Lifestyle
Sterling K. Brown recommends taking it 'moment to moment,' on screen and in life
Sterling K. Brown, shown here in January 2020, stars in the new film American Fiction.
Amy Sussman/Getty Images
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Amy Sussman/Getty Images
Sterling K. Brown, shown here in January 2020, stars in the new film American Fiction.
Amy Sussman/Getty Images
When Sterling K. Brown first came to Hollywood in the early 2000s, casting directors told him he needed to lose his “smart guy thing” in order to get more roles. The actor, who had studied economics at Stanford and interned at the Federal Reserve, says he didn’t fit the mold of the stories being told about Black people.
Those stories, Brown says, “had to deal with Black folks overcoming certain adversities and dealing with certain traumas. … That was also linked to a certain socio-economic wash that they thought was appropriate for how Blackness needed to be portrayed in order to be ‘authentic.’ ”
The notion of “authentic” Blackness is at the center of Brown’s latest film, American Fiction. The movie is about a novelist (played by Jeffrey Wright) who’s told his work is unpublishable because it’s not Black enough — and who, in turn, writes a book that traffics in stereotypes. Brown plays the novelist’s brother, a plastic surgeon whose wife has left him after discovering he’s been having affairs with men.
Brown won an Emmy in 2016 for his portrayal of prosecutor Christopher Darden in the miniseries The People v. O.J. Simpson, and another Emmy in 2017 for his role as Randall Pearson, the Black adopted son in a white family, in the NBC series This Is Us. In Black Panther, he played the prince who betrayed Wakanda.
Brown says of his Black Panther part was a small but important role that he shot while he was working on This Is Us. “The fact that I was able to moonlight in something that did wind up making history is something that I get a chance to celebrate until the day that I pass away,” he says. “I’m so honored that I got a chance to be in that film.”
Interview Highlights
On initially seeing O.J. Simpson prosecutor Christopher Darden as a traitor for prosecuting a Black man
Hands down, 100%, he was persona non grata as far as I was concerned. Like, you’re trying to take down one of our heroes. I think that’s the way a lot of Black folks will relate to people who “make it,” celebrity or otherwise, but particularly celebrity. And particularly at that time. We have so few people that are able to make it to a level of esteem, notoriety or what have you, that the idea that the system, “the man,” that America is trying to bring them down and that a Black man [Darden] got attached to … the wrong side. This felt like, why are you allowing them to use you? That was definitely my perspective at age 18 or 19 when it happened. …
My perspective as a human being has shifted. … Like, who is the voice for the people who were murdered? They don’t have anyone to speak for them. And so someone has to do it. Even getting into Darden’s book, in terms of being a prosecutor, he’s like, “We need to have a Black presence in all facets of law enforcement, whether that is as police, whether that is as prosecutors, as defense attorneys.” … Like, a presence in all of those things means that we can work from the inside. And I think that that’s sort of an admirable perspective that he has on how law enforcement can work at its best.
On going by Kelby (his middle name) as a child, but switching back to Sterling (his father’s name) as a teen
My dad passed away when I was 10, almost 11, and it had been about five years that I hadn’t heard his name in my life on a regular basis. And honestly, Terry, I wanted to hear his name. I wanted to hear the name of Sterling. So I said, “Hey, guys, could you call me Sterling now?” … I think I really grieved my father about five years after his passing away. I think for the first five years, I felt like I had to be the man of the house. I had to keep it together for my mom. I also believed — and still believe — that my father ascended to heaven so that he was in a better place. But that still didn’t allow me the space to, like, really just be like, “I miss you, I miss this man.” And so I think it took about five years for me to fully let that out. And then after I let that out, I was like, “OK, I’m ready to hear his name again.”
