An exclusive insight into Jason Stuart’s unlikely journey to play a slave owner in 2016’s most anticipated film, The Birth of a Nation
If Woody Allen gets credit for coining the aphorism which says that 90 percent of success is just showing up, then lets agree that an ethos of similar import and clarity belongs to out actor, Jason Stuart, who appears as archetypal Southern slave owner, Joseph Randall in Nate Parker’s expectations-laden reprise of The Birth of a Nation (Oct. 7 release date).
Be serious about your place in your profession and make sure the industry knows you’re serious – then become indispensable.
I’m paraphrasing because I’ve heard Stuart use variously similar words to explain the foundational motto by which he also appears to navigate his personal life. However, that observation may be presumptuous given the fact that a journalist can only tepidly attest to the personal life of an actor whom he knows from a handful of interviews and from having been lucky enough to moderate a few live-discussion panels in which Stuart was, as it turned out each time, an indispensable participant.
That’s the thing about Stuart, once he gets into your head or your heart, you keep going back for more. Yet he still maintains a humble persona. Actually, that’s not fair, it’s not a celebrity-fabricated persona; it’s the genuine-article personality of a guy raised in the sinewy, palm-lined shadows of the Hollywood sign by strong and loving parents, one of whom was a Holocaust survivor.
Fairfax High School sits smack-dab in the heart of the left coast fashion-and-paparazzi quarter known as the Melrose District. But as a student at Fairfax High, Jason Stuart saw his high school the same way innumerable other LGBT youth do in places more ordinary and presumably far more conservative. He saw it as an often scary place.
“Someone wrote the word ‘fag’ on my locker on the first day of school,” Stuart tells San Diego LGBT Weekly. “I had to see that word every day for next three years. Everything is always hard for me on the first day since then, including first dates and first days on the set.”
What the bullies at school couldn’t know is that with parents like his, one of whom, his dad, survived the ghettos of Poland under Germany’s Third Reich, Stuart was better armed than most would-be victims to endure. In fact, those words to live by about being serious in career and life and becoming indispensable, Stuart credits to his late father. Stuart says he left acting for a time in the 1980s for a career in comedy because he got tired of being passed over for parts because he appeared “too light in the loafers.”
“That’s how they said it back then,” Stuart recalls. “I went into comedy because it was the only place I could overcome the homophobia and discrimination.”
Overcoming antigay sentiment in the 1980s eventually did land acting roles for Jason Stuart. In fact, he has 125 television shows and movie appearances under his belt. Although the day of LGBT Weekly’s follow-up interview with Stuart marked the day he made is 125th such appearance on a project called Hollyweird, Stuart said he was particularly proud of his portrayal of Dr. Powell in an upcoming episode of Judd Appatow’s (Trainwreck, The 40-Year-Old Virgin) Netflix series, Love.
Just a few of the film and television titles in which Stuart has starring, supporting or significant roles are the farcical, Hush up Sweet Charlotte, the cop drama, Dirty, Real Rob, the Fox series, Sleepy Hollow, not to mention his own web series, Mentor, which also stars Alexandra Paul (Baywatch) and Paul Elia.
But it’s really the coup of winning a role in The Birth of a Nation of a seminal character who could hardly be further from the actor’s own reality that marks the turning of a page not only for Jason Stuart as an individual, but for any actor who has felt the sting of being blackballed from playing any but the most supercilious and clearly gay character parts in movies and on TV.
“I play a man who is dead inside and who has no understanding or willingness to see outside himself,” says Stuart. “He’s the exact opposite of me.”
Asked what it feels like to be part of The Birth of A Nation and however much progress the film is likely to promulgate toward recognition and healing along the veins of history where so much African American blood has been and continues to be shed, Stuart was circumspect, saying that he must always defer to his colleagues who are African American regarding such matters:
“This film will show folks a new way to see history from another point of view,” Stuart tells LGBT Weekly. “And, in my opinion, it’s a more honest and complicated telling of the story of Nat Turner.”
When The Birth of a Nation’s director Nate Parker asked Jason Stuart to join the rest of the cast on stage at the Directors Guild recently for the dedication of a new scholarship fund that is being funded by the cast and that was inspired by the film, it was clear that Stuart had earned his way into the director’s heart. Stuart was dressed in decidedly casual attire. Stuart’s garb was perfectly appropriate for an audience member and ultimately looked fine on stage, but it revealed the “you-really-want-me?” humility that made Stuart blind to the fact that, as Parker put it, “you’re family now, whether you like it or not; now come up on stage and join us.”
Stuart met Nate Parker in the parking lot before his audition for the part of Joseph Randall. He really wanted the part and was nervous. Stuart didn’t recognize Parker, even though, coincidentally, he’d seen just about every movie Parker has made.
“It’s strange because he looks different in person,” Stuart says. “He’s very approachable and calming.”
In fact, not knowing that he’d just met the director for whom he was about to audition, Stuart thanked the pacifying stranger for helping him gather his nerves and headed to be auditioned. The rest is history; Stuart got the part. If the trailers and press photos are any indication, Stuart’s portrayal of Joseph Randall is going to be powerful.
San Diego LGBT Weekly asked Parker what made him believe Stuart was the right actor to play Joseph Randall.
“It was really all about his incredible work in the audition room,” replied Parker. “I wanted to stray away from the traditional sociopathic slave owner and instead present a character who had more relatable qualities – qualities some could almost perceive as ‘likable’. This would create in the audience member a more complex journey as they grappled with the systemic effects of this period of American history. Jason walked in with an understanding of this vision. He brought a confidence, humility and humor to the role in a way that helped achieve a much needed balance across the characters and overall narrative. His onset instincts further validated his hiring, as he constantly pursued brave choices that aided in expanding the breadth of his character.”
Positive feelings of each other are mutual between the director and his plebe.
“Nate was like a beam of light in that parking lot before the audition,” says Stuart. “He is one of those people who has the magnetic energy that makes you feel like you’re who he’s talking to in a room full of people.”
The Birth of a Nation, which earned a record-breaking $17 million at Sundance when Fox Searchlight bought rights to the film this year, can be fairly described as the seizing by a great African American director of a landmark film by the same name made more than 100 years ago by the great and terribly racist director, D.W. Griffith, as a means of telling the inspirational story of the 1831 Nat Turner slave rebellion.
You can learn more about Jason Stuart, The Birth of a Nation and how to see Jason live in his one-man show at the Purple Room in Palm Springs Oct. 15 at jasonstuart.com
