Hey folks Sam Jones here. Welcome to another edition of Off-camera, the show where I get to talk to iconic, creative, curious artists, and find out how they got that way and in this episode I

sit down with actor Lance Reddick you know I was excited to have Lance Reddick on and a little

intimidated because if you know his work from the wire or from Bosch or from fringe or Oz or lost

you know he's a pretty powerful authoritative guy but when he was growing, Lance Radick was a really shy kid, and as one of the only

African Americans at his school, he never felt like he fit in, and his introverted nature made

him an easy target for bullies. In the face of those struggles, Lance had to confront his own self-perception at an early age.

As he says, in order to escape the trap of trying to fit into places where people try to define me or how they define being

black, I had to find a sense of myself that was independent from that.

Well, that's where the arts came in.

During his college years, Lance discovered that he had a talent for music and acting.

As he says, when I was on stage and it was going well, I felt powerful, which was something

I wasn't used to feeling in front of a bunch of people.

Despite his natural talent for acting, he took a detour to pursue his first love, music.

And when that didn't pan out, he tried an equally risky route, applying to Yale's drama school, and to his surprise, he

got in.

Being one of the oldest students in his class didn't deter him, and neither did going from

one risky aspiration to another. Lance was just determined not to have a

regular job and felt like he wasn't qualified for a regular job. Well luckily his

experience at Yale changed his life and his approach to the craft and he's become a successful steady working actor beloved on some of the greatest shows ever on television like the aforementioned wire and now most recently Amazon's Bosch and Comedy Central's corporate.

Lance joins off camera to talk about his most terrifying moment on stage,

confronting systemic racism in the industry,

and about the time he serenated his crush only to get

...