Hey guys, Willie Geist here with another episode of the Sunday Sit Down

Podcast. My thanks as always for listening along. My guest this week is a bit of a throwback to a conversation

I had a few years ago with the now Oscar nominated Sterling K Brown. He got to know him first

from his award-winning performance in NBC's hit drama,

This is Us. A big tear jerker for all your fans, of course. He's won several awards and this weekend

he's up for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Cliff in the film American fiction.

So sit back, relax, enjoy our conversation a couple of years ago with Sterling K Brown on the Sunday

sit-down podcast. Sterling thanks for doing this. Thanks for having me

well. Great to see you. We got a lot of history to talk about you in this neighborhood, you in this theater.

This is my stomping grounds, dude. I went to NYU from 98 to 01. I lived at one aster place right around the corner and so the public was this fixture like this beacon of when we get out of school

Maybe we'll get a chance to work at the public maybe we'll get a chance to do Shakespeare in the park and I've got a chance to work here on a couple of

occasions and it's been magical every time. I was telling you I've interviewed a

number of actors who said I want to do the interview at the public theater.

What is it about this place that's so special for people who don't even know about it?

There's all these people that come through here, right?

So you know like Mel Streep is done Shakespeare in the Park.

Leav, like you said, I've seen him do Hamlet.

You see all these actors whose careers you want to emulate

and they could be off doing all these fancy movies and TV shows etc but they take

time to make sure that that muscle of being able to tread the boards never

atrophies because they care about the art of illuminating the human condition and that's sort of what was embedded in my fiber at grad school at NYU

and so it's something that I keep coming back to over and over again.

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