MORE THAN A ROLE

'The Man, The Father & The Life Behind The Performance'
Exclusive Interview with Curtiss Cook
Featured in 'Innerviews'
Hosted by Allié McGuire

We see the characters. We remember the scenes. But we rarely stop to consider the life that shaped the man bringing them to life. In this intimate conversation, Curtiss Cook reflects on the years that tested him, the family that grounded him, and the purpose that carried him from survival to something more.

ALLIÉ: Before the stages, before the screens, before the roles that we know you for, who were you when this dream of acting first took hold? What was it about storytelling that made you believe it was worth everything?

CURTISS: Wow. Who was I? So, I grew up in Dayton, Ohio. I am the oldest of five. Alice and Clifton Cook are my parents. They were married until my mom passed a few years back. My dad is still kicking out there, still living in Dayton, Ohio. All of my siblings are still there. I went to elementary school and then middle school and then high school.

I always performed. I was in show choirs and all of that crazy stuff growing up. Then in junior high, we had these variety kinds of shows that I was always doing. I thought I was going to be a singer, Allié, primarily. I thought that was my dream. I was going to be a singer. So, I was doing a lot of choirs and drama in high school.

Then I got to do this big organization called The Muse Machine in high school, which was all these states put together, all these cities in Ohio coming together to audition these children. We did this huge production at the end of the year, every year. I did that from my sophomore year to my senior year. I got to go over to London. I got a scholarship for London Drama School. The reason why I’m saying all of this, I’m trying to condense the story, is because it wasn’t until I got to New York City and I just knew I was going to be this amazing singer, and then I heard this one man sing. I was like, “Okay, maybe that’s not my gift. Maybe singing is not my gift.”

I can hold a tune. I can talk a song better than anybody you know, Allié. But the way that he was singing right there, I was like, “No, no, no. He sings.” Thankfully enough, I had been doing drama all that time, and I had found my true passion, which was acting. I was rambunctious. I was loud. I was strong-headed as a child. I got into a little trouble, knock wood. But I think it was the arts that put me on my path, my straight and narrow.

CURTISS: (continued) In high school, I didn’t know that you could really make a living in the arts. I knew that people did it in the community centers in Dayton, but they all had jobs. They were teachers. They were something else. They were always something else. So, in high school, me and my best friend from kindergarten decided to join the Navy together.

It wasn’t until the woman who ran the high school production I did, said to me, “So, what are you going to do, darling, after high school?” And I was like, “I’m going to the Navy.” I was going to go to the Navy, come back, get me a job at Montgomery County Engineers doing streets, make about twenty or thirty thousand dollars a year, get me a little small house, get married, and just live on.

She was like, “No, darling. No. You have too much talent. You have too much talent to go to the Navy.”

I was like, “You don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m about to go here and get this twenty thousand dollars.”

Then she had the principal of Mountview School come to Dayton, Ohio, and I auditioned for them. They accepted me initially. And like I told you before, I’m the oldest of five. So, I went home to my parents, and I was like, “Oh my God, I just got accepted to this amazing conservatory in London.” At the time, it was the fourth highest drama school in the world.

They were like, “Oh, that’s great,” but their faces were drawn and not excited like I was. So, they let me go off for a couple of days or whatever, and then they called me back. They were like, “Curtiss, we all need to have a conversation.” My mom and dad said, “Yeah, that’s beautiful for you, but we can’t do it. We don’t have the money to do that.” I was like, “Okay. Well, I guess that’s how it goes.”

So, I went back to the woman who ran the high school production I did and said, “Thank you very much for the offer to go to this school, but unfortunately, I’m not going to be able to do it.”

She said, “No, darling. Hold on a second. Give me a minute. Let me try to figure something out.” A week or so later, she called me back into her office and told me to bring my parents. That’s when they offered me a full scholarship to the school in London. And dare I say, Allié, it changed my life forever.

