Deadpan. Drama. Andre Braugher did it all, and did it so well.
Andre Braugher, who died Monday at 61, was a phenomenal dramatic actor. Anyone who watched “Homicide: Life on the Streets,” for which he won a Best Actor Emmy in 1998, knows just how potent he could be on the small screen. When he delivered a line on that show, or just a look, you couldn’t help but pay attention. He was never less than commanding, as you watched his thinking run across his wide-open eyes.
And that was before the mind-blowing performances of cable TV kicked in during the 2000s with James Gandolfini on “The Sopranos” and Bryan Cranston on “Breaking Bad.” Along with Dennis Franz of “NYPD Blue” and one or two others, Braugher stood out in the 1990s for softening none of his character’s flaws for network audiences. Every week, he was delivering a triumph as Frank Pembleton on the NBC show, which ran from 1993-99, even if too many viewers — viewers who’d later obsess over the not unsimilar “The Wire” — were missing it, as the show always seemed to be on the bubble.
Whether it was Pembleton aggressively wrestling information and truth out of the slyest of suspects with psychological trickery and invasive stares, or Pembleton stumbling into insecurity and resentment after a stroke, Braugher was exceptional. He could be implosive and explosive with equal intensity, no easy feat. Later on, Braugher headlined a few other TV dramas, but none caught on — though not because of his work. Inevitably, reviewers singled him out for improving on material that was too dark (“Gideon’s Crossing”) or not original enough (“Thief ”), and he got an Emmy nomination for the former and an Emmy win for the latter.
But, as we learned, Braugher had another powerful trick up his sleeve: comedy. In the short-lived but extraordinary dramedy “Men of a Certain Age,” which premiered in 2009 and brought him two Emmy nominations, he had lighter moments that were endearing, and it became clear at that point that he didn’t always need to play forbidding or outsize characters. But with “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” which ran from 2013-21, he became a full-on comic gem. He found a way to use his still face — so formidable on “Homicide” — in the service of humor, and it arrived like a surprise party. Deadpan, thy name was Braugher.
In “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” he was part of an ensemble that played beautifully together, in the manner of “Parks and Recreation.” As Captain Raymond Holt, he was the bassist in the band, holding his expressionlessness for an extra beat or two or three — whatever his ace sense of timing determined to be funniest. Just as Braugher’s dramatic timing was perfectly calibrated to chill or move the audience, so was his comedic timing for laughs, and he was Emmy-nominated four times for the role.
Holt was the gang’s father figure, and Braugher milked that aspect of the character, maintaining a grave demeanor with each of them to tease out their neuroses. But then, as in most comedies, we learned about Holt’s own neuroses and particularities, which were many, and he became fully human. As the NYPD’s first Black, gay captain, Holt was also a quietly subversive sitcom character. Whenever Braugher had a scene, it was sure to kill. All of his TV performances were notable, but his turn on “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” may be his most engaging and beloved. It’s an enduring gift from an actor gone too soon.