Stephen McKinley Henderson

The views and opinions expressed by speakers and presenters in connection with Art Restart are their own, and not an endorsement by the Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts and the UNC School of the Arts. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Stephen Henderson has a resume that most actors in his generation would — and probably do — envy. Trained first at Juilliard and then at UNCSA, he has been working steadily onstage for more than four decades, performing in classical and contemporary plays in theaters around the country. 

In 1996 he originated the role of Turnbo in August Wilson’s “Jitney” in Pittsburgh and then went on to play the part many more times around the country, including in a hugely successful Off-Broadway run that netted him a Drama Desk Award. He eventually played the part at the National Theatre in London in 2001 in a production that won “Jitney” the Olivier Award for Best Play. Since then, he has appeared on Broadway several more times, including in two August Wilson plays, “King Hedley II” and “Fences,” earning a Tony nomination for best supporting actor in the latter. 

In recent years Stephen has also amassed an impressive film resume. When Denzel Washington directed “Fences” for the screen, he asked his Broadway castmate Stephen to reprise his role in the film adaptation. Between 2016 and 2017 alone, Stephen was featured in three films that were nominated for the Best Picture Oscar: “Fences,” “Manchester by the Sea” and “Lady Bird.” Later this year he will appear in one of the most anticipated films of recent years, Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of “Dune,” and he recently wrapped filming in horror auteur Ari Aster’s latest film, “Disappointment Blvd,” starring Joaquin Phoenix.

In this interview with Pier Carlo Talenti, Stephen reveals how in his early twenties a terrifying period of literal and metaphoric paralysis helped make him the artist he is today, a revolutionary optimist that renowned directors and playwrights alike know they can trust explicitly with their work.  

Choose a question below to begin exploring the interview:

• You left Juilliard as a young man to pursue activism in a very turbulent era in our country’s history. What did you learn during that time that informed your acting and your art thereafter? And when you returned to acting, did you feel like you had to choose between your activism and your acting, or were they intertwined?
• You mentioned Amiri Baraka’s advice about naturalness. What did it feel like to try to maintain your naturalness as a young Black actor at the time?
• Speaking of the Juilliard commencement, you said in your beautiful speech, “I suggest in these conflicted, polarizing times that we require performing artists with fearless revolutionary optimism.” What do you mean by revolutionary optimism? And why do you think it’s important for performing artists to exemplify it?
• What do you think in your own career most exemplified that revolutionary optimism? What are your proudest moments?
• Can you talk about your relationships to playwrights and whether that’s something that just happened or whether it’s something that you really very consciously cultivated?
• You have also taught actors for decades now. Is there advice that you give them today that you might not have given them 20 years ago, let’s say? Are you sending them out into the world with a different set of tools or the same?

Pier Carlo Talenti: You left Juilliard as a young man to pursue activism in a very turbulent era in our country’s history. What did you learn during that time that informed your acting and your art thereafter? And when you returned to acting, did you feel like you had to choose between your activism and your acting, or were they intertwined?

Stephen McKinley Henderson: Well, they’re definitely, definitely intertwined. And I must say it was my childhood that came a-calling, finally, when I was at Juilliard. 

I was quite happy to be studying at the time. My dear friend — who became my dear friend and mentor to some extent — Amiri Baraka, the poet, polemicist and activist, was very instrumental. We worked together in my hometown, Kansas City, and I told him then when I met him that I would be in New York because I’d be studying at the Juilliard School. I asked him if that was relevant at the time. It was 1968, and I said, “I’m studying Shakespeare and Chekhov and all this and that.” And he said, “That’s wonderful brother.” He said, “That’s fabulous. Just don’t let them let you lose your naturalness.” He said, “As long as you’re working on the great writers and learning your craft and becoming more and more expressive as an actor, there’s nothing amiss with that. Just don’t lose your naturalness.”

I knew that there was no conflict between training as an artist in the classics and remaining a part of what was going on in the streets.

