“I’m a big guy: I look like a linebacker, you know? But no one cares, really, that I’m educated. I have a copy of ‘Fire Next Time’ by James Baldwin in my bag. I have an Ibsen play in there, too. I have to walk through this world with that duality all the time, that I live in two different worlds.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“I dare somebody to go to Atlanta and not have a good time.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“Atlanta, in itself, is its own living, breathing thing.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“Atlanta has become and has always been a place where you create your own universe.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“There’s no redemption in being robbed. Yeah, maybe you can replace that thing, but it will never be the way it was when you got it the first time. It’ll never have the same weight and preciousness again.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“My father was retired military, and my mother was an educator. She was incredibly creative. I used to love going to her school during the summer and helping her decorate her classroom. I would draw Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck. She was a sixth grade teacher. She and my father are the ones that got me into my love of music.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“I hope Paper Boi runs for president. I hope he does. Governor, mayor, senator, I hope he does it all. You better believe it.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“Atlanta’s a great city to cultivate your own thing – from fashion to music to food.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“You can’t share your magic with everyone. Your job is to live within your magic. And if other magical people find you, then let’s go and make a brew.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“Hip-hop is not about pretense. You can be missing an eye; you can have an ice-cream cone in your face; you can run around with Bantu knots; you can decide to wear gold, all everything. It’s not about how you look – it’s about what you say. It’s about what message you’re getting across.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“I always say I’m not going to work: I’m going to play with my friends.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“I love that you can just walk into the club and hear Young Jeezy or hear Fetty, and it’s on.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“Sometimes, you need someone to believe in you when you don’t believe in yourself.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“I used to draw and do a lot of calligraphy and typography. I’m a big sketcher, too.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“My father had one of the biggest vinyl collections I’ve ever seen.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“When I was three years old, one of the first albums I ever heard was Michael Jackson’s ‘Off the Wall.’”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“I don’t think I’m going to be back on ‘This Is Us.’ I think that Uncle Ricky had his moment; he did what he had to do.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“I never thought that ‘Atlanta’ would go off and do what it was gonna do. I never thought that I would get recognized for that show the way that I have been.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“On top of trying to find my way in this business and losing my mother and trying to figure out what family meant to me and everything – 2016, there was a lot of anger from me and a lot of anger all around. I think the hardest part was to really realize that all these things, it’s worth it.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“It’s really humbling and gratifying to see that people are finally realizing that we are talented and we have things to say and that our stories are just like your stories. There’s no reason that anybody from Wisconsin or Turkey can’t relate to ‘Atlanta.’”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“I’m very grateful, first of all, for my friends and my family because they keep me grounded, and they make sure I’m taking care of myself and that I’m keeping my sanity about me.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“I stay in contact with my castmates from ‘Atlanta’ almost every day.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“Aja Naomi is one of my good friends.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“I love the element of surprise, throwing people off of what they think they know about what I can do and who I am. I just want to keep doing that.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“Hug your mom. Hug your mom and thank your mom.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“There’s something about being onstage, man. No matter what age I am or where I’m going, theater will constantly be the thing that accepts me and embraces me.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“You can put Trump in the White House, but you need to prepare for a revolt because I’m going nuts.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“My sisters were teenagers when I was born, so the last thing they wanted was a little nappy-headed boy running around. I would imitate them or copy things off TV.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“At Morehouse, I found myself and my voice, and I didn’t want to lose that at Yale.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“I was born in Fayetteville, North Carolina, which is where J. Cole is from. I went up to Washington, D.C., where my mother moved, to stay with her, and then moved back to North Carolina to finish junior high and high school.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“I learned everything I know about music from my parents and my sisters.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“Acting really started for me because I was in a house full of adults. They never shielded their lives from me. They were adults going through this world doing what they had to do. I used to like to watch them and imitate them. They all have their own distinct personalities; even though they’re family, we couldn’t be more different people.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“I was working with the likes of Steve McQueen, Matthew McConaughey, Viola Davis, just running the gamut.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“I say this all the time: All I know is I know nothing at all.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“My school had the dopest arts program – the dopest show choir, the dopest marching band. I couldn’t sing or play an instrument a lick, but I was just going to fake it till I make it.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“Music has always been a part of my life, and it helps me a lot because it speaks for me when I can’t speak for myself.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“I’ve discovered people in my lifetime who are like, ‘I always wanted to sing but… ‘ It’s like, ‘Well then, did you try?’ My thing was always not caring about failure.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“When people ask me, ‘Are you a singer?’ I say, ‘No, I’m not a ‘singer’ – but I love the craft of singing,’ going in and finding out what that means or why the hell I’m singing in the first place. My thing is really the craft of it.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“You see the Paper Bois – easy. Personas are easy to touch and see and digest. But you don’t get the chance to really see who the Alfreds are. I want to make sure I did that with him.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“I went to college in Atlanta, so I know that city.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“The rap scene is so unique. Every rapper has to bring their own thing.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“I discovered that acting gave me this spark, this thing. Honestly, it was a way to survive.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“The projects that I’ve been fortunate enough to do are all projects where I followed my heart. I didn’t follow the money or the names. It’s all about reflecting my life and my art.