Houston’s Jason Dirden adds grit to BET series ‘American Soul’
When Jason Dirden arrived to shoot the new BET TV show “American Soul,” he sported a beard from his turn as a crooked pastor on another series, “Greenleaf.”
The plan was to send Dirden onto the set clean-shaven to portray Gerald Aims, a club owner who assists the legendary Don Cornelius through the creation of the pioneering TV program “Soul Train.” But then fate came calling.
“We decided to just wait a minute and to look through some old pictures,” the Houston actor says. “So the little secret is this look was inspired by one of the members of the Chi-Lites. It’s not straight-on pork chops, but the sideburns are curved to a point. It was all Chi-Lites.”
Dirden’s devilish chops do add some feeling of menace to his character, a man with refined tastes and a cutthroat manner of conducting business sharpened from years of dealing with complicated characters. Dirden’s Aims provides a portal for Cornelius to pass through. Without him, there’s no “American Soul,” BET’s series that premieres Tuesday.
It tells some of the off-camera tale of “Soul Train,” the brainchild of Cornelius, a disc jockey from Chicago who moved to Los Angeles and created a cultural sensation with a music-and-dance TV program that launched in 1971 and ran until 2006.
The show quickly became an AfricanAmerican institution, showcasing soul, R&B, funk, disco, gospel and jazz. More than 1,000 episodes were made during the show’s run, including more than 700 with Cornelius as its host.
Growing up in Houston, Dirden, 38,
recalls the show’s ubiquity. He watched at home with his siblings.
“I had great affection for that ‘Soul Train’ growing up, but it seemed like it was always on,” Dirden says. “I remember it being in the background on Saturday mornings when we’d be cleaning the house. Of course, I didn’t know a thing about the story behind the story until I read the script for the pilot.”
Acting as the family business
Dirden, who now resides in Los Angeles, grew up immersed in the arts, though he said he didn’t feel much of a pull toward acting until high school. His father, Willie Dirden, was by then a well-known stage actor.
Dirden’s mother, Deborah, was an artist and also a teacher, who worked at MacGregor Elementary and Texas Southern University. His older brother, Brandon, “wanted to be some kind of entertainer since he came out of the womb,” Dirden says. “I think instead of crying, he started reciting something from ‘Othello.’ ”
But he remembers being 5 or 6 and seeing his father on stage. And then his brother.
“I was always interested in storytelling, but it wasn’t something I actively pursued until high school,” he says.
He recalls his first forays into theater, rehearsing scenes in front of his father.
“I’d do a monolog, and he’d fall asleep,” he says. “I’d ask why, and he said, ‘You bored me.’ So he went back and taught me principles and foundations of character development. The craft of it.”
Willie Dirden simply wanted his sons to find a passion and then pursue it. He studied to become an electrical engineer, a job he grew to dislike. But he often thought back to his most enjoyable semester at the University of Texas: the one when he helped write, produce and develop a TV show.
“I got back to Houston and found my way to the theater scene,” says Willie, who still lives here.
The Dirdens would bring the kids to Willie’s shows. “It was cheaper than a babysitter,” he continues.
And as the boys got older, they were pulled to the theater, receiving feedback all the way.
“Brandon used to get so aggravated by my critiques,” Willie says. “He’d say, ‘Dad, I can’t do anything right for you.’ I told him, ‘Son, you’ve asked me to make you better. And I can’t make you better if I don’t tell you what you’re doing wrong.’ At that point, he understood.”
Jason says his parents haven’t missed an opening night for any of the brothers’ shows, be it a film premiere or a play’s opening night.
“My wife and I said we had to find a way to spend our kids’ inheritance,” Willie says. “So that’s what we do.”
Jason points out the mentorship aspect has changed. “About five years ago,” he says, “Dad stopped giving us notes.”
Talking about their stage work, Willie says the best writing and acting hints at a larger story beyond what an audience actually sees on stage or screen. “You peel things back and see the trauma or tribulations that get characters to that point,” he says.
Getting beneath the facade
He wasn’t talking about “American Soul” specifically. But he might as well have been.
“Soul Train” was entertaining TV, presented with polish. “American Soul” pulls up some of its twisted roots, showing the strain involved in making, breaking and maintaining a hit show in a TV industry that was both competitive and tilted against nurturing young, black talent.
Some of that story is told through the music itself. The show has additional Houston connections: Singers Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams play Gladys Knight and Diana Ross.
And some of its struggles and successes happened off screen, involving real-life characters from which the “American Soul” writers drew Aims, a sort of underworld counterpart to the bright-eyed Cornelius.
Having broken bad on “Greenleaf,” Dirden again threw himself fully into playing a dubious character. He relishes the opportunity to bring Aims to life, razor-sharp sideburns and all.
“There’s a very dangerous, unsavory part of him,” he says. “But the writers did a great job focusing on the human qualities, too. The things that make him attractive as well as dangerous. He’s more human than I first thought.
“On the surface, he wants certain things and has certain intentions, and he goes about getting them in a specific way. But everyone has these shades of gray. He’s a hustler, and he’s also a man of his word. And if his survival is threatened, he knows what he needs to do.
“To find a dangerous guy who can still be human, it’s one of those dream roles, you know?”