If you’re a filmmaker with an available role and you want to attract the attention of Kelvin Harrison Jr., the up-and-coming co-star of the musical “Cyrano” with Peter Dinklage (opening Feb. 25), make sure of one thing: he’snotplaying a teenager.
Over the course of the last half-decade, the 27-year-old has made a big splash portraying a misunderstood or mistreated youth in such lauded indie films as “Monster,” “Monsters and Men,” “Luce” and “Waves” as well as on such TV series as “StartUp.” He was even supposed to join the second season of “Euphoria,” HBO’s woozy, drug-and-sex-drenched distillation of high school life.
But, Harrison says, no more.
“I’m not doing any more teens,” he says emphatically during a Zoom interview. “The well is dry in that department. I’ve used it all on ‘Monster,’ ‘Luce’ and ‘Waves.’”
Which brings us back to “Cyrano,” director Joe Wright’s acclaimed takeoff on the classic 1897 French play “Cyrano de Bergerac,” in which a nobleman/soldier/poet who considers himself physically unattractive (Dinklage) enlists the aid of a friend, Christian (Harrison), to woo the beautiful Roxanne (Haley Bennett). Cyrano pens the words that Christian uses to make Roxanne swoon and so lives vicariously through their blossoming romance.
这个故事被告知很多次——大多数famously in the 1987 comedy “Roxanne” with Steve Martin and Daryl Hannah — but, this time, it’s a musical. And it was that element that really intrigued Harrison, who was also considering a military drama and a science fiction film when the part of Christian came his way.
“The musical felt like the biggest departure from everything else that I’d done,” he says. “And it seemed like it was a little bit more upbeat for me, as a character. And I was looking for characters that had more light, more levity and just excitement for life, and a little bit of a naivete and have the swagger. I wanted to switch it up instead of being the tortured teenager.”
The music man
While Harrison’s public persona may not be associated with music, his musical roots run deep. Born in New Orleans to musician parents, he is a pianist who studied studio engineering at Loyola University New Orleans, and was taught by Jason Marsalis, the younger brother of jazz/classical trumpeter Wynton Marsalis and saxophonist Branford Marsalis. Ultimately, he transferred to the University of New Orleans where he studied film.
“I grew up in music and I really respected my parents and how great they were at their craft,” he says. “And I wanted to be a singer for a while. I didn’t have that gift. Then I wanted to be a piano player and a trumpet player. And that wasn’t my game either. So acting has been something that has allowed me to express myself the way I would have liked to through music.”
但这是一个big leap from sitting at the piano to conveying a story through music with acting and singing. He admits to being a little intimidated at first. “There were a lot of new things I had to learn,” he says. “I worked with this vocal coach, Mary Hammond, and she talked to us about how to breathe, how to sing from your diaphragm or your chest voice, or your belting or your falsetto, and story, finding the storytelling through melody in the particular songs that we can carry out for the scene.”
Now, music seems to be a big part of his immediate future. He plays B.B. King in Baz Luhrmann’s anticipated “Elvis” and Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges in “Chevalier,” a biography of the French composer/violinist of African descent who became a celebrity in 18th-century France. He will also play the late artist Jean-Michel Basquiat in an upcoming biopic directed by Julius Onah, who made “Luce.”
Breaking stereotypes
Yet as much as Harrison wants to shatter the traumatized teen mold, he is proud of the work he did on those films where he had the chance to embody three-dimensional young Black male characters who plumb issues of race and class, all struggling within the straitjackets of stereotypes and expectations.
In “Waves,” he’s a middle-class South Florida kid who goes off the deep end. In “Luce,” he’s a former Ethiopian child soldier turned honor student, who may or may not have completely shaken off his violent past. In “Monster,” he’s a young filmmaker who gets entangled in the legal system after being charged with murder. He doesn’t think these movies, all critically acclaimed, received the visibility they deserved.
“I do think that, to an extent, we were put on the back burner a lot,” he says of how the films were marketed. “And I do think, especially with ‘Waves,’ people really struggled with the idea of this kid growing up in an upper-middle-class family and behaving in these spaces that way. Which, this is stuff I had seen. I literally had seen kids like Tyler, and I based it on people I knew. And so I think that was a bit tough, and so we got a lot of criticism in that department. And then ‘Luce,’ it’s just confronting. It’s disruptive. And it’s not easy to sell a disruptive movie. You’re making people feel uncomfortable. So I think I love that, I love that challenge. If we’re not being disruptive, then we’re just here. So that has always been something that’s interesting to me, in terms of storytelling and the conversations that I want to be a part of.”
But if Harrison is over being a teenager, why did he sign on for “Euphoria,”even though he ultimately backed out due to scheduling conflicts? “Yeah, it was a teenage role, and that was before the pandemic,” he says. “I felt like I was really fascinated by the show in its first season. (Showrunner) Sam Levinson told me he had a really interesting part. And so I got involved in it, I signed on, and we were collaborating, and that was going to be my last time doing it.”
Now that the second season is airing, Harrison says he has no regrets about backing out. “I’m happy for everybody, and they’re crushing it,” he says with a laugh. “I’m rooting from afar.”
cary.darling@chron.com