In a wide-ranging interview with Variety, actor Andre Braugher opens up about playing a gay cop on the show Brooklyn Nine-Nine, addressing the show’s handling of police brutality.
The Golden Globe-winning NBC comedy has earned mixed reviews from LGBTQ+ viewers over its portrayal of law enforcement. On one hand, Braugher’s no-nonsense police chief is portrayed with strength and dignity, a rare queer role model of color on television, and out actress Stephanie Beatriz also plays a bisexual character. But the LGBTQ+ community’s relationship with police has been strained dating back to the Stonewall era, when cops would raid gay bars and beat LGBTQ+ patrons.
That practice sadly continues even to this day, a key factor in the now-annual protests against including police in LGBTQ+ Pride parades.
Braugher doesn’t have much to say about his character’s sexuality in a Wednesday profile published in the entertainment outlet, other than that he liked that it was just one aspect of a complex character. But he spoke much more about the show’s general approach to police brutality, hinting that the show’s next season will feature a storyline that involves racial profiling by police.
“It could be a really groundbreaking season that we’re all going to be very, very proud of, or we’re going to fall flat on our face,” he told Variety.
Braugher also admitted to falling for the “mythology” of cops as heroes, one that has been propagated for decades by fellow police procedurals like Law and Order: SVU, Hill Street Blues, NCIS: Los Angeles, NYPD Blue, and Homicide: Life on the Streets.
“Because there are so many cop shows on television, that’s where the public gets its information about the state of policing,” he said. “Cops breaking the law to quote, ‘defend the law,’ is a real terrible slippery slope.”
In the future, he said cop shows must address the “the myth that the outcomes of the criminal justice system are not dependent upon your race.”
In the wake of this summer’s Black Lives Matter protests, as well as numerous killings of unarmed Black people by police, Brooklyn Nine-Nine was forced to re-examine its portrayal of law enforcement. Actor Terry Crews told the entertainment site Access in June that the show had thrown out four scripts they were planning to use for Season 8 and started from scratch to address growing outrage over police abuse.
“We have to start over,” he said. “Right now, we don’t know which direction it’s going to go in.”
Get the best of what’s queer. Sign up for our weekly newsletter here.