I was there for three years. I had never flown on a plane before. The furthest I had been from Dayton, Ohio, was Pittsburgh. That’s the furthest I had really been from Dayton, Ohio ever. We used to drive there because that’s where my father was originally from. So, it was mind-boggling, all of the things I learned.

You don’t realize how much you’re learning while you’re living something. You’re just kind of going through the day and making it through. Then you step back sometimes and realize, “Oh my God, I know this. I know that. I knew this because of the environment and where I was.”

That’s a long answer to your question, but that’s kind of the origin of who Curtiss is, how he became, and how I got here to where I am now. It wasn’t by myself, by any means. I had a lot of angels helping me. First and foremost, my mother and father. Then another angel, Ms. Susie Cassani. Ms. Copeland, my drama teacher. I used to dance with DCDC, and Jodine Blunden, the founder of Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, also helped. So, I had a lot of assistance and a lot of help that helped me get to where I am.

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​ALLIÉ: So, you pursued acting, and that’s a hard enough pursuit on its own, but then you were doing it while raising children. Let’s talk about that as a single father, which is both an extraordinary responsibility and an act of profound love. Can you take us into that chapter of your life? What did survival look like in those moments when the dream and the reality felt at odds at times?

CURTISS: Yeah. What did it look like? What did survival look like? It looked like survival, Allié. It felt like survival. There wasn’t much time to document or to have future aspirations. It was just about the now, right?

I was on tour at the time when everything kind of happened. I was just coming off a tour of Miss Saigon. I did the national tour of Miss Saigon. I had gotten back to New York City, and that’s when my wife and I had decided that this relationship was no longer for us. Dare I say, she decided that it was no longer for us.

Also, we had three children at the time, and she no longer wanted to be a mother at that time with them there, which always sounds weird because no matter what you do, you’re going to be a mother. You know what I mean? Because you have children. I understood her mindset. It was like she had different aspirations and what she needed and felt like she needed to do in life, and this was her taking control of that. I can’t speak for her. This is what I felt like it was about.

So, we parted ways. She left Curtiss Jr., Isis, and Kimani with me, primarily. Everything shifted. Everything stopped.

I would be sounding very pompous and know-it-all if I were to say to you that, in that moment, I figured out how to do it, and I knew what I needed to do, and I pulled myself up by my bootstraps, and I just forged through, and we made our way. It was not that at all. It was very scary. It was very frustrating. I was angry, and I was worried.

But the thing that I had at that time was them, right? Meaning that I could not act on any of those emotions or feelings at the time because they needed me to make sure that their day-to-day was taken care of. If I stopped, they were babies. Kimani, who is now going to be thirty years old in June, was two years old at the time. That was my baby. So that means Curtiss Jr. was six and Isis was five, right? They were very young children.

I don’t know how I did it, Allié, to be totally honest. I just know when I had an appointment, I got them in a stroller, and we went on the train, and we went to the appointment. When it was time to figure out what to have for dinner, we went over to the store. I do know that I got on public assistance. That was very humbling. That was very humbling at the time.

It taught me, in hindsight, that rough times will come, and rough times will be rough. If you stick to it, if you keep moving through it, you will get through it. It may not be the prettiest. It may not be how you want to live. But you will get through it if you keep going, if you keep pushing forward. You will make it.

That seems so simple, but those times are rough, right? You’re tired. You’re frustrated. You’re angry. All of that stuff. You just want to stop. But if you get up each day and just handle the business that is applied to that day and what you need to take care of, and that’s all you worry about, you’ll find yourself eventually on the other side of it.

With the help of friends, with the help of the universe, I don’t know what your faith belief is, God, creator, all of that being with you, it will turn out okay… It will turn out okay.

Eventually, I got into a show called The Lion King on Broadway. Then I met my wife, and then we got pregnant, and then we had twins. So, now I have five children. The twins, actually, at the time that we’re recording this, tomorrow is their birthday, and they will be twenty-two years old tomorrow. We’ve been together for a very long time.

