Critic’s Appreciation: Andre Braugher Was an Intensely Dramatic, Intensely Funny Actor’s Actor

The first time I interviewed Andre Braugher, he was uncertain and uncomfortable. It was hard to process, coming from an actor who had made certitude into his calling card. Braugher was righteous and righteously correct or he was nothing, but it took the courage and conviction of an Andre Braugher character to shift that image as wildly and vividly as the actor did in the last third of his career.

It was the fall of 2014, just weeks after the 66th Primetime Emmy Awards. With two earlier wins already to his credit, Braugher had been nominated for the first season of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, his first nod in a comedy category. His performance as Capt. Raymond Holt on Brooklyn Nine-Nine was rooted in the years he’d spent playing stern authority figures, but at the same time, this version of the Braugher persona seemed revelatory. It opened the comedy doors sufficiently that Braugher got to be part of one of the scripted comic bits within that Emmys telecast.

But when I asked if Braugher was enjoying getting to be at the funny people’s table, he demurred.

“They’re too dangerous,” he said thoughtfully. “Do you know what I’m saying? You could never think as quickly as they do.”

He added that he enjoyed being part of that world, but “I’m much more of a voyeur at the funny person’s table.”

Coming from nearly anybody else, this would sound disingenuous. Coming from Braugher, it was sincere and humble. It was up to critics and fans to see past that humility, of course, because Andre Braugher absolutely belonged at the funny people’s table as an active participant. He belonged at any table. Andre Braugher was spectacular, and having to refer to the actor, who died Monday at 61, in the past tense is gutting.

Braugher was 30 when Homicide: Life on the Street premiered. He had some high-profile credits, including his exceptional film debut in Glory and the lead role in the TNT telefilm The Court-Martial of Jackie Robinson. But it was Homicide that cemented him instantly as one of the medium’s preeminent leading men.

As Det. Frank Pembleton, his intensity was quiet and searing … and then explosive. Pembleton was a legend in “The Box,” the man who could get any criminal to crack — and unlike so many an actor whose character’s expertise is established through having other characters speak of them in hushed tones, Braugher illustrated it in every mano a mano showdown, escalating and orchestrating like a verbal symphony conductor. It was a role that perfectly combined passion and intellect, the two forces that carried the character through too many breath-holding interrogations to count. Then it was a character who, having been defined by strength and determination, had to deal with weakness when he suffered a stroke in the fourth season finale. Suddenly this man with an iron mind and a silver tongue had to work through impairments, carried by a will that remained intact.

In a perfect world, I’d tell you to head to Streaming Service X, pull up Homicide and start working your way through the classics. “Three Men and Adena” is an all-time television peak, a work of high theater tracing a particularly heated intellectual battle in The Box. In “Subway,” Pembleton puts his mental dexterity to a different use, trying to console and bond with a man (Vincent D’Onofrio) wedged between a subway car and the platform and clinging to life. One of the most painful chapters in his stroke recovery, “Kaddish,” captured the frustration and disorientation of his diminished capacity. You’d need DVDs, though, to go on the Homicide journey. It isn’t streaming anywhere.

It’s also hard to find short-lived post-Homicide dramas like Gideon’s Crossing and Thief, for which he won his second Emmy. These cemented Braugher’s place as an actor of infinite gravitas and strategically deployed vulnerability. They also cemented him as an actor unlikely to be anybody’s first instinct when casting a role in a broadcast comedy.

When Brooklyn Nine-Nine premiered in 2013, it was a moment when most of Braugher’s roles came equipped with specialized titles — an assortment of doctors and military officers, all enhanced by the actor’s natural authority, rising as high as general in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer and Secretary of Defense in Salt. Because it continued that streak of characters-with-ranks, it felt like a continuation of that side of his career.

But let’s be quick to contextualize that chapter in Braugher’s career alongside the three-season run of TNT’s Men of a Certain Age (2009-2011). It’s that role, an insecure and diabetic car salesman with confidence issues, that scrapped the unapproachable, often fearsome, Braugher archetype and let him play an Everyman. It isn’t that Braugher hadn’t given his characters reservoirs of relatability before, but in a superb trio with Ray Romano and Scott Bakula, he got to be likable and weak and human and, yes, funny. Unlike Homicide, Men of a Certain Age is available on Max. Watch it.

But if Men of a Certain Age didn’t quite reach the mainstream, Brooklyn Nine-Nine allowed fans to go from “I respect Andre Braugher because he’s the best in the biz” to “I love Andre Braugher.”

Describing Raymond Holt as stoic or deadpan was easy shorthand, but the character is far funnier and more varied than that implies. Braugher and the series’ writers crafted a figure filled with his own sources of joy — his husband, classical music, etc. — but no way of processing the things that amused and entertained his colleagues. The arc of the show, at least for Holt, is in the warmth he grows to feel for the other members of the precinct and the ways he learns to express that warmth and even love. The character’s vocal eccentricities move past “deadpan” very early on and, over the course of the show’s run, Holt became one of the highest-percentage punchline-landers on all of TV. Give him two lines? They’ll both land. Give him two words — HOT DAMN! — and those will be the biggest laughs in the episode. I’ll never understand how Holt’s affection for his corgi named Cheddar wasn’t a ticket to an automatic Emmy, but four nominations had to suffice.

When I spoke with Braugher in 2014, he was still struggling to understand what did or didn’t work about Raymond Holt. He admitted he was used to playing characters with a wider emotional range, and he wasn’t sure how much of that he was able to layer in beneath the stoic surface.

“I’m always surprised that people think it’s funny,” he said. “I sit there, I’m saying to myself and I ask myself, ‘Is this funny?’ And there’s no definitive ‘Yes’ answer like, ‘Ha! This is funny!’ So I’m always a little surprised.”

He admitted, though, that sometimes it took him four or five years to be able to watch himself in a show or movie and forget the behind-the-scenes effort in order to tell what worked and what didn’t. I asked if in 2018 or 2019, he’d be able to know if he’d been funny.

“I will,” he said. “In retrospect I’ll be able to. Yes. History will finally confirm that that was a funny episode for me.”

History has confirmed that Andre Braugher was, in fact, wonderfully funny — see The Good Fight and hear his turn as Woodchuck Coodchuck-Berkowitz on BoJack Horseman for further confirmation — and astonishingly dramatic and an actor who took every part and every vehicle and elevated it to a special place. I assume he knew. I hope he knew.