes in endless possibilities.
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Clark Peters
My wife is much more practical. She'd be like, the forecast says 90% rain tomorrow, so we should not plan on kayaking. And I'm like, but 10% like, let's
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Terry Gross
not get rid of the kayaks yet. Watch or listen to that wildcard conversation on the NPR app or on YouTube. PRWildcard. So you grew up in Englewood, New Jersey. Would you describe the neighborhood?
- [34:54]
Clark Peters
Yeah, my neighborhood was brilliant. There must have been 15 children on those three blocks. Across the street from me was an Irish family. Next door to us was. Was a German Carpenter, Master Carpenter, Mr. Fink. 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 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, coming from the projects in New York, which was predominantly black and Latin, to this multicultural block. Within four blocks of us, we had the United Nations.
- [35:57]
Terry Gross
What changed in your family's financial life that precipitated the move?
- [36:03]
Clark Peters
My father getting a job and being promoted to the advertising manager for a company called Homelight. They were upwardly mobile, I guess is the word that was bantered about then.
- [36:15]
Terry Gross
How old were you when you moved?
- [36:17]
Clark Peters
I was seven.
- [36:20]
Terry Gross
What borough?
- [36:22]
Clark Peters
Harlem.
- [36:23]
Terry Gross
Mm.
- [36:24]
Clark Peters
Yeah.
- [36:25]
Terry Gross
Your father was a commercial artist. Did he take you to museums?
- [36:29]
Clark Peters
Yeah, he did. And particularly in the early 60s when that exhibition, when the Egyptian exhibition came through New York.
- [36:36]
Terry Gross
Oh, that was a big deal.
- [36:38]
Clark Peters
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was. We spent a lot of time there. And my mother's sister Ruth, she always lived. She always made sure she lived near a center of culture. So if it was not the New York Museum, it was the Brooklyn Museum or the Botanical Gardens. You know, we're always, always exposed to things like that.
- [37:01]
Terry Gross
Part of your family is of Native American descent. And when you played an Indian chief on Treme, did you relate to that role? Because.
- [37:09]
Clark Peters
Absolutely, absolutely. It resonated with me deeper than I could have ever expected. And particularly when meeting them and talking with some of 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 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 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 offer America and the American culture.
- [38:28]
Terry Gross
Clark Peters I have so enjoyed talking with you and hearing you sing. Thank you so much.
- [38:33]
Clark Peters
Thank you. Thank you, Terry. We'll catch you the next time around, eh?
- [38:37]
Terry Gross
Yes. All right. Be well.
- [38:41]
Clark Peters
And you.
- [38:42]
Terry Gross
Clark Peters is one of the stars of the new Netflix series the Burroughs. After we take a short break, TV critic David Biancooli will review the new series Cape Fear. This is FRESH air. Richard Reeves is unimpressed by online influencers who peddle ideas about hyper masculinity.
- [39:01]
Clark Peters
You're talking about boys and men. Where's your policy agenda? You're good on podcasts, but we've actually done a bunch of stuff for boys and men. Sorry, what have you done?
- [39:09]
Terry Gross
Ideas about the next era of manhood. That's on the TED Radio Hour podcast. Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Cape Fear, based on the 1957 novel by John D. MacDonald, already has inspired two intense films about an ex convict terrorizing his former attorney. Now There's a new 10 part miniseries from Apple TV which premieres its first two episodes tomorrow. Our TV critic David Biancooli has this review.
- [39:40]
David Biancooli
The first Cape Fear movie was in 1962, starring Robert Mitchum as ex convict Max Cady 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 Katie cornered Sam's wife, played by Polly 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.
- [40:17]
Clark Peters
You gonna buy me a drink? Waiter. That'll be double, waiter. 12 year old. My rich cousin here says nothing's too good for old Max. How much do you want, Katie? How's that again? You heard me. I said how much do you want? Cassidy, you gotta forgive me. I'm a little slow after my first drink. I assume we're talking about dough, Is that right? That's right. Well, that certainly is heartwarming. The poor ex convict comes to a new town looking for a fresh start and one of the leading citizens steps right out and offers him financial help. That's enough to renew your faith in human nature.
- [41:02]
David Biancooli
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 Javier Bardem 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 cady in the 1991 remake of Cape Fear, opposite Nick Nolte as the defense attorney. At their first encounter after Katie's release, Sam tries to talk tough, but it's De Niro as Katie who's obviously in control and loving it.
- [41:38]
Clark Peters
Look, Mr. K, I realize that you suffer. I mean, I understand your problem, but I mean, why me? Look, I was your lawyer. I defended you. I mean, why not badger the DA or the judge? Badger? Yeah. Well, why not then? Why not then? Badger Best I remember, they was just doing right by their jobs. Oh, I didn't do my job, Is that right? Look, I pleaded you out to a lesser clue to defense. You could have gotten raped instead of battery. I'd have been up for parole either
- [42:13]
Terry Gross
way in seven years.
- [42:14]
Clark Peters
According to the Georgia penal code. Rape is a 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.
- [42:21]
David Biancooli
The most gripping and uncomfortable scene in that version, which was directed by Martin Scorsese, may have been the moment in which De Niro's Katie is alone with Sam's teenage daughter, played by Juliet Lewis, and approaches her with a mix of charisma and menace. Scorsese, in his Cape Fear remake, kept Katie 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 Antosca, who created and oversaw this new Apple TV miniseries, 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 Katie purely to get revenge on Sam. In this new story, the main characters are renamed Tom and Anna and Tom's wife. Anna was Katie'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 Cady, it's none other than Javier Bardem, who already has embodied one world class sociopath. Here he comes again.
- [43:51]
Terry Gross
Why are you here?
- [43:55]
Clark Peters
What?
- [43:58]
Terry Gross
What's funny? What?
- [44:04]
Clark Peters
No, I'm sorry. Just that I asked the same question every day for 17 years. Why am I here? Why are you here tonight? Because I wanted to see you both. I wanted to see you and you because I read about you, your good works and you, I mean your professional success.
- [44:23]
David Biancooli
And we're off. Apple TV provided eight of the ten 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 set in today's world, so there are cell phones, podcasters, ride shares, catfishing and public shaming, all of which figure into the plot. There are flashbacks not only to Katie'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 Katie in the film versions, and those films are echoed with respect. Just as 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.
- [45:42]
Terry Gross
David Biancooli 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 Elizabeth Pryor about being Richard Pryor's daughter, or Maggie o', Farrell, 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@whyy.org Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Sam Brigger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Roberta Shorrock, Ann Marie Boldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Anna Bauman and Nico Gonzalez Whistler. Our digital media producer is Molly CV Nesper. Susan Yakundi directed today's show. Our co host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.
- [46:54]
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