David Alan Grier during a performance of 'A Soldier's Play' in New York. NEW YORK -- When David Alan Grier was offered a chance to revisit one of his favourite plays on Broadway, he quickly agreed. He just forgot about all the beatings.
"I forgot about all that. I was like, `Oh, he has lots of lines. Yeah, I'll do it.' I thought there were little scuffles," says Grier. "I thought, `Well, he gets pushed a couple times. A lot of monologues. I'll take it."' The play won the Pulitzer Prize for drama and over the years has attracted some of the most accomplished actors in the black community: Denzel Washington, Adolph Caesar, Samuel L. Jackson, Wood Harris, Taye Diggs, Anthony Mackie, James McDaniel and Blair Underwood.
"I abstained. Wisely, wisely, I was told later," Grier says. One reason was that he'd never heard of such a dish. "And I'm going to go out on a limb. I speak for all Japan: Neither have they." Food -- well, dessert, really -- had an important role in how he became an actor. Growing up in Detroit, he knew he was funny but he moved to New York in the mid-1970s to be a musician. And like all struggling musicians, he had a side hustle.