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This is fresh air. I'm Terry Gross. Today we remember actor Andre Brower. He died last week of lung cancer at the age of 61.

He's best known for his work on the TV series Brooklyn 99 and Homicide Life on the Street

and for the film's glory and she said. We'll hear two

interviews with him, one that I did with him in 1995 and another that our

TV critic David Biancooley recorded with him in 2006.

We'll start with David's appreciation of Andre Brower.

When Andre Brower first came to television in 1989, after studying at Juilliard and playing Shakespeare in the park.

His arrival, like his performance, was nothing special.

He played a second banana to Telli Sevalis in a series of Kojak TV movie revivals.

But that same year, he also was featured in a movie on the big screen.

Glory, a drama about the first regiment of black soldiers to fight in the Civil War.

And Brower was amazing.

And after a few years and some other TV and movie roles, Brower landed the role that made him a star,

won him his first Emmy, and gave him the platform and artistic collaborators to craft one of the

finest dramatic series roles in the history of television.

The role was Frank Pemberton, a Baltimore homicide detective famous in his own precinct for

his skilled methods of interrogation.

The TV series, which ran from 1993 to 1999, was NBC's Homicide Life on the Street,

...