Sterling K. Brown, TCM Guest Programmer for November, is one of the brightest talents in contemporary television and film. He scored Primetime Emmy Awards for his roles as prosecutor Christopher Darden in the 2016 anthology series American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson and as Randall Pearson in the ongoing dramatic series This Is Us. For his role in the latter show, Brown also won a Golden Globe, Screen Actor's Guild Award and an NAACP Image Award.

Brown's current or upcoming movies include Waves (2019), Frozen II (2019) and The Rhythm Section (2020). Born in St. Louis in 1976, he began acting in movies and TV in 2002 and has been consistently busy in both venues ever since. He now lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Ryan Michelle, and their two children.

The films in Brown's lineup of programming are all films from the 1960s, which he originally saw on television as a youngster and were picked primarily for his admiration of the actors involved. Having lost his father at age 10, he says that Gregory Peck's performance as the compassionate, understanding parent in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) "moved me in a really profound way."

Regarding Peck's sensitive portrayal of Atticus Finch, he remarks that, "You weren't accustomed to that level of selflessness" in a movie characterization.

Brown says that, when first viewing Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), he was unaware of the real-life history of stars Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, allowing him to focus fully on their characters in the film. "Something really struck me about the nature of that marriage... How did they endure each other? Because it seemed as if they hated one another."

Later he realized that "the antithesis of love is not hate; it's apathy. These are two people who are not apathetic to each other in the least." He considers that watching Taylor and Burton explore the depths of this explosive relationship comprise "master classes" in acting.

Brown's first "man-crush" is how the actor describes Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke (1967). "That guy just oozes charisma out of every pore of his body!" He recalls now that most of the male movie stars he grew up admiring were white," leading him to think "Wow, what would it be like if I had those sorts of opportunities?"

Now he believes that young Black actors can see films that offer "a really interesting landscape, because you have the Denzels and the Will Smiths and the Don Cheadles - so many more people who look like them."

Brown's final programming pick, The Pink Panther (1963), is again chosen for a captivating star performance - that of Peter Sellers in his original outing as the bumbling Inspector Clouseau. Describing the artistic partnership of Sellers and director Blake Edwards, Brown observes that "There's something about the ridiculousness and the largesse of the situations they create."

At the same time, he believes that Sellers proved his mastery of comedy by responding to those situations with great subtlety. "The dichotomy is what I find fascinating, because it's never slapstick for the sake of it; everything is fully grounded in character."

by Roger Fristoe