Michael Emerson: I liked dark, urban stories like 'Peter Gunn,' which...

I think people respond to villains because people in general are more villainous than heroic.

Michael Emerson

heroic people thinking

My mother always told me growing up I had a punchable face. Little did I know she was predicting my television career.

Michael Emerson

growing-up careers mother

So these are the kind of things that now when people are trying to move towards multiracial congregations that they're stressing. They're talking about these scriptures that say we ought to come together, and that at Pentecost, when that the Holy Spirit is said to have come upon the first Christians, they were given the ability to speak in different languages, and so that no matter who the people were, they could all worship together.

Michael Emerson

stress christian moving

Humor is so culturally based that when I try to tell a joke as me being a white American, if I tell other white Americans, they'll laugh. If I tell an African American, they might not laugh. In fact, they either might not find it funny, or they might find it offensive, and I didn't mean it to be offensive. So these are the sort of little things that build up over time, just like in a marriage. You know, the little things can build up over time.

Michael Emerson

white laughing mean

In your actor's heart, you know when you're playing well. Others may not always agree with you, but I'm always aware of when the scene is cooking or not. You have an instinct about that from years of doing scenes and plays, and I think it stands you in good stead even in the TV world.

Michael Emerson

play heart thinking

Maybe there's even anger. But if they make it through that they come to a new agreement, and they start creating a new culture, and it becomes something that people just - a lot of times they'll say, "I couldn't live without it. I just have to be there."

Michael Emerson

creating agreement people

We've done a lot of studies to see when they do happen, why, and I mean there's a variety of reasons. But one, it starts with a commitment where they decide this is going to be who we are. Maybe it's out of their faith, a new way of looking at their faith, that we must be integrated across race.

Michael Emerson

race mean commitment

I think whites are used to being in power, so when whites think we ought to have integrated churches they think, "People ought to come to our church. What can we do to get them to come?"

Michael Emerson

church people thinking

They could never go back to being a uniracial congregation again. It brings excitement. It brings life. It allows them to be able to know people they would never know, to meet people that are outside the congregation they would have never connected with, you know, through the networks that they developed in the congregation.

Michael Emerson

excitement able people

Now they had to sit in separate places and sometimes they'd even have to sit outside and look through the windows. But they did worship together.

Michael Emerson

worship together looks

In part because they had no choice, right? If you were a slave, you did what the master said. And they said to worship: "You're going to worship with us."

Michael Emerson

worship-you slave choices

It's one of the things we find in these congregations is that they are much more likely to be sort of up-beat worship styles, more likely that people in these congregations say "Amen," maybe get up and dance some, tend to be a little bit more lively than a typical white service would be, but not as lively as a typical black service would be.

Michael Emerson

black white people

We go where our family goes. We go where our friends are, and because our social networks are so segregated by race, we end up with what we have. We also find that, you know, if you're immigrants, you're not part of that history.

Michael Emerson

social-network ends race

I really do think that every time you play a role well, you are in danger of being identified with that role until the next big thing comes along.

Michael Emerson

roles play thinking

To a large extent, people's interest in the character is the mystery of the character.

Michael Emerson

mystery character people

Preaching styles and people being slain in the spirit and things like that. Now it doesn't happen in all black churches, and it happens sometimes in white churches, right? But on average they're quite a bit different.

Michael Emerson

white average people

Downsides, yeah, and when there are more downsides when churches first start - they go through stages of transforming to becoming multiracial. So in the beginning stages there's often a lot of pain, a lot of confusion, a lot of people leave.

Michael Emerson

pain confusion people

I have to conclude, oh, the best people are all somebody other than my own race. So that's difficult. How do we interpret the Bible? Should we stress things like justice and that God is somebody who cares about equality of all people? Or is he a God of love and a God who's there to give me an afterlife?

Michael Emerson

afterlife stress race

One of the things I like about performing on the stage is that it is a kind of meditative experience. Time does stand still. You have no concept or feeling of the passing of two or three hours' time. It's all kind of one present moment, which is a kind of a description of meditation.

Michael Emerson

meditation feelings two

If we go into white congregations, non-whites will sometimes say it felt like worship never started. It was sort of dead and didn't feel that warmly received. But so - and there are different realities either way, and it makes it difficult for all groups to try and cross boundaries.

Michael Emerson

white trying reality

I liked dark, urban stories like 'Peter Gunn,' which was a detective series on network TV when I was a little boy. I grew up in a farmtown in the Midwest where not much exciting happened. I liked the idea of lives lived at night and the shadowy characters who lived in that demi-monde.