On his mother’s ALS diagnosis
I don’t talk about it that often, but I’m talking about it more now because I think that the universe is calling me into some sort of action, and I’m still figuring out what that is. My mom was diagnosed with ALS in April of 2018. She lost the ability to speak in October of 2018. And I think [she] has far exceeded the expectations of most doctors in terms of lifespan, because she’s still with us, and about to go into 2024. But the joy that my mom is able to hold onto in the midst of this incredibly debilitating disease, the smile that she still has for the people who walk into her sphere is radiant. And it shows you, it shows me that, first of all, I don’t have to allow circumstances to dictate how I am in the world, that I still have choice. I may not have choice over what the circumstances are, but how I respond to them. And my mom has been a shining example of how to maintain radiance in the midst of a very difficult situation.
YouTube
On working with Andy Samberg and personal hero Andre Braugher for an episode of the comedy tv series Brooklyn Nine-Nine
I think for me more than anything else, is that when you try to stay in the moment, the next moment has a way of taking care of itself. When you’re trying to project to the future and be like, “Oh, I hope I make it to this crescendo at the very end,” then you sort of, like, wind up missing what’s happening just right now. Taking it moment to moment in life, on stage, on screen is usually the best recipe to get to the end of anything. That’s what I try to do as a performer. And I think those two gentlemen in particular are wonderful at it. And so they made it easy for me to join in the symphony.
Lauren Krenzel and Seth Kelley produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.
“She’s like a female Willy Wonka,” Sakief Baron, 36, said about Kendra Austin, 32, after she explained that her personal style had a playful and cartoonish spirit.
Dressed in loose, oversize layers in blue and neutral shades, the couple were walking on the Upper East Side of Manhattan when I noticed them on a Saturday in April. There was a symmetry to their ensembles, so it wasn’t too surprising when she noted that he had influenced her fashion sense.
Before they met, she said, she was “less sure” about her wardrobe choices. “I also have lost 100 pounds in the time we’ve been together,” she added, which she said had helped her to recalibrate her relationship with clothes.
His style has been influenced by hip-hop culture, basketball players like Allen Iverson and his mother’s Finnish background. “I just take all these pieces and then it kind of comes together,” he said.
Both described themselves as multidisciplinary artists; he also has a job at a youth center, mentoring children. “I want to make sure that I look like someone they want to aspire to be every time they see me,” he said.
In my L.A. Buy Nothing group, I started noticing how some objects, given for free from neighbor to neighbor, carry emotional weight. An item was more than it appeared. It was a piece of personal history, perhaps one with generational memories.
From one person’s hands to another’s, objects find new life through the free gift economy on Facebook or the Buy Nothing app. Buy Nothing Project, a public benefit corporation, reports having 14 million members across more than 50 countries who give away 2.6 million items a month. There are more than 100 groups in Los Angeles alone.
Buy Nothing reduces waste by keeping items out of landfills. It also builds community. When our lives are increasingly online, Buy Nothing encourages us to get out of our cars and make connections with neighbors, even if the interaction is no more than a wave when picking something up left by a doorstep. Researchers have found that even small social interactions can foster a sense of belonging.
Still, Buy Nothing has its challenges. For years, some have complained that the groups shouldn’t be limited to neighborhoods, but rather have more open borders. Last year, many longtime members complained about the project enforcing its trademark, leading Facebook to shut down unregistered groups even if they were serving people under economic strain. Critics saw the tattling as a shift from mutual aid toward control and branding. For its part, Buy Nothing says its decisions are based on building community, trust and safety.
Despite those disagreements, Buy Nothing offers a platform for special connections. As much as there are jokes about people offering half-eaten cake, many have passed along treasured items. Buy Nothing items may feel too valuable for the trash or too personal for Goodwill. The interaction between giver and receiver becomes just as meaningful as the object itself.
I set out to document these quiet exchanges in my Buy Nothing group, drawn to the question of why people choose to pass their belongings from one neighbor to another.
Tiny builders, big exchange
Lidia Butcher gives a toolbox and worktable her two sons used to Chelsea Ward for her 17-month-old son.
“We’ve had the toolbox and worktable for the last 10 years, it’s been very special. When I told my youngest son we were going to give it away, he was a little sad. He said he was still playing with it, but then I explained that it’s been sitting untouched for a year and that if we gave it to someone else, maybe someone else would be happy about it. So he felt joy about giving it to another child who would want to play with it. I have this little emotional feeling letting it go, but at the same time, it’s a good feeling. Like a new beginning.”
