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After honing his acting in theater, Burgess, 36, stepped into
the television spotlight with Tina Fey and Robert Carlock's "Kimmy
Schmidt," securing a supporting actor Emmy nomination for
playing eccentric roommate Titus Andromedon to Kimmy, a former
'mole woman' trying to carve a New York life.
Burgess discussed race, stereotypes and season two in an
interview with Reuters. The following are excerpts:
Q: What were you surprised to find and pleased to find about
Titus?
A: They made him three-dimensional, and he wasn't just the
stereotypical gay best friend - I despise that and I had no
interest in playing that.
If it's Tina and Robert, I can trust that Titus is going to be a
human being who happens to be gay, who happens to be an actor,
who happens to be down on his luck, and all of these things are
happenstance and not the thing that we focus on. Rather we focus
on this unlikely partnership, this unlikely friendship between
he and Kimmy.
Q: One episode shows Titus finding more acceptance in a werewolf
costume than as a black man. With race issues so prevalent, what
do you hope season two can tackle?
A: The issue with race particularly within this country is
largely because of lack of dialogue. Honestly, racism is
something learned, not something that you just pick up one day
and wish to dislike someone.
I think Tina and Robert have a delicious platform and they have
a gay black man who has not yet had a career, who is part of a
socio-economic demographic that is at the bottom - he is more
everyman than not. And the more they borrow from the buffet and
exploit the trials and tribulations, the better off my audience,
our audience, will be in terms of being informed on what it's
like to look like this in America.
Q: Titus will be getting a one-man show next season 2, what can
we expect?
A: I know that we are once again going to do what I think is
smart and right, which is borrow from today's headlines and
we're going to do more of what I just spoke about (on race) in
that one-man show.
(Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Bill Rigby)
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