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“Life should be art, right?”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“You play the honesty of the characters and show a side of them that people can relate to and want to get to know.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“I was in a musical for a while, and I sing around the house all the time, but I don’t ever think of myself as a singer.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“If you are conscious and really want change in this world, and you don’t vote, then what was all the fighting for? All the things our parents and our parents’ parents fought for?”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“Being in a club – clubs are, like, not my favorite thing.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“I was in show choir in high school.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“I think that Atlanta has this huge well of black culture and openness to share all the things that we have made there.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“Theater’s literally where I started.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“In my household growing up in Fayetteville, N.C., music was the great communicator between my parents and me.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“My mother had a gorgeous singing voice, and she’d play these amazing vinyls. My favorite was ‘But Not for Me,’ on the 1954 album ‘Chet Baker Sings.’”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“After my mother and father separated when I was 5, my mother moved to Washington, D.C., and my father remained in North Carolina. Later, I moved to New York and would often drive down to D.C. to see her. We’d ride around together talking and listening to music.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“My mom loved road trips, and sometimes we’d drive down to North Carolina. Though my parents were separated, she wanted me to stay connected with my dad.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“Yale was one of the best moments in my life – also one of the hardest. I learned about community.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“The most important thing I feel in the acting profession is to create a community that reflects you back to you.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“What does it serve any studio to not reflect the lives of people who are giving you money, who are crying out to you, ‘Hey, please tell our stories.’”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“I hope that there’s a little black boy somewhere in Montana that never thought that he would see a reflection of himself, and he turns on the television, like, ‘Oh my God, thank you.’”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“Really trying to find the people who really ride for you and are down for you, that’s hard.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“Every time you get in front of the lights and the cameras and you think, ‘Okay, well, we’ve done this before, but we have to do it again? Oh, we’re doing it again? We’re doing it again?’ It’s so gratifying, but I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it. I hope I won’t.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“TV can be a thread between all of us, and it can be a powerful tool to examine life and love and what we all have in common as humans.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“I couldn’t believe there was going to be a show called ‘Atlanta,’ because that’s my favorite city in the country. It’s where I went to college. I have so many great friends that live there. It’s where I discovered that I wanted to be an artist.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“I am the product of those who believed in me.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“Atlanta’s the hub of black culture, and it’s OK to be you there – it’s the city that really shaped me to be who I am.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“I really love Instagram for the artwork.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“The great thing about James Baldwin and his writing is that it’s still fresh every time you pick it up. That’s also the sad thing about his writing sometimes, too.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“I have been the hugest HBO fan since I was 3, watching programming that I had no business watching as a child.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“It’s not without its flaws – it’s still the South and the Bible Belt – but Atlanta is one of those cities that’s really good at uniting people.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“This is the city that kind of formulated who I am. And, not only that, but to be black in Atlanta is one of the greatest things because you can go anywhere and feel familiar with anyone who’s right next to you, from Bankhead to Buckhead.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“At the end of the day, it’s incredibly important to have a show like ‘Atlanta’ because if we can’t stand up for and celebrate each other, then who will? Who will do it better?”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“Every single person you can think of called me Paper Boi.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“I usually get approached by older white ladies of a certain class, with their pearls and, you know, their Talbots on and everything, and they’re like, ‘We just have to say, we know we’re not your demographic, but we love Paper Boi; we really love this show, and we love what you’re doing.’ It’s totally cool.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“People like to use the word ‘naivete’ as a negative, but not for me.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“The humility keeps me going forward.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“I never really thought about what kind of career I wanted to map out for myself. I just wanted to do work that spoke to my heart. ‘Atlanta’ definitely did that.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“Acting, for me, was kind of a way of survival, honestly. I’m the baby boy out of four different sisters, and I grew up in a house with so many different personalities that acting was the only way to not go to therapy.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“I just remember watching my first theater class, and I was like, ‘Oh I can get up there,’ like I could absolutely get up and do this every day and learn about it.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“I think that’s the best thing about being black is that we find a way to make our own communities and always give room for people to pull up to our tables. We always provide a way for other people from different walks of life to come into the communities that we have built because we’re so used to being excluded.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“That’s the great thing about being an actor: getting the opportunity to do something that really speaks to you.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“I’m a huge pin collector.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“’Atlanta’ is really trying to put that out there: these are just the lives of these people in this city, and this city is its own breathing, living thing, too. So how do you navigate through life, especially with dreams and aspirations in a world that tells you that you don’t deserve to have them.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“Just to say ‘woke’ is to always be in a constant stream of consciousness where you don’t feel like the wool is pulled over your eyes so much. You question your belief that everything should just be presented to you on this beautiful plate. Everything is not as it seems.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“Things are constantly evolving, and anything could happen. And that’s exciting to me.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
“Perceptions really do define what our realities are. What we’re hoping to do with ‘Atlanta’ is to really shatter that. To shatter it completely wide open. To go from the furthest lane of absurdity to the furthest lane of reality and make them blend.”
― Brian Tyree Henry
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