— Lidia Butcher, 35, joined the group several years ago when someone told her a person in the group once asked for a cup of sugar.
“We’re getting a worktable. Benji is now old enough to be interested in playing with tools. I’m going to move my drafting table out of his room. His bedroom is my office. So that will go into storage or the Buy Nothing group and the worktable will go in its place. We live in an apartment, and as he’s growing, his needs change but our space doesn’t. Buy Nothing is really helpful to be able to cycle out of stuff.”
— Chelsea Ward, 38, has found the Buy Nothing group extremely helpful since becoming a mom.
Something borrowed
Abby Rodriguez lends Sophie Janinet a veil for her wedding.
“Sophie had asked for a wedding veil on our Buy Nothing group and I’m lending it to her because I wanted it to have a second life. I hate the idea that precious things just sit there and never get touched. My wedding day was one of the best days of my life. At one point the power went out and now we have this amazing picture with my husband and I and everyone using their phone to light up the dance floor.”
— Abby Rodriguez, 40, discovered Buy Nothing when she moved to her northeast L.A. neighborhood in 2020.
“I moved to Los Angeles from France four years ago. The day I joined Buy Nothing was the first time I felt connected to the community. It played a huge role in my adapting to life here. I’m receiving a veil because I want my wedding to look and feel like my values. I thrifted my dress, I chose a local seamstress to alter the dress but when I tried it on, I felt something was missing. I wanted a veil but I didn’t want to buy new because I didn’t want to add anything to the landfill. So I posted a request for the veil on Buy Nothing.”
— Sophie Janinet, 37, is recreating the low-waste, slower-paced values she once lived by in France through her local Buy Nothing community.
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1. Abby Rodriguez, left, holds her wedding veil that she is lending Sophie Janinet, right, for her upcoming wedding. 2. Michele Sawers, left stands with Beth Penn, right, while giving her a decorative owl.
A pigeon-spooking owl gets a second life
Michele Sawers gives Beth Penn a decorative owl.
“Coming from a place of luck, now I have plenty to give. The owl has been with me for 26 years. I bought the owl soon after I bought this house. The owl was purchased because I had a pigeon problem, they would camp out under my eves and I would have bird poop everywhere. The owl must have worked because they’re gone and they haven’t come back.”
— Michele Sawers, 58, uses Buy Nothing regularly to connect with her community and support her low-consumption values.
“There are things I don’t want to own. So borrowing those things on Buy Nothing is really nice. There is a person who I borrowed their cooler twice and their ladder twice so I feel like they are my neighbor even though they are not [right next door]. We get these birds that poop on the deck and the recommendation online was to get a fake owl. When it was posted on Buy Nothing, I thought, ‘I have to have that owl!’ It’s going to have a good home with me on the deck with some cats, a dog and some kids.”
— Beth Penn, 47, once helped build her local Buy Nothing group and now experiences it from the other side, as a member.
Stuffed toys find a new purpose
Magaly Leyva, left, stands with Tatiana Lonny, right, with the stuffed toys and play balls she is gifting her.
(Dania Maxwell/For The Times)
Magaly Leyva gives stuffed toys and plastic play balls to Tatiana Lonny.
“My mother-in-law gave the dolls and plastic play balls to my daughter, but she has so much. My daughter is not going to play with them with the same intent that another kid would, because she’s really little. I’d rather another kid use these things.”
— Magaly Leyva, 35, joined Buy Nothing nearly four years ago to find clothes for her nephew.
“I’m taking these new items to a township called Langa in South Africa. I know the kids there will be so happy. They have so little there. I’m doing this all by myself, I’m just collecting a GoFundMe for the suitcase fee at the airport.”
— Tatiana Lonny, 51, began using Buy Nothing in hopes of finding resources to support the animals she rescues.
A second helping
Laura Cherkas gives Aurora Sanchez a cast iron pan.
