Courtney B. Vance Was Intimidated to Portray Johnnie Cochran. Now He’s Playing Another Attorney in ’61st Street’
In the first season of the legal drama 61st Street, Courtney B. Vance stars as Franklin Roberts, a public defender on the brink of retirement who refuses to leave Black high school track athlete Moses Johnson’s (Tosin Cole) fate up to the corrupt criminal justice system when he’s accused of killing a Chicago police officer — despite promising his wife Marth Roberts (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) that it was her time to shine professionally.
The series — which The CW picked up in May 2023 after AMC canceled its second season that had already been shot — made its return on July 22 depicting the aftermath of Johnson’s trial, which appears to be a continuation of a vicious cycle as it’s no longer the life of a Black teen that must be fought for but justice for the death of a Black man killed by a cop. Franklin, despite dwindling health after a prostate cancer diagnosis, once again finds himself at the center of what he deems a quest for truth.
More from The Hollywood Reporter
Awkwafina to Appear on The CW's KCON L.A. Live Broadcast (Exclusive)
Daniel Ezra Unpacks the 'All American' Season 6 Finale and Stepping Down as Series Lead
K-Pop Hits Primetime: The CW to Broadcast Portion of L.A.'s KCON Festival Live
This, of course, isn’t the first time Vance has portrayed an attorney under immense societal pressure. In 2016, he memorably won an Emmy for his portrayal of Johnnie Cochran in The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story.
“I was very intimidated to do Johnnie, so I really made a point of not watching any footage because I didn’t want to get in my head with it,” Vance recalls to The Hollywood Reporter. Simpson’s recent death in April, he says, took him back to the media fervor that surrounded both the FX series and the real-life murder trial. “He went to the grave with all that he knew, and maybe that’s a good thing. I don’t know,” Vance adds. “People had to stake their careers on what they thought. So I don’t know if anybody wanted to hear from him anymore.”
Below, Vance talks about season two of 61st Street, the parallels between the series and present societal woes and why not voting in this year’s election isn’t an option.
***
This series was shot simultaneously as a two-season pickup. What was it like filming that many episodes at once?
It was a lot. It really was because one of the stories is that it’s a legal trial, so certain things have to happen. There has to be an opening and a closing argument, a cross examination. That’s a lot of words and there are two seasons of that, too. So I really had to plot that out when the pages began to come. [I was like]: Give me my pages so I can begin to map out how I’m going to attack this, because what I don’t want to happen is that I end up holding up production because I don’t know the scene. People tend to think [acting] is so glamorous. It’s just work. It’s grinding work that nobody really sees. And everyone in the cast and crew so appreciates that I can help them get out of there and get ready for the next day. And being number one on the call sheet, I had to be ready. I wanted to set the tone.
Did you know how the story would end from the start?
I didn’t know. I sat down with the creator and showrunner Peter Moffat and [writer and executive producer] J. David Shanks, and I said, “I trust you guys.” We talked and had a wonderful conversation, and we realized we were on the same page and saw the same thing. Let’s make this the best we can make it. I had a basic idea, and I knew that he was going to get some health challenges and that they were very, very severe health challenges. But at the end, they wanted me to die there on the bench, but I didn’t know if I wanted to do that. So we had many discussions about how the health challenges end up manifesting and how we wanted the close to be. I’ll leave it up in the air, no spoilers.
Franklin has a new battle in season two, but he’s dealing with some of the same players. Where is your character mentally?
Mentally, he’s a mess because my character, and so many of the characters, are juggling and trying to thread needles. I’m keeping so many balls up in the air and if one drops, the whole ball unravels. So I’ve got to keep all these balls in the air, and it’s exhausting. I’m giving my word to my wife that I would retire and come home so she can go out because she’s been at home manning the fort, but life happens. And it keeps happening — the first season with Moses, the second season with the new case. So, at what cost does he take care of people? At what cost does the larger family have to have precedent over your core family? Those are the issues that everyone has to, when you get out in this world, start to actually navigate. At the end of the day, everyone will be gone. As my mother used to say to my father, “That job will be there whether you’re there or not.” You’ve got to take care of yourself, of those who are important to you, because those folks are worth more than that.
Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor plays your character’s wife, Martha. What was it like working with her again in this capacity after Lovecraft Country?