Curtiss Jr. is doing well. He’s an actor. Isis and Kimani are living in New Jersey. Jade is one of the twins. She’s finishing her senior year at SUNY Purchase in the acting program. Harlem is working and lives here with us, where we are now in upstate on the East Coast. That’s a lot, right? That was a lot.

ALLIÉ: It’s a lot. I mean, that’s life. But you made such a good point to say what’s hard now won’t be always. This is the moment. It’s not the always, right? To just hold on to that.

CURTISS: And it’s easy to say that when the time now isn’t hard. You know what I mean? It’s easy sometimes to be like, “Well, you know what? If I just stick through it, it’s fine.” But when you’re in the muck, and you’re like, “My goodness,” and that next hour just seems forever away, you’re just feeling like, “I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.”

But saying it now, you can. You can, and you will. You will. I’m very, very, very grateful. Very, very fortunate and grateful.

ALLIÉ: Yeah. So, let’s talk about sacrifices. There are sacrifices that people never see behind a lasting career. With your family depending on you, were there moments where you questioned if the path you chose was right, was fair to yourself, to your kids? How did you navigate those internal conversations? Tell me about the questioning times.

CURTISS: The questioning times. I don’t know if I ever felt like I was on the wrong path, right? If there were questions, the questions were really about how much longer it would take for me to get to where I feel like I need to be. You know what I mean? Not that I need to be off this path.

I had a friend one time, and she’s still a friend, but I remember she said this to me a long time ago, before any of us had our Broadway shows. I used to feel like people coming into the city were like a class, right? Like a class in high school, a class in college. You kind of always see the same people at auditions all the time. Eventually, somebody from that class gets a Broadway show, and they get a big movie, and they move on to the next grade, right?

So, there was a class of us. Everybody was starting to get their Broadway shows. I’m still doing regional productions here and there and whatever else. One day she said to me, “Oh my God, when are you going to get your Broadway show?”

I said, “Well, listen, I’m just out here paying my dues.”

She said, “Yeah, it seems like you’re paying everybody’s dues.”

I was like, “Okay, thank you.”

But I always felt like I was on the right path. It was just a matter of when that would happen. The sacrifices that my family had to make because of that, you would have to ask them because I really don’t know. I tried to make sure that, while in that process, the day-to-day was taken care of.

I’m sure if I got my children here now, they’d be like, “Yeah, there was that time, Dad, when such-and-such didn’t happen.” But I won’t speak for them. I’m sure my wife now would be like, “Yeah, well, sometimes when I called, you weren’t answering the phone like I needed you to be answering the phone.” I’m sure that would happen as well, Allié.

Those are small, minute things. At the time, they also seemed big. Like, “Oh my God, why won’t he just pick up the phone? I’m just trying to call to find out what’s happening.” But I’m probably in that process of figuring out this character, figuring out what I need to do, how to move it forward, how to stay in the bubble of the world of the show I’m doing at the time.

So, I’m sure they had their own types of frustrations from me pushing forward and being true to this thing that I’ve always loved. This is all I’ve ever done, Allié. Once I got to New York, I’ve had one nine-to-five job. I’ve had one nine-to-five job. Once I left that, all of my work has been through acting, through performing.

That’s not to say that it’s all been roses, but that’s all. And I’m proud of that. It’s not a boast. It’s a feeling of determination, of knowing that I am in the right space and at the right time. I am a person, sometimes, that once I do something, I have to do it. I can’t just dabble here and do that for a while and then come back to this other thing because I had the children, first of all. I didn’t have a lot of time to jump around. I couldn’t say I was going to commit to this and then all of a sudden try to jump over there because I was doing that with the family.

I say that to say that stick-to-itiveness is a real thing. How fortunate and how blessed I am, I don’t take any of it for granted. I’m now in my latter fifties, and I’m an old dude. So, I’ve been very, very, very fortunate, and I still have a lot of ways to go. I’m ready for the ride.

