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W. Earl Brown On His Acting Career

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  Tracy Ross talks with W. Earl Brown on Sounds Good about his acting career and his Saturday performance as Big Daddy in Cat On a Hot Tin Roof at Murray State University. Brown received Murray State University’s Outstanding Alumni Award in 2016.

 

Brown credits his interest in acting to time spent with his grandparents. His great grandmother was the first in the community of Golden Pond to own a television and when she babysat him they would spend the day watching T.V. together. “She was fascinated with TV shows,” Brown said. “And I remember we’d watch shows and she’d say, ‘Now, they do magical things with those T.V. cameras. Why, if we had a TV camera, they’re ain’t no telling the stuff we could do, the funny stuff.’” When he visited his other grandparents, he would sit on the porch with them and listen to his Grandma sing and his Granddaddy tell stories. Brown jokes that their porch was the first theater he attended.

The first in his family to attend college, Brown discovered his interest in acting at Murray State University. “I got stuck in a theatrical experience class as a gen-ed requirement,” where he says he was captivated by a lesson in improvisation. He started acting in school plays and signed up for more theater classes. In 1985, Second City came through town. Brown auditioned and was accepted into a summer class for which he would drive to Chicago every weekend. He imagined his career would lead to a spot on Saturday Night Live and then branch into movies, but there was a hitch. When he audition for Second City Touring Company, he was beat out by Chris Farley.

 

Instead of seeking out other jobs, Brown went to DePaul University as a graduate student studying theater. His career started to pick up when he started teaching actors how to speak the Chicago dialect and then he got a role playing the bad guy in Excessive Force. He was doing well in Chicago but he knew he would have to move to California to advance in his career. His agency sent him to Hollywood to test the waters and he immediately received two roles. The prospects for work seemed great, so he and his wife moved to Los Angeles. Then it was seven months before he found more work.

 

“When I was there for pilot season I was the exotic out-of-towner, ‘He’s the Chicago theater guy.’ And suddenly I’m just another one of the masses,” Brown said.

 

Some of Brown's most well-known film credits include Scream, There’s Something About Mary, Black Mass, Wild, and The Lone Ranger. He has also acted in several television series. One of his favorite roles was playing Dan Dority in Deadwood. Between roles, Brown has had to learn how to ride the waves of employment. An acting career can include many lulls.

 

This Saturday Brown will perform as Big Daddy in the play Cat On A Hot Tin Roof. The show starts at 7:30 p.m. in MSU’s Robert E. Johnson Theatre.

Tracy started working for WKMS in 1994 while attending Murray State University. After receiving his Bachelors and Masters degrees from MSU he was hired as Operations/Web/Sports Director in 2000. Tracy hosted All Things Considered from 2004-2012 and has served as host/producer of several music shows including Cafe Jazz, and Jazz Horizons. In 2001, Tracy revived Beyond The Edge, a legacy alternative music program that had been on hiatus for several years. Tracy was named Program Director in 2011 and created the midday music and conversation program Sounds Good in 2012 which he hosts Monday-Thursday. Tracy lives in Murray with his wife, son and daughter.
A proud native of Murray, Kentucky, Allison grew up roaming the forests of western Kentucky and visiting national parks across the country. She graduated in 2014 from Murray State University where she studied Environmental Sustainability, Television Production, and Spanish. She loves meeting new people, questioning everything, and dancing through the sun and the rain. She hopes to make a positive impact in this world several endeavors at a time.
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