Brian Tyree Henry felt like an inconvenient child. Now, he's taking up space

Brian Tyree Henry got his first taste of the spotlight in preschool and never stepped out of it. He may have forgotten the one line he had in his starring role as Santa Claus (which was "Merry Christmas"), but still, he remained unfazed.

Throughout his childhood, Henry was obsessed with performing. With his classmates cheering him on, he'd read storybooks and act out each of the characters. None of the kids were able to take their eyes off him, and Henry liked that, especially because the adults he lived with couldn't always give him the attention he craved.

"It felt like a kind of glory for me to know that people outside of my home saw potential of what I could do and that gave me space to be unafraid to do things," he tells Q's Tom Power in an interview.

Since his preschool debut, Henry has jumped from the stage to the screen. His first big acting job was in the original cast of The Book of Mormon on Broadway. In 2018, he picked up a Tony nomination for his performance in the play Lobby Hero.

Although musical theatre didn't end up being the right fit, it showed Henry what a stable, sustainable career in the performing arts could look like. He stuck with The Book of Mormon for three years, then got an audition for the TV show Atlanta just under a year later.

Atlanta spoke to Henry in a way that theatre hadn't. He knew this would be something special.

"I just remember everything so fondly about how we all came together. It also makes it even better when you don't care how people feel about it. At the end of the day, I was like, 'We are telling the stories we wanna tell.'"

In his most recent project, a TV show called Dope Thief, Henry plays the main character, Ray. Posing as D.E.A. agents, Ray and his best friend rob drug dens while also working through generational trauma, addiction and grief.

It is one of the more challenging roles Henry has had to take on — not because it's unfamiliar territory, but because Henry sees a bit too much of himself in the character's struggles.

"The fear was coming from the visibility of having a character go through all these things — to have this Black man have to confront dealing with addiction and recovery, dealing with being abandoned," he says. "That was incredibly intriguing but terrifying at the same time, because that also meant that that didn't really give me anywhere to hide."

Henry's father passed away right before they began shooting an episode about Ray's relationship with his father, which bore striking similarities to Henry's dynamic with his own.

In the process of shooting an intense scene, Henry looked up from the floor to see a photo from his childhood that had made its way into the set — it was him, as a young kid, standing in front of the house that he was born in, and that his father had recently died in.

I was not that man that was going to shrink himself to make other people feel better about themselves.- Brian Tyree Henry

Henry points out that although he can't choose when grief or other challenging emotions will strike, he's worked hard to do his own healing before taking on this role.

"Five years ago, I don't think I would have had the tools to absolutely be able to give Ray the shine he deserved," he says. "I think I would have confused his pain with my pain."

Thinking back to his somewhat isolating childhood of being passed between his parents, Henry says that like Ray, he often felt like an inconvenience.

"I knew when I stepped into Ray, I was not that man anymore," Henry says. "I was not that man that was going to shrink himself to make other people feel better about themselves…. All the male characters that I've played have given me an opportunity to expand myself, to truly realize that I deserve to exist."

Part of that learning, for Henry, is accepting that the success of his acting career hasn't just been brought upon by him being in the right place at the right time — he makes these projects special.

"At some point, I had to stand and look at myself and be like, 'Fool, it's you. It must be something you're bringing to the recipe," Henry says. "'All the things that you have been a part of have done these great things, so when are you going to start pouring that stuff into yourself?'"

The full interview with Brian Tyree Henry is available on our YouTube channel and on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Brian Tyree Henry produced by Vanessa Nigro.