​ALLIÉ: Yeah, that’s awesome. Thank you for sharing all of that. So, let’s talk roles. Your roles, especially as Duda, which so many of us know you as, carry a complexity that feels lived in, not performed. How has your journey as a father, as a man who endured, shaped the way you understand power, vulnerability, and humanity in the characters that you bring to life today?

CURTISS: You sound so amazing. I’m not, but thank you. That sounds so great.

I’ve always been, well, no, I haven’t always been, but I like to think that once I started to realize that this was really my journey, acting and being in this world, and that’s what I really wanted to do, I became an empath. I find myself watching people and things differently, meaning that I don’t take most things at face value.

I dream a lot. I used to play silly games on the back porch as a child. One reason I used to play a lot of games on the back porch by myself was because I was on punishment a lot because I got in trouble all the time. So, I had to figure out ways to entertain myself.

Finding complex characters, whenever I watch any movies or television shows, I like to imagine, “What would I do at that point? What else could have happened?” Even in reading books, like Walter Mosley books or James Patterson stuff, which I used to love a lot, they would send me into these worlds of, “What else is there?” I would just collect information.

I remember in drama school, we used to have these classes where we would go to the park as a group. We’d kind of break off in threes or whatever, and our job was to observe people in the park and then come back and create characters based on those people and the things that we saw them do and observed that day.

That’s something I’ve always taken with me, especially being in New York City or being in London. There’s just a plethora of characters no matter where you look or where you walk, right? So, I do that constantly still. Now it’s on automatic.

Once I begin to look at somebody, I’m watching their body language. I’m watching their eyes. I’m watching their mouth. I’m watching what they say, what they’re holding back to say, how they’re holding their head, if they move their hair, if they touch their lip, if they nod. I’m creating certain things about them, maybe true, maybe not. Then I’m collecting information.

If I sit here and I’m talking to you like this all the time, somebody might be like, “That’s odd.” But eventually you realize, “I’ve seen that somewhere,” and now this becomes a character, and it becomes real. Because I’m not halfway doing it. I’m living it.

I think a lot of times, some of the younger actors think that they need to come in knowing exactly what to do and how it’s supposed to be and what it’s supposed to sound like. I feel like sometimes their performances look like that. It’s like, “Yeah, I guess that is true, but it’s a little flat.” It’s a little on the nose. And in life, nobody’s on the nose, right?

That’s what I put into the characters, Allié. I like to put in real life. That was a push for me with Duda. In one aspect, I felt like the character, toward the latter years, was starting to turn into just this guy who was big, bad, and evil, right? Without any real personality. We’ve seen that done before, I think.

In my head, I’m like, “No, even those guys have bad days.” You know what I mean? Where they’re vulnerable, and they’re not the biggest person in the room. They think they are, but they’re not because of whatever else. How do you incorporate that in this moment to make them more of a three-dimensional being?

I would like to think that’s what the audiences gravitated toward. I think they appreciate it. Even if they didn’t see it initially, even if all they did see was the big, bad, evil dude, I think those other elements were added to the character. That’s what makes people go, “Wow, I dig this dude. He’s complex. He’s not just this or that. Let me watch and see how long this lasts that way.” So, I try to do that as often as I can.
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ALLIÉ: Well, you do it very well.

CURTISS: Thank you.

ALLIÉ: I do have one more question for you today, my friend. Now, as you step into a big world like Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, your work reaches audiences on an entirely different scale, a different audience. So, here’s my last question. When your children look at your life, not just your career, what do you hope they understand about the choices you made and the man behind them?

CURTISS: You are not asking easy questions.

ALLIÉ: I thought I’d get a little deep, you know?

CURTISS: First of all, I hope that they know and feel and have felt that I love them very, very, very, very much. No matter how much it seems like this is singular shine or adornment, or it feels that way, it is because of them. It is for them. I think that should go without saying, but I’m saying it anyway.

