His 30
Rock character gave us two-for-one; now he’s going for the whole
nine yards.
“Deep inside of me somewhere there is a Toofer,” 30
Rock actor Keith Powell admits. He’s talking about his TV alter
ego, nicknamed Toofer by the 30 Rock on-camera writing staff.
The reason: with him you get two for one; a Harvard graduate and a
black man. The ground-breaking comedy series pulls no punches when
dealing with issues of race and sex. Apologies are not made; soft
gloves are not worn. For instance, Alec Baldwin’s character attended
parochial school in Boston during the Seventies: Our Lady of
Reluctant Integration. The Toofer character —
takes
his ribbing with thick skin, never mind the color; the actor,
conversely, is grateful for the opportunity to be a part of a
historic TV series. Yet in this post-racial nation, where does one
go from here?
“The role was really important to me when I auditioned for
the show,” he says. “In my mind, the reason I got the part is I
looked at Toofer and realized that he had nothing to apologize for.
He is an insanely smart person. And black. There were a lot of
people who auditioned for Toofer who kind of made the joke that
Toofer was smart and black. The way that I created it was that there
was no joke about it. He just is smart.”
Powell was born in Philadelphia and attended NYU. He was a
regional theater actor who found his way to California when he was
plucked from obscurity for the key series role. Along the way, no
silver spoon passed his lips and no career simply dropped into his
lap.
“I
grew up very poor,” he says. “But everybody I was surrounded by
and
pitfalls to avoid.
“It really was akin to hitting the lottery,” he says of
winning the coveted role. “And now it’s seven years later and I have
a career and a momentum and I have a new house. So there is that
fear that I am going to go back to being that scared regional
theater actor when I walk into an audition. The worry is that I will
never find another Tina Fey again.”
The worry may be premature; upon the series finale, Powell
is immediately off to other projects, including a guest stint on
NCIS: Los Angeles, which speaks to the dramatic actor in him.
“It was a chance to do drama which, frankly, was all I was
ever hired for before 30 Rock,” he says. “It was a chance to
do a dramatic series, which was really exciting. I got to hang out
with [series star] LL Cool J. My fiancé is a visual artist. She sold
a painting to LL about a year ago. So he was telling me that it was
hanging up in his office and that he really liked it. So it was a
thrill.”
The thrill won’t be gone any time soon as Powell gears up
for his career 2.0. Still, it’s hard to come down from the Rock.
“It does feel like it’s an incredibly hard act to follow,”
he admits. “When we started the show, no one expected it to even get
on the air. None of our cast expected it to last half of the first
season. And it kind of steamrolled.”
The steamroller keeps rolling, as Powell has yet to
explore every opportunity that awaits. He explains it this way:
“On the first day of college, we were
asked, ‘Why do you want to be an actor?’ The girl next to me said,
‘I want to be an actor because I get to play different people.’ And
I thought, that’s not the reason that I want to be an actor. The
reason I want to be an actor is because I get to be different
aspects of me. Deep inside of me, there is a Toofer. And it’s fun to
explore that aspect of me. Deep inside of me is a dancer, a lawyer,
but it’s all me, and being an actor is finding my way in.”
CLICK HERE TO SEE WHAT 30 ROCK CREATOR/STAR TINA FEY
HAD TO SAY TO US IN 2008!