I understood what he meant at the time. I really did. Because there were a few people who we both knew, actors who had left their homes and suddenly developed a British accent. We were raising money to pay the bill for someone who had been arrested for activism at the time, and so I knew that there was no conflict between training as an artist in the classics and remaining a part of what was going on in the streets.

But I had personal things in the family. And then there came a time when the pettiness that surrounded the training, some of the competitiveness and some of the needless backstabbing and so on and so forth, made it impossible for me to justify the strain that was on myself and my family for me to be there in New York. So I just want to make it clear that I didn’t necessarily think that I couldn’t train as an artist and remain politically conscious and effective, but it was a lot of personal family weight that made it impossible.

And I tell you the other thing, if you don’t mind, and maybe it takes a bit of time to say this, but I suffered from survivor guilt. My older brother was deaf. I had a younger sister with myasthenia gravis. It was just developing, and they didn’t really realize what it was, so they were treating her for multiple sclerosis. They were treating her for other things before they found out what was really there. So anyway, I felt survivor guilt. My older brother was doing fine in his world, and he was quite something, he was my hero, but I just felt that survivor guilt. And I sometimes felt, “Why me? Why should I be doing so well? Why should I have a scholarship to come to New York and study in the first class of actors at Juilliard?”

So it was personal mental stress that really caused me to leave that opportunity. And I did indeed go to and embrace the political climate of the time, which also made me realize that, well, I needed to be doing something I felt a bit more relevant or something that I could justify being healthy. So anyway, I did that. 

Pier Carlo: So how did you decide then to recommit to your acting career?

Stephen: Well, I didn’t feel complete; I wasn’t whole. I loved the craft, I loved the theater and I loved acting, and a friend of mine who was at the School of the Arts said, “You should come down here and audition for the school.” And I said, “Well, I could get there, but I don’t have round-trip fare. I have to get on a bus and come there.” He said, “Well, do it because you’ll get in.” So I did. I took the last money I had, bought a bus ticket and went to Winston-Salem, NC, auditioned and got into the school there.

Prior to that, I have to say, I was in the Western Missouri Mental Health Center. I was in a wheelchair. I had convinced myself that I couldn’t walk. I had asked my grandmother … I said, “I’m having problems, I need to go and see about myself.” So she called the Western Missouri Mental Health Center and said, “My grandson wants to come in and be examined and get some help.” But they sent the police out because it was the neighborhood we lived in and the times we lived in, and they thought that there was somebody out there going crazy and that my grandmother was in danger or something.

They came to get me and put me in a straitjacket, put a shotgun under my chin and then used some language to make sure that I understood that they were serious and that I shouldn’t make any false moves as they were saying it. With a shotgun under my chin and in a straitjacket, they put me in the back of a police car and took me to the Western Missouri Mental Health Center. It was the wrong people to come to get me at the time. But those were the times we were in and we’re not far from sometimes today. 

When I got there and they said, “No false move,” they put me in a wheelchair to take me into the Center. I didn’t get out of that wheelchair for quite a few days because I felt this is the only way that they won’t see me as a threat. So I was in that wheelchair, and I’m telling you all this, Pier, to get to this point: that one day I was sitting there, and they brought a fellow in a much more conventional way. I realized who got the kind of treatment that I got: people who came from my neighborhood.

He was quoting “Hamlet,” but he was misquoting it. He was saying the words that he thought he knew from Hamlet’s speech, I think it was, “O that this too too solid flesh would melt,/ Thaw, and resolve into a dew!/ And the Everlasting had not fix’d/ His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter!” It was one of the passages that I knew. It irked me terribly that he was saying it wrong. [He laughs.] It just bothered me, I’m telling you! I got up and I went over to him, and I started explaining the proper speech. That’s when the people who had been attending me looked over and said, “He got up, he walked, and he’s … !” Because I didn’t talk very much either. I sat in the wheelchair, and I didn’t talk. But now they see he’s up, he’s walking, and he’s quoting Shakespeare and correcting this guy.