“Buy Nothing gives me the freedom to let go of things because I know that they will stay in the community and the neighborhood. I’m giving a couple of cast iron items that my husband and I got when we were on a cast iron kick, probably during COVID. We determined that we don’t actually use these particular pans and they were just making our drawers heavy. So we decided to let someone else get some use out of them.
“I hate throwing things away. I want to see things have another life. Sometimes I take things to a donation center, but I like the personal connection with Buy Nothing and that you know that there is someone who definitely wants your item.”
— Laura Cherkas, 40, has built connections with other moms through Buy Nothing and values it as a way to cycle toys in and out for her child.
Laura Cherkas, left, holds the pan she is gifting Aurora Sanchez, right, through Buy Nothing.
(Dania Maxwell/For The Times)
“I wanted a cast iron pan because I cook a lot of grilled meat. I’m excited to try this style of cooking out and it will help me when I cook for only one or two people. I got lucky because I was chosen to receive it.”
— Aurora Sanchez, 54, has spent the past two years engaging with Buy Nothing, finding in it a sense of neighborly support that makes her feel valued while strengthening her connection to the community.
Next player up
Joe Zeni, 70, is using his local Buy Nothing group on Facebook to give away a basketball hoop he used with his son when he was little.
(Dania Maxwell/For The Times)
Joe Zeni first offered a basketball hoop on Buy Nothing in 2023, where it remains unclaimed.
“I’m giving away a Huffy basketball freestanding hoop because it’s just taking up space. We used to play horse and shoot baskets together. My son is now 35, he doesn’t live here anymore.”
— Joe Zeni, 70, uses Buy Nothing often to give items away, believing many of the things he no longer needs still have purpose.
In the year since his death, there has been no hard pivot at Armani. The shadow of the founder has stayed in place over the Milan HQ, where the brand seems happy to leave it. Armani is not just plumbing the past for continued inspiration, it’s reselling it.
Today, Giorgio Armani is announcing Archivio, a grouping of 13 men’s and women’s looks, plucked from the brand’s back catalog and remade for today. (And, yes, at today’s prices.) There’s a jacket in pinstriped alpaca of 1979 vintage; a buttery one-and-a-half breasted jacket with a maitre d’s flair that first appeared in 1987; and an unstructured silk-linen suit that will activate ’90s flashbacks for die-hard Armani clients and those who want to capture that era’s nostalgia. The advertising campaign was shot and styled by Eli Russell Linnetz, who has his own label, ERL, but always seems to be the first call brands make when they want sultry photos with the aura of Details magazine circa 1995. (He did a similar thing for Guess recently.)
Linnetz’s images are a reminder of how Armani’s work still reverberates decades later.
Archivio is also a canny recognition of what shoppers crave now. On the resale market, Armani wares are as coveted as can be. Every week it seems as if I get an email from Ndwc0, a British vintage store, announcing a new drop of meaty-shouldered ’90s Armani power suits. They sell for less than $500. At Sorbara’s in Brooklyn, you can buy a tan Giorgio Armani vest for $225.
That vintage-mad audience is in Armani’s sights: To introduce the collection, it’s staging an installation, opening today, at Giorgio Armani’s Milan boutique. It will feature the hosts of “Throwing Fits,” a New York-based podcast whose hosts wear vintage Armani button-ups and shout out stores like Sorbara’s.
It’s prudent, if a bit disconnected. Part of the charm of old Armani is that it can be found on the cheap. I’m wearing a pair of vintage Giorgio Armani corduroys as I write this. I bought them for $76 on eBay. Archivio is reverent, but its prices, which range from $1,025 to $12,000, may scare off shoppers willing to do the searching themselves.
If you ask me, the next frontier of this archive fixation is that a brand — and a big one — will release a mountain of genuine vintage pieces. J. Crew and Banana Republic have tried this at a small scale, but a luxury house like Armani hasn’t gone there. Yet. Eventually, Armani (or a brand like it) is going to grab hold of the market that exists around its brand, but through which it gets no cut.
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