In Always Great, Awards Insider speaks with Hollywood’s greatest undersung actors in career-spanning conversations. In this installment, The Wire and The Book of Mormon alum Michael Potts explores his bumpy journey to the world of August Wilson, culminating in his brilliant turn in The Piano Lesson.
After enough time auditioning in Hollywood, Michael Potts learned to steel himself for the question he’d get over and over: Where are you from? “I was not seen as urban enough— or ‘street’ enough, the word I used to hear a lot—when we first got out of school,” the Yale Drama graduate says. “In this business, you get categorized, you get typecast…. I was foreign to them. Alien.” His favorite example relates to 1999’s The Cider House Rules. Potts had already secured the role of Peaches in a previous iteration of the project that fell apart. He was asked to read for the part again—and he knew, for this audition, he wasn’t exactly the favorite. So he decided to play a “dirty trick” on director Lasse Hallström.
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The post Michael Potts Is the Secret Weapon of ‘The Piano Lesson.’ He’s Gotten Used to That appeared first on Vanity Fair.
