Jesse Williams hopes you’ll get to know him.
Not as Dr. Jackson Avery in “Grey’s Anatomy” or the gay baseball superstar in “Take Me Out” on Broadway, but rather his lighthearted, physically playful alter ego in the Prime Video action series “Hotel Costiera.”
As Daniel De Luca, Williams is a former Marine at a crossroads who returns to his childhood home in Italy and becomes a fixer at an opulent resort on the Amalfi Coast.
He chose the sunlit “Hotel Costiera” to offset the earnestness he projected after years as an activist and educator, which he sensed overshadowed the Monty Python-loving cut-up yearning to break through.
“I feel like my career is just beginning because I was only on one show for a decade, and I started when I was almost 30,” said Williams, now 45.
“I’m excited to be able to share this with the world and kind of introduce myself to the audience for the first time,” he added in a video interview, before talking about watching movies at home, sailing in his 20s and reading Tennessee Williams for the first time. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
My Kids
I have an 11-and-a-half-year-old daughter and a 10-year-old son, and I am a super hands-on dad. But what I do for a living pulls me out of the home. It’s brutal. Thank God for FaceTime and WhatsApp video and being able to do homework and a bedtime story and just be present.
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The post Jesse Williams Feels Like He’s Just Getting Started appeared first on New York Times.