The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 04/08/2008
Boris Kodjoe has sat on an elephant and shot fashion campaigns with Naomi Campbell. He has played a delivery man on the Showtime series "Soul Food" — later marrying his character's love interest, actress Nicole Ari Parker, in real life. And he has filmed two movies — Tyler Perry's "Madea's Family Reunion" and "The Gospel" — in Atlanta, the city he now calls home.
On Tuesday, the 35-year-old actor who once made People magazine's list of the world's most beautiful people takes another major career step — making his Broadway debut in the celebrated revival of Tennessee Williams' "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof."
 Jessica McGowan/AJC | |||
| Boris Kodjoe hopes directors and producers will see him in a different light after he completes his run in 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.' | |||
 Guy D'alema/Screen Gems, Inc. | |||
| Boris Kodjoe fell in love with Atlanta while filming 'The Gospel' because he knew it was a place he and wife Nicole Ari Parker could raise their children. | |||
 Sara Krulwich/The New York Times | |||
| Boris Kodjoe will replace Terrence Howard, and get to act opposite James Earl Jones, in the Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams' 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.' | |||
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MOST POPULARThe strikingly handsome, 6-foot-4 former professional tennis player will play the seething, catatonically drunk Brick in an all-black cast that includes James Earl Jones as Big Daddy, Phylicia Rashad as Big Mama and Anika Noni Rose as Maggie the Cat.
But "black" does not always mean what the public, and Hollywood, assumes. Calling the cast "African-American" is a misnomer. It's reductive. It's not true.
Kodjoe (pronounced "ko-jo") is a European black man who was born in Vienna, Austria, and grew up in Germany. His mother is German. His father is from Ghana. His story is part Arnold Schwarzenegger, part Barack Obama.
"They see you as an African-American actor," says Kodjoe, who fills in for Terrence Howard in the sold-out Broadway hit through May 4. "Meanwhile, every time I step in front of a camera, I do a foreign film because this is not my mother language. This is not my mother tongue.
"When I first got that acting bug, I knew I didn't stand a chance to make it unless I got rid of my accent, because a lot of German-speaking actors come to Hollywood and they end up playing the Russian and the German Nazi.
"I knew I wasn't going to convince them to let me play the Nazi and stuff," he jokes of his skin color. "So I got rid of my accent."
Kodjoe's maternal grandmother is Jewish. To survive Hitler's regime, she married a Nazi.
"In the '60s, my mother came home with a black man, and my grandfather almost had a heart attack," Kodjoe says. His grandfather, who had both his arms blown off during World War II, eventually grew to accept his black grandson. As a kid, the actor remembers shaving his grandfather.
'A new normal'
A private man who lives in north Atlanta with his wife and two small children, Kodjoe invited a reporter and photographer into his home to talk about his serendipitous career, his Broadway gig and the life-changing experience of having children.
Parker and Kodjoe's 3-year-old daughter, Sophie, was born with spina bifida, a birth defect of the spine, and the glamorous movie star couple have become supporters of the Spina Bifida Association of Georgia.
"From the time we first met, their attitude has always been: 'What can we do to help?'" says Jim Okula, CEO of Spina Bifida Association of Georgia. Kodjoe says the support system has been two-fold.
"Sometimes, all you need is somebody to sit there and understand what you are going through, because it's something you are not ready for at first," he says. "I look at my daughter and she is the happiest little girl on the planet and she teaches me how to take this. This is a new normal. When you stop asking why and start accepting that new normal, that gives you a lot of strength."
Kodjoe fell in love with Atlanta while filming "The Gospel" and "Madea's Family Reunion" here in 2005. "I knew that L.A. was not the place to raise kids," he says. Atlantans "give you love and they respect your privacy. They understand that when we are with the kids, we don't like to take pictures."
Breaking through typecasting
The actor says he's not nervous about Broadway, a proving ground that has been a challenge for movie stars such as Julia Roberts and theater newcomers such as Sean Combs and Usher. "Right now, I'm just giddy."
He hopes directors and producers will now see him in a different light. He says he's been typecast as a good-looking ladies' man, but never as a serious lead.
"As soon as I heard about the project, I had a conference call with my manager and my agent, and I said, 'OK. I don't care what you do, or what you have to do, to get me in the room with these people. But I want to do this play.'"
Director Debbie Allen was impressed by what she saw. "I know there is a part of this character that speaks to him in very special ways because of his own life experience," she says.
"I can relate on many levels," Kodjoe says, stretching out on a white sofa in the breezy living room of his Mediterranean-style home, wearing jeans, a short-sleeve shirt and socks but no shoes. "The father-son relationship is something I can relate to very well. The fact that sometimes people have a hard time talking to each other, even though they have been so close forever."
Like Brick, a fallen football hero, Kodjoe was once an ambitious athlete. He started tennis at 3 and went pro at 16. Before college, he "crashed and burned."
"My back went out on me, and I found I had three herniated discs. I had grown so fast, and all that tennis, six hours a day, was too much."
Says Allen: "He went into a whole depression for over a year, didn't want to speak to anybody, was disgusted with the world. So he has that in his back pocket. He is that beautiful, glorious-looking athlete, but he is also grounded in something very real."
A backup plan to modeling
Kodjoe recovered enough from his injuries to play tennis for Virginia Commonwealth University in the late '90s. Visiting his sister in New York during that time, he was approached by a stranger from Ford Models. "She just came up to me and asked me what agency I was with, and I was like, 'What?' "
Ford sent him out to meet photographers and fashion directors. Photographer Bruce Weber made a Polaroid and asked Kodjoe if he could start immediately. "The next day, I was sitting on an elephant with Naomi Campbell, shooting the Versace campaign. That was my first job."
While modeling, Kodjoe realized he needed a backup plan, so he took up acting.
In 2004, he was cast in "Soul Food," playing a package delivery man named Damon Carter, "a colorful guy with tons of issues, tons of love in his heart." Parker played the character's love interest, a spunky attorney. On the last episode, after five seasons of dating and breaking up, the two characters were married. And then life, as they say, imitated art.
Kodjoe said that Parker befriended him from the beginning, but they didn't start a relationship until later. "Everybody knew, except us," that they were meant to be together, he says.
Though Kodjoe is friendly and kind, he still maintains the aura of the outsider, a man who wants to be taken as a serious artist and not just a hunk.
"I just need a chance, an opportunity, because in Hollywood, executives like to label you," Kodjoe says. "They like to put you in a corner. ... It's very hard to step out of that corner and spread your wings and do things people don't necessarily expect you to do."
A German black playing a part made famous on film by blue-eyed Paul Newman? Now that's a departure.
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