Harper reaches a good place in acting career
Series momentum propelled him into leading-man roles
As recently as five years ago, William Jackson Harper’s career goals were simple: He wanted to reach a level of success where he wasn’t worried about rent or in need of several roommates.
To be where he is now — in London, shooting a film he can’t discuss — is, to his mind, a wild turn of events.
Until 2016, when he landed the role of Chidi Anagonye, the endearingly indecisive and anxious former ethics scholar, on NBC’s “The Good Place,” Harper was the definition of “working actor,” competing for on- and off-Broadway roles and landing guest spots on shows like “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” and “30 Rock.”
“Just before booking ‘The Good Place,’ I was at this place in my career where I was like, ‘I’m not sure that I like this anymore,’ ” he says. “‘I’m not sure having several roommates and living paycheck to paycheck and being in my mid-30s and wondering, “Is this what my life is going to be forever?” is it.’ … I was always just a little bit freaked out.”
He hoped that Chidi and “The Good Place” would result in steady work for a season, at most. The series lasted four and gave him the momentum to snatch up roles in the 2019 films “Midsommar” and “Dark Waters.”
So Harper, 41, can breathe a little easier now.
Not only is he appearing in a secret film project, but he’s also headlining the new season of HBO Max’s anthology series “Love Life.” Now streaming, the show explores the ups and downs of adulthood and the romantic escapades
that present themselves along the way.
It follows other recent projects that have placed Harper in leading-man territory. Earlier this year, he gave a soulful performance as a freeborn
Black man in pre-Civil
War America who has a sweeping romance with a runaway slave (Thuso Mbedu) in Barry Jenkins’ limited series, “The Underground Railroad”; he also starred in the film “We Broke Up,” about a couple who call it quits but pretend to still be together to fulfill a wedding obligation.
“I never thought that being the central character in anything on-screen was in the cards for me,” Harper says. “I always figured, at best, I’d get to be a really strong left-of-center supporting character. That was where I thought the journey ended for me. I still would love to play those
roles too. But I never saw this side of it for me. And I like it. I feel like I’m reading a book where every time I turn a page, it’s empty and being written right in front of me a little bit. And there’s possibility.”
In the new season of “Love Life,” Harper carries the lead baton passed on by Anna Kendrick in the first season. He plays Marcus Watkins, a 30-something book editor who dives back into the dating pool after blowing up his marriage in ways only he didn’t see coming. The story follows Marcus over several years as he floats in and out of relationships while in various stages of self-discovery.
“It is more than just a story of dating and romance. It’s really just a story of a person growing up,” says Harper, also an executive producer.
To add a level of connection to the character, Harper visited the writers
room a few times to share his own mistakes and the questionable decisions he has made in relationships, but he’s careful to note, “Marcus’ journey is not my journey.”
Co-showrunner Sam Boyd agrees, sort of. With Harper, he says: “You feel like you’re watching a movie star and a real person at the same time, which seems kind of contradictory, but you’re like, ‘Oh, this is like a real guy in the world, and he also has this incredible gravitas and this incredible kind of star power and charisma.’ ”
For nearly a decade, Harper’s own love story has been strong and steady. His partner is Ali Ahn (“Billions,” “Orange Is the New Black”); both were in relationships when they began doing theater together in New York. Eventually, they starred in a production of “Romeo and
Juliet”; both single by then, “it just spiraled up into the sky from there.”
Harper was raised in the Dallas suburbs. He was 8 when his father, a computer operator for a power company, died. His mom, an executive assistant until Harper was in middle school, went back to school to get a nursing degree.
“There was a time where all of us were in the house doing homework,” Harper recalls. “… My mom gave up a lot and put up with a lot to give us options.”
He wasn’t a child who showed early signs of being a performer. He took theater in middle school only because his mom made him — an attempt to get the shy kid out of his shell. “I thought it was corny. I thought it was going to be a whole lot of getting down on one knee in front of a balcony wearing some stockings and some pumpkin pants — I wanted nothing to do with that.”
Eventually, however, that ambivalence turned to admiration; acting not only brought him out of his shell, but it also became a passion that fulfilled him.
After graduating from the College of Santa Fe in New Mexico, he moved to New York, working flexible jobs to sustain him in his anxious pursuit of becoming a working actor, always aware that success could fall away just as magically as it was achieved.
Maybe that’s why Harper’s peers sense both ease and intensity in his work ethic.
“He has such ease as an actor. He is one of those people you think might have been born to do it,” says Kristen Bell, his former co-star on “The Good Place.” “He is very hard to throw off his game. But he also makes some of the most outrages outrageous choices I have ever seen made by an actor; particularly when choosing the volume or tempo with which he delivers a line, but somehow they work every single time.”
“He’s a very methodical and very cerebral performer,” is how Jenkins describes Harper. “Once he gets a full understanding of the character, then he kind of becomes more instinctive, like he’s moving on intuition.”
Harper’s just happy to leave an impression. Whatever this secret film turns out to be and with whomever he teams up next, it’s clear he’s enjoying this moment.
“Getting to work with these people I’ve watched from afar for so long is a privilege that is not lost on me,” he says. “It feels like midnight on Christmas
Day when you were a kid, but like all the time. I’ve got these new toys I keep opening up, and I don’t want to put them down.”
Disney on Ice presents “Mickey and Friends.”
7 p.m. Nov. 5; 11 a.m., 3 and 7 p.m. Nov. 6; and noon and 4 p.m. Nov. 7 at Hampton Coliseum, 1000 Coliseum Drive. Tickets start at $20. Masks are required inside the Coliseum for ages 2 and older. For more info, visit hamptoncoliseum.org.
Events may change. Check before attending.
MORE FUN
Shen Yun: 5,000 Years of Civilization Reborn. 7:30 p.m. Nov. 5 and 2 and 7:30 p.m. Nov. 6 at Chrysler Hall, 215 St. Paul’s Blvd., Norfolk. Tickets start at $80. To purchase, visit ticketmaster.com.
Melissa Etheridge. 8 p.m. Nov. 6 at
Ferguson Center for the Arts, 1 Avenue of the Arts, Diamonstein Concert Hall, Newport News. Tickets start at $38 with VIP options available. For tickets and venue info, visit fergusoncenter. org.