Cover story: It's a good time to be Sterling K. Brown

Los Angeles Times

13 hours ago

Who among us hasn't contemplated holing up in a bunker, maybe with a good book, a cache of taquitos and, as the immortal Burgess Meredith put it, 'time enough at last'?
I'm Glenn Whipp, columnist for the Los Angeles Times, host of The Envelope newsletter and the guy checking to make sure everything is watertight because you never know.
Sterling K. Brown has a bunker. He didn't build it. It came with the Ladera Heights house that he and his wife bought a number of years ago.
As I mention in my profile of Brown, which covers this week's issue of The Envelope, the couple sealed it off as they didn't want their boys to wander in there. But now that they're older and the world is getting ... let's just say more interesting, they're thinking about opening it up.
I don't have a bunker, probably because another 'Twilight Zone' episode is lodged in my brain (I watched a lot of 'Twilight Zone' as a kid): the one where a bunch of angry neighbors use a battering ram to break into a family's shelter.
Personally, I don't want to deal with having to clean up that kind of mess. I'd rather take my chances on the outside.
Brown just earned an Emmy nomination for his lead role in 'Paradise,' a twisty apocalyptic drama that finds 25,000 people holed up inside a massive domed underground city after a tsunami floods the planet.
Like every other drama that uses a shelter in its premise, it deals with all manner of moral conundrums, which leads to some great what-if scenarios.
Like: Because space in a bunker is necessarily limited — resources and air being finite — what if you have to shut the door to your kids?
'I'm not going in there without my kids,' Brown says, adding that he'd gladly sacrifice himself so they could live and potentially have at least as much time on the planet as he has enjoyed.
'If they couldn't make it, and I did, I think that is a very particular type of torture,' Brown says. 'My sister lost a son, and that is a pain that I don't wish on any parent, and many parents have to experience it day in and day out. It's not something that I even like to think about. And as an actor, you are asked to contemplate truly wild, preposterous, awful scenarios. That one, losing a child ... I don't want to go there.'
Yet, Brown, a man who strives to find something to be grateful for in even the worst scenarios, can't let it end there, his mind drifting back to the show that helped establish his career.
'You know, 'This Is Us' was all about people losing things. You lose people, you lose homes, you lose friendships, you lose marriages. And the underlying theme was: Life goes on. There's still something beautiful to be found on the other side, right? So I guess I would have to remember that, like actively remember that I have had an experience that teaches me that there is something of value if I persist.'
It's easy to talk with Brown on just about any subject and our conversations covered a lot of ground. As the headline puts it: 'Ayahuasca. Football. God. Sterling K. Brown has a take on just about everything.' I think you'll enjoy the read.
I'll be back in your inbox Friday. And remember: Enjoy every sandwich.