Bryan Terrell Clark On His ‘Diarra From Detroit’ Character
When Bryan Terrell Clark was auditioning for his first television role on “CSI: NY” in 2008, he walked into the casting room wearing sagging pants, frowned Bryan Terrell Clark, a trained at the Yale School of Drama and co-starred on "Diarra From Detroit," a dark comedy about a divorced schoolteacher and a mystery involving the disappearance of a man she met on a dating app. Clark set a goal to only pursue opportunities that allow him to showcase his talents and embrace being a gay Black man. The series premiered on BET+ earlier this month and airs new episodes on Thursdays. Despite internal shame from home life and difficulties in his life, Clark believes his parents have taught him how to fly and embrace his authenticity. He is committed to providing deeply reported, fact-checked news that is freely accessible to all.
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The episode’s director was impressed with his performance on set, but Clark, convinced that he could only get cast as a thug or a drug dealer, was ready to put those roles aside. He set a goal to only pursue opportunities that allow him to showcase his various talents and embrace being a gay Black man.
“I would always introduce myself and transform into the character, but I wouldn’t get it,” said Clark, who was trained at the Yale School of Drama. “We still had to Blacken up, and later on in my life, casting directors would want us to be more flamboyant. It’s nothing wrong with the array of how we express ourselves, but it’s a problem when it’s only limited to stereotypes.”
It’s been 16 years since that life-changing audition, and Clark is now portraying a character on television written for him. He co-stars on “Diarra From Detroit,” a dark comedy about a schoolteacher (Diarra Kilpatrick) going through a divorce while trying to solve a mystery involving the disappearance of a man she met on a dating app. The series premiered on BET+ earlier this month and airs new episodes on Thursdays. Kilpatrick is also the series creator.
“I’d found the language for my purpose as an artist, and that’s to push culture forward one story at a time,” Clark said. “We got a chance to actually not only to tell stories from our culture, but to be directed and costumed by people who grew up in that same ethos.”
“It was a lot of internal shame from home life to who I really was,” Clark, 43, said. “But all of the things I used to see as traumas and difficulties in my life have become my superpowers. In a strange way, both of my parents taught me how to fly and embrace my authenticity.”
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