Frankie Faison on bonding with Hannibal Lecter and struggling with the success of Coming To America

https://film.avclub.com/frankie-faison-on-bonding-with-hannibal-lecter-and-stru-1833859430

AVC: Is there a favorite project you’ve worked on over the years that didn’t get the love you thought it deserved?

FF: The only one would probably be the very first TV series I did on Fox, which was called True Colors. I just always felt that it came up short. It was a revolutionary show, way ahead of its time. Here again, I read this script and I read that character, and I said, “That’s in my wheelhouse. I can do that.” And I got the chance to do it. I actually went out to California to do it, because it was a bold show to do, challenging, dealing with interracial couples when there was a lot of racial unrest in our society. You’ve got this black man hugging and loving and being normal with a white woman and a white family on TV, and there was a lot of danger surrounding that. I mean, we had to have security on the set, just because it was a black man and a white woman on TV.

I thought that show had the potential to have the power of something like an All In The Family. We didn’t quite get there, because we sort of... [Hesitates.] I shouldn’t say “we.” I should say “they,” because it was always my intention to go forward with the most honest stories that we could have. I wanted it to be more risk-taking, where you just put all your marbles out there on the table. But it never got to that point. I was very disappointed, because at the time I was in an interracial marriage, and I knew a lot about interracial marriage. The director and the writers, they didn’t know that. But I’m saying, “I know about this stuff, and the stuff that you’re putting out there... Some of it is fun, and it’s entertaining and good, which is what you want it to be, but there’s a level of humor that you can go much deeper with. It could be cutting, it could be cutting-edge, just like an All In The Family.” But they wanted to do more of a stereotypical kind of thing, and if you do stereotypical stuff, sometimes it’s hard to get to cutting edge. That’s my biggest regret about that show: It didn’t get there.

The show was appreciated, it ran for two years, but I only did a year and a half because of artistic and creative differences. Now, at the end of that, I came running screaming back to New York, looking for some theater to do, because it was not a satisfying experience for me. But it was the first show to take me out to Hollywood and give me that exposure, and it was a learning and a growing experience, and I appreciate that. And I appreciate the great producer, Michael Whitehorn, who had the vision to come to New York and snatch me up and bring me out there. I really appreciate that. I just wish that we could’ve gone further with that, and deeper.

In fact, I’ve often thought about maybe revisiting it on my own and just writing a show that I thought up that would just really typify what it means to be in an interracial or mixed marriage or whatever. Because people have got this idea, but we’re all the same. The color of our skin cannot define the context of our character. So I’ve always wanted to do that. That show was so important to me, it was personal and everything, but I just never thought it got the credit or the push that it should’ve gotten. But it is what it is.