That’s when I started to realize why I was there. I came there to get myself straight, but once I went through that straitjacket and that shotgun, I went all the way to a whole other place. And then I realized where I had been, where I had come from, that I had been at the Juilliard School, and all this other stuff started coming back to me. And that was the beginning of him being able to help me. 

In one session, I mentioned to this doctor that ... . He had a picture of William Bendix and Alan Ladd from the movie “The Blue Dahlia.” Now “The Blue Dahlia” was a film about a soldier coming back and having some mental problems. It was an early film that explored the power of the shock of PTSD, and it was a brilliant performance by William Bendix. John Houseman happened to be a producer of the film. I knew John because of the Juilliard School. He had directed me in “King Lear,” and John took an interest in me. He was very kind to me.

I told the doctor, “That is a picture from ‘The Blue Dahlia.’” And he says, “Oh, how do you recognize that?” I said, “Well, my friend John Houseman produced it.” And he looked at me like, “Oh, he’s still delusional. He’s still a little off.” [Laughing] You know what I mean? So I told him, I said, “No, I really know him!” And he says, “Oh, OK.” I said, “Well, you know what? Get him on the phone. I can call.” He said, “I’m not going to bother.”

The next day I was insistent, and I said, “Yeah, I know him.” Now by this time I was really ready to get out of there, but what I found out was that I couldn’t sign myself out. I was able to come in all right, but because I came in under the circumstances that I did, it wasn’t like I could say, “Oh, well, I feel better, let me go home.” 

Pier Carlo: And how old were you at the time?

Stephen: About 20, 21. Yeah. I went to Juilliard at 19, so this was after two years there. So yeah, 20 about to be 21. So anyway, I said, “Get John on the phone.” And finally he said, “OK, just to get you over this thing, I’m going to do this.” And he called. He apologized profusely and said, “But I have a patient who thinks … ,” and when he said the name, John said, “Oh, you horse’s ass, Henderson. You horse’s ass. I remember quite well, and what are you doing now?”

I told him what the circumstance was, and he said, “I will tell him that I have a position for you.” He said, “But I don’t. You know that, right? You can’t come back to the school, you can’t any of that. But if this is the only way you can get out of the hospital, I will tell him.” He did exactly that, and so I got out. But I had nowhere to go, and that’s when my friend who was at the North Carolina School of the Arts said, “Come down here, and you’ll get in.” And I did. And it was a great salvation to me.

Little by little, it was being in an environment where I was working on plays and being in a very supportive, beautiful campus environment. And it was young. The campus was young, and what it is now is just astounding. It’s wonderful. But it was welcoming, and it certainly was a healing for me.

Now, I must say I was a little rocky. Little by little, it was being in an environment where I was working on plays and being in a very supportive, beautiful campus environment. And it was young. The campus was young, and what it is now is just astounding. It’s wonderful. But it was welcoming, and it certainly was a healing for me.

Pier Carlo: I’ve got to say, I love that thematically speaking in terms of your life story it was “Hamlet” that was a crucial turning point for you at a young age, this play about putting on plays, about sanity, what is sane and what isn’t. It’s a beautiful story.

You mentioned Amiri Baraka’s advice about naturalness. I’m guessing that back in 1968 there weren’t as many young actors of color in conservatory programs as there are now and that naturalness was probably defined by white teachers and white actors. What did it feel like to try to maintain your naturalness as a young Black actor at the time?

Stephen: Well, it’s interesting, you’re quite insightful what you’ve said, because at Juilliard at the time, there were only three of us actors of color. 

Pier Carlo: Were there any teachers of color?

Stephen: No, and I must say that would’ve been very helpful if there had been. It really would have been helpful. It was helpful that they did provide seats for us to go and see theater events that had people of color in instrumental positions. I saw James Earl Jones in “Great White Hope” and Moses Gunn in “Othello,” and other shows. “Boesman and Lena.” But it would have been extremely helpful had there been faculty of color.