As far as the example, I’ve always felt that people used to say this phrase, and it may be from the Bible, but I’m not sure. It’s something like, “Do as I say, but not as I do.” But I always wanted to be like, “Do as I do, as I’ve shown,” because I’ve learned through my failures that this is one of the better paths.

Meaning that I am shoveling in the snow, metaphorically. I’m shoveling this path for you, so when you walk, you have an easier way. That doesn’t mean that you have to go the whole path. You can shovel for yourself. You can go that way. But behind me, there’s an easier road, and I’m making that road for you. I hope they understand and feel that he was and is doing his best, his honest, God-fearing best, to be the best individual he can be, with all the flaws and all the mistakes.

I try every day to question everything, Allié. Sometimes it’s annoying. I kind of live on, “I don’t know about that.” That’s my default when I see anything. I kind of live there. Even for myself, right? It’s like, “I don’t know if that was good enough. Let me try a little harder.”

There are some downfalls to it, obviously, but I’ve learned that, for me, it sets a bar. It sets a standard. I would like to think that the standard I’m setting, and they’re watching, is one that they meet and then move past. Like you said, I’ve had a lot of good work that I’ve been able to participate in, and none of it have I taken lightly. You’ll be the first one to know because we’ll probably make an announcement not soon, but I don’t know when this will air, but you can probably print it. I just joined FBI, the television show on CBS. I started shooting yesterday. I’ll be there for a few episodes. Right now, it’s just a few episodes, but who knows? Those shows are one of those things.

So, that’s another thing where it came out of the blue. The discussions we had, sitting with Jeremy Sisto and Alana and Peter, some of the creators over there, and having them say how much they love my work. There was a time when I was in the city and I was just like, “If I can get on Law & Order, I made it.” You know what I mean? Back in the day, I was like, “That’s it.” And now these folks are saying this to me.

​It just, once again, affirms the fact that I’ve been doing what I set out to do once I got here. Not a lot of times do I, and I’m doing this now actually, but not a lot of times do I sit and do that to myself because I’m still doing. I feel like sometimes if I do that too much, you’re like, “Okay, you’ve been patting yourself for five months. You need to get up and go do something. What are you patting yourself for? Get up.”

In talking with you, so many emotions are going on right now. So many things are bubbling up, and it’s making me think of how fortunate I am and how hard I’ve worked to get to the space of where I am now, still knowing that there are still goals I will achieve very soon.

Monarch is great. The audience that I’m being introduced to, I don’t even know what that is yet. I mean, I know what that is, but I don’t know what it means to me yet because it just started airing. I try to stay away from social media, but some of the responses are like, “Oh, this is my show, and I can’t believe he’s on here,” and whatever else. It’s all of that. Of course, it’s one of those things that I really probably won’t know until next year or sometime when all of it kind of comes in.

It’s one of those things that’s like, “Wow, I can’t believe that I’m sitting here, and I’m acting with Godzilla and King Kong.” You know what I mean? It was also the same way when I worked with Martin Scorsese. I’m sitting here working with Leonardo DiCaprio, Ben Kingsley, Martin Scorsese, Michelle Williams… Or even working on my first big Hollywood movie, The Interpreter, with Sean Penn and Nicole Kidman. They had just come off their Oscar wins, and this was their next movie. Sidney Pollack was there. You know what I mean? It’s honestly weird to me because I don’t think about it often. Then I start to say it, and it’s like, “Oh my God, I did that. I was there. I lived that. I experienced that. I learned from that. I got this opportunity.”

So, it’s those things of my pursuit and stick-to-itiveness and passion about whatever I’m doing that I hope they see and understand. Once again, it was for them, but it is a way to move forward. Not the only way. There are multiple ways to do what you need to do. But hopefully, they’re like, “No, Dad was doing some great stuff. He cared about it, and he cared just as much about us.” ∎

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​@curtisscook