I really wanted to work with her again. She has such a sense of herself. When you look in her eyes, you know she’s real. That comes across in the camera and I wanted that for us. And Aunjanue is very much about making sure everything makes sense to her. She was very concerned that Martha might just be the wife of the attorney. She wanted her to be a standalone character and a powerful character in her own right. So I said, “Bring it up, Aunjanue, to Peter and David Shanks, and let the chips fall where they may.” And she did, and they rewrote everything for her. She became the political maverick, which was great for the story that, you’re trying to do this, Franklin, as the press would say [in the series], and your wife is trying to go over here. Are you guys on the same page? It was great for the show.
You famously portrayed Johnnie Cochran in American Crime Story: The People v. O. J. Simpson. Did you bring any of him into your portrayal of Franklin?
I don’t know. I was very intimidated to do Johnnie, so I really made a point of not watching any footage because I really didn’t want to get in my head with it. I just read Jeffrey Toobin’s The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson two times through, and I actually saw the throughline of how Johnnie’s life modeled my upbringing, and that’s all I needed. I said, the scripts are all wonderful, so whatever I missed, I hope will be forgiven. I just jumped in and it was a wonderful, long, arduous journey with Johnnie and our remaining cast.
Did O.J. Simpson’s recent death take you back to any particular time on set or in real-life history when Nicole Simpson’s murder trial was at the center of the media?
It took me back. I remember doing the story, and it’s thrilling and amazing to be a part of something that becomes larger than any of you. It became as large as when the O.J case — well, nothing could be that large, but it became pretty darned big, because folks who were alive then were reliving it. In the interviews during our press tours, nobody wanted to really interview us. They wanted to talk about different moments and where they were. It was so interesting, that’s never happened. At the same time, people who weren’t alive during that, they couldn’t believe that this really happened. And for us to be the conduit through which people saw history, so many things, I think, came up for all of us.
He went to the grave with all that he knew, and maybe that’s a good thing. I don’t know, even if he came out and said what he felt, whether anybody would believe it — because everybody had an opinion about what happened, and it becomes larger than the actual event. People had to stake their careers on what they thought. So I don’t know if anybody wanted to hear from him anymore. He had gotten out of jail — he ended up going back for a few years — but he’d gotten out of going to jail thanks to Marcia [Clark], Chris Darden and Johnnie Cochran. Johnnie was a brilliant lawyer, but I think they were just inept. It’s on them to prove what happened. And they didn’t prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. And instead of vilifying Mr. Cochran, everybody talked about how inept [the other] team fought. This “evil Johnnie Cochran.” Johnnie did his job. I think all that came up for everyone when he passed away. Like, “argh,” nobody really wanted to go into it; “argh, not again.”
During Franklin’s opening argument in season one’s trial, he asks the jury to “exercise imagination in place of prejudice,” and remarks, “we’ve lost the ability to step into someone else’s shoes and walk around,” which very much feels like where we are in today real-life society. How are you feeling about the upcoming election, particularly in light of President Biden not seeking reelection?
There’s no absolute thing, there’s no rhythm — one and one does not equal two. The addition and the subtraction quotients don’t seem to make sense. People are saying things and doing things, and then people are watching and going, “wait a minute, you want us to do right, but we’re watching on these phones and on our screens and we see what you’re saying and doing, and you don’t care. You don’t care that we see that you’re lying, that you’re living a lie and that the ends justify the means. You don’t care.” And so, what does that say to us? We have a choice to make. Either we do like you do and continue the mess, or we come in and go, “no, we’re going to go back to a time when people right things, or at least try to.”
I always said that — I call him 45, I can’t even call his name — when 45 [Trump] was ascending to the highest height, people are going to have to choose between the country and him. He’s gonna force you to choose. And it’s still true, and even moreso as we’re going forward. I think what Kamala’s going to do is lay it before the people to make a choice. That’s the beauty of our system. With Lincoln and the election of 1864, at the end of the Civil War, he said, “you’ve got to give it to the people. The people have to decide.” That’s the beauty and the madness of our system. But at the same time, that means we have to get involved in the system so that it can do its job. And if we get involved in the system and vote, the system will take care of us. If we don’t, as our bishop used to say, “If we don’t vote, you really can’t complain.”
61st Street releases new season two episodes Mondays at 9 p.m. on The CW.
Best of The Hollywood Reporter