I found out later, just in passing, talking with the great Lloyd Richards that he said that he and James Baldwin had written a letter to the Juilliard School when they heard that a drama division was being founded and that it might be helpful if they were planning on allowing artists of color to come — and they certainly were — that there be [faculty of color]. Lloyd told me, “We were not applying for positions. We were simply saying it would be useful to have them there to help that transitioning, otherwise there would be some culture shock in that time.” Because they knew the times they were in.

Later on, Lloyd did teach there but not during the early years. Lloyd did a few master classes, as I have now. I’m proud to say I have done some master classes at the only school I ever dropped out of. I did a commencement address and received an honorary doctorate from the Juilliard School and have taught master classes there.

At the time I left, that would have seemed absolutely impossible to me. [He laughs.] The remorse that I had later … I thought perhaps that that was the greatest mistake of my life, but actually it was the only thing I could possibly do. It finally led me to the greatest healing, and the School of the Arts was that healing. And I can now say that I’ve delivered a commencement address and received an honorary doctorate from that school. 

Pier Carlo: Well, speaking of the Juilliard commencement, you said in your beautiful speech, “I suggest in these conflicted, polarizing times that we require performing artists with fearless revolutionary optimism.” What do you mean by revolutionary optimism? And why do you think it’s important for performing artists to exemplify it?

Stephen: Well, I got that from Amiri Baraka. One of the last times I was with him, we were together in Brooklyn at the Irondale and we were doing an evening together, actually him interviewing me. It was quite an occasion for me. We were backstage before going out, and I said, “Hey, Amiri, you’ve been a cultural nationalist, you’ve been a dialectical materialist, you’ve been a communist and a socialist. You’ve been all these things. What do you think of yourself as now?” And he said, “Well, I’m glad you asked me, brother. I think of myself as a revolutionary optimist because in times like this, optimism is a revolutionary act.”

It's revolutionary optimism that’s called for. That means what John Lewis said about good trouble. Revolutionary optimism is the kind of optimism that can see a better day in the midst of the darkest day.

And he said: “One of the things that we have to pass on — when we pass on to young people about what came before them and we talk about some of the horrible things that may have been done and some of the injustices — we have to make certain we pass on optimism with it. We can’t just pass on the horrific information. We’ve got to make sure that it comes with a dose of optimism and to let them know that this is a heroic journey.” I know he liked the quote that James Baldwin had that we must make this journey through the world as nobly as we can. Part of the nobility of moving through it, especially for African Americans but for all people and certainly for all artists, is to move through with that sense of nobility and optimism. A revolutionary optimism, not a Pollyanna optimism, not Disney optimism. And I don’t mean that in any disparaging way about the Disney cooperation; it’s a brilliant, wonderful institution. But it’s revolutionary optimism that’s called for. That means what John Lewis said about good trouble. Revolutionary optimism is the kind of optimism that can see a better day in the midst of the darkest day.

In fact it’s almost redundant because to be revolutionary is to believe that things can change, that you can change things. That revolutionary optimism for an artist is really essential because you have to believe that even with all the great art that has existed that you have something to give the world as well, that you have something to leave that is as worthy as that which you found when you came here. 

Pier Carlo: What do you think in your own career most exemplified that revolutionary optimism? What are your proudest moments?

Stephen: Oh man. Oh, Pier, [laughing] what a thing to ask, what a thing to ask. Well, I’m proud of a lot. Well, the first thing that comes to me is the work with August Wilson, to have met him and worked with him and to be one of the actors, one of the men and women who he felt he wanted to trust with his work. The first Broadway show I did was “King Hedley II” when Viola Davis won her first Tony, and I was fortunate enough to be in the “Fences” revival that Kenny Leon directed, and she and Denzel both won Tonys. But before even working with all this on Broadway, I did “Jitney,” and to play Turnbo in “Jitney” with August, from 1996 to 2002 … . We did that show and it’s arguably the most celebrated American drama at the turn of the century.

