Brian White had to leave the New England Patriots after a career-ending knee injury. After putting down the pigskin, White picked up acting and now has a recurring role in the award-winning drama, “The Shield.” In this interview, White talks about sports, the importance of family, charity work, and his admiration for “Mr. 3000” star, Bernie Mac.
INTERVIEW WITH BRIAN WHITE ('T-Rex'):
It’s not easy to play someone who isn’t nice, yet he’s still likeable. How did you pull that off?
I think it’s probably mostly about trying to find the humanity in the character, understanding why they do what they do… Charles is a very philosophical director so when we sat down and talked about the motivations for people’s actions, that is intrinsic to developing T-Rex.
I know this guy, I know guys like him, I’ve played with guys like him, and he’s a very real person. There’s lots of examples in professional sports of guys that focus on themselves first and the team is an afterthought. The opportunities that they have for them and their family, the reasons why they articulate and they’re probably understandable, where they came from and where they are now, are disparate. They are so far away from each other that you can almost understand, which if you can convey that on screen makes them understandable, if not likable.
Did your sports background apply to playing this character?
Sure. I played baseball all of my life. It’s probably my strongest sport. I like collision sports, contact sports. I just like being in people’s face more. In football, you step up to the line and you look in somebody’s eyes and you dance with them. There’s a lot of contact. Lacrosse is the same way. And that competitive nature really helped me for this movie, because these are very competitive, overly big-type characters. So you really just get to go back to doing what you’ve done for so many years, and take it to that next level.
Do you have a favorite baseball movie?
“Bull Durham” is probably my favorite. I’m a huge Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins fan of their work, and the story, the dialogue in that movie. And “The Natural,” when the lights go out every time gets me. I like “A League of Their Own” because I like Penny Marshall films, and think Tom Hanks is a genius. So those are three.
Why was the tattoo so important that you would go through make up process every day to have it put on?
I requested it. It’s kind of like the jewelry, because it’s about excess and I myself don’t have any. It was more about character. I like to find people that are further away from me. This role wasn’t written for a black actor, and then it became nondescript. After they’d seen a bunch of people, I got the opportunity to go in and meet for it. And that’s kind of my agenda as an actor, to find films that just happen to have African-American characters. I think that this is a very mainstream film, it just happens that Bernie Mac happens to be African-American. So when I jumped into this character, I started speaking to Charles about, “‘Look, this guy has a lot of swagger, he has a lot of bling, he has a nice car and he’s into these things. These are his trophies, these are how he tells himself he’s successful, or how he proves it to himself. So he has to be able to see things on him that he didn’t have when he was younger.” It was important to me to have those things.
For me, it was always about looking at what Bernie was doing and then trying to be bigger than it. It’s like he has a little gold chain that he loves, and I have a big, huge platinum one. He had a nice watch, I had one with all the diamonds in it. And then bracelets on his wrists – and I’d go to wardrobe and I’d say, “Look, Bernie has this, can we get one that’s really obnoxious?” And if you watch music videos or anything in pop culture, that’s very real, so it doesn’t come across as obnoxious. It allows, hopefully, the audience to look at me and look at Bernie and say I’m the new school version of an old school player.