Pier Carlo: I want to talk about your relationship with playwrights because one of the many interesting things about you is that you are a member of Labyrinth. You’ve mentioned Amiri Baraka and of course August Wilson, and I know you’re close to Stephen Adly Guirgis.

Can you talk about your relationships to playwrights and whether that’s something that just happened or whether it’s something that you really very consciously cultivated?

Stephen: Well, it did happen quite organically, and I have indeed cultivated it as well. But with Stephen and with the Labyrinth … because the Labyrinth Theater Company is quite an institution and Stephen is an actor as well as a playwright and the Lab really fosters that. We have writers that contribute plays who are designers and actors and directors, and that’s in-house. We test out things in-house.

Pier Carlo: Do you write plays yourself?

Stephen: No, I haven’t, I haven’t. Throughout the years, I wrote poetry for myself. My son keeps telling me I’ve got to do that, not to write a play but to write a book or a memoir or something about acting or something about my journey as an actor. 

But in terms of the playwrights, Stephen is a wonderful playwright. Man, oh my God, I love him. And to have been a part of “Between Riverside and Crazy.” We started out … he gave us 14 pages, and he said, “I think I got a play.” The great Neil Pepe of the Atlantic Theater Company — Neil, brilliant, brilliant theater man — he believed in it, and he knew how Stephen worked. I live in Buffalo, NY, and they would do readings as more pages would come. And Neil said, “Whenever we’ve got enough for another reading, Stephen, I’ll bring you in.” So I would often just fly in for a day or take the train in and one way or the other do a reading and then get right back because I was teaching at university at the time. I taught here at SUNY Buffalo for 30 years.

And then to work with Stephen and Phillip Seymour Hoffman, their friendship and their fellowship and brotherhood, the plays that came out of that collaboration! My first time with the Lab was with “The Last Days of Judas Iscariot” and to get to play Pontius Pilate there, which was an absolute joy. Then I was asked and welcomed into the company. That in itself was a highlight to be asked to be a company member because I had trained at Juilliard to be a member of the acting company and I was never able to do it. 

But I was a member of a company in St. Louis as well, which is a very important part of my journey, the Loretto-Hilton Repertory Theater, now the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, founded by the Sisters of Loretto and Conrad Hilton. That was a great, great time to be a company member, 1976 to about ’81, ’82. 

Pier Carlo: You have also taught actors for decades now. Is there advice that you give them today that you might not have given them 20 years ago, let’s say? Are you sending them out into the world with a different set of tools or the same?

Stephen: What I tell them first and foremost is that the career you seek may elude you but the craft you seek is in your hands and that you must continue to work on your craft. You can’t think that you got a BFA or an MFA degree and now you are an actor. You’ve got to seek and continue to seek to grow in your craft, whether that means being in a class or many times it means being a rep company. If you’re fortunate enough to be a company member in a rep company … but we don’t have them as much anymore; there’s a lot of jobbing in and out.

The career you seek may elude you, but the craft you seek is in your head. And when that opportunity comes for a career blessing, you’ve got to be prepared with the craft.

But it takes some years of experience and doing shows so that your craft is what you can work on. The career you seek may elude you, but the craft you seek is in your head. And when that opportunity comes for a career blessing, you’ve got to be prepared with the craft.

And then also to go back to the place where they came from when they need to, to go back and make a contribution in that community wherever they came from. 

Pier Carlo: Like you did when you went back to Kansas City, you mean?

Stephen: Yeah, yeah. It’s like being in a room with the oldest member of the family and the newest born in the family. If you can be present when the newest baby is held by the oldest member of the family and you’re in a room with some other family members, you get to see something in context. You get to understand that you’re never alone. You know you belong. All your ancestors, everyone, everyone, whether they came from another country and came here or whether as far back as you can remember they were here or if they just came here and they don’t have a connection all the way back … but every time that newborn is held by the oldest, all the connection is made. I always try to let them know that they do belong. You first belong there, and then you have something to give. 

And you have to have a life in order to bring life to the arts. So get love in your life too, I tell them. Make sure that you don’t get so driven that you force love away from your life.