(Source: Angela Weiss/Getty Images North America/ZIMBIO)
*EUR/Electronic Urban Report caught up with actor Demetrius Grosse to dish about his role in the new NBC series “The Brave,” premiering TONIGHT (Sept. 25) on NBC after “The Voice.”
This fresh, heart-pounding journey into the complex world of America’s elite undercover military heroes follows Captain Adam Dalton (Mike Vogel) and his heroic Special Ops squad of highly trained undercover specialists as they carry out each mission on the ground. This team works hand-in-hand with D.I.A. Deputy Director Patricia Campbell (Anne Heche) and her team of analysts as they wield the world’s most advanced surveillance technology from headquarters in D.C. All members of this elite squad, both in D.C. and across the world, have one thing in common: their resilience and commitment to freedom is unmatched by any other.
“We had a CIA guy come in and work with us because “The Brave” is not your regular, run of the mill military show,” Grosse tells EUR correspondent Ny MaGee. “We talk about how all of the different departments that report to the Department of Defense work together to help keep the world safe.”
Grosse is best known for his pivotal roles in such popular series as “Westworld,” “Banshee” and “Justified” as well as the hit films “Straight Outta Compton” and Michael Bay’s “13 Hours.” For “The Brave,” he stars as CPO Ezekiel “Preach” Carter, an integral member of the elite military team keeping the world safe one mission at a time. Preach is the team’s communications expert, stoic advisor and serves as a sounding board for everyone’s concerns. He is driven by his spirituality and believes in the good in the world. Therefore, he strives to bring enlightenment to every difficult situation.
“Preach got his name because he’s a spiritual anchor. He’s the young wise man of the group. What I love about him is that he actually leads with his intelligence. He was a guy who grew up in Long Beach, California. Rumor has it he had some ties to the underworld,” he explains. “Some of his relatives were involved with pretty sophisticated criminal activities and he decided to go right. When he joined the military he used some of the technological savvy that his older brother used for less than noble reasons. He translated that into good.”
Check out the rest of our conversation with Mr. Grosse below.
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There’s no team stronger than this. #TheBrave takes action tonight at 10/9c on @nbc. pic.twitter.com/ahGGWJ7eJ7
— The Brave (@NBCTheBrave) September 25, 2017
What makes “The Brave” unique from other military shows?
DG: I feel like “The Brave” is not a straightforward military narrative. We actually explore more of the espionage and intelligence and deep cover elements of freedom fighting and we revise, I think, people’s idea of what these agents look like, what they talk like, what they feel like. Say for instance on our omega team, our sniper is a woman played by Natacha Karam, who’s of Middle Eastern descent. I’m a Navy SEAL. I play a chief petty officer who was recruited out of the Navy SEALs, and I’m a 6’4″ man of color. And so we are taking creative license to revise how people even see our heroes. Whether that be from a gender standpoint, an ethnic standpoint and a lot of our narratives are based off of true events. And we’re also training with some of the men and women who actually do this in real life.
Our show also is one that doesn’t ping-pong back and forth between what goes on the homeland and what goes on in the field. We are a show that stays focused on the mission and through the development of the characters and the relationships between them, we see how their real lives affect the mission as opposed to having these two parallel narratives that I’ve seen a lot of other shows do. So it’s unique in that we go in deep undercover. In our first season, we go into Lagos, Nigeria. We go into Moscow, the Ukraine. We take down a Mexican cartel. Oftentimes, a lot of these narratives that are proliferating, it’s the American good guys against the Middle Eastern bad guys or the American good guys against the rest of the world, and we are a truly international show. It’s not just, let’s go home with guns blazing and take out the enemy. It’s more so, how can we gather intelligence? How can we infiltrate a situation to neutralize it in hopes of not actually having to get in full on combat? So it’s a much more sophisticated and intelligent show than we’ve ever seen before.
How would you describe Preach and in what ways does he help drive the narrative?
DG: Preach is a lethal MacGyver. He is a guy who is the telecommunications expert. He comes from a Navy SEAL background, so obviously, his ability to engage in hand-to-hand combat–his aptitude for that is, up there. However, Preach anchors the story because he really is the intelligence guy. He’s the inside man. A guy who knows how to gather information and intelligence through very unorthodox means. He is the voice of reason and the voice of cool in the group. Sometimes he’s also the comic relief. He’s the right-hand man of Adam Dalton. They’ve served in this clandestant, elite group the longest together. So they’ve obviously gotten each other out of some pretty intense situations and had to trust each other with their lives. [Preach] is a guy that with limited resources can get himself and his team out of a tight situation.
(Source: Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images North America/ZIMBIO)
We imagine military men and women as brave heroes, but surely they have fears too, and one of those fears is dying in combat. Aside from this, does Preach have any fears that he’ll be forced to conquer this season?
DG: I think the main fear that… and this may be a more subverted/subliminal element of his character, but I feel like a lot of men and women of color, who operate in the military and who believe in America, and who love America and whose colleagues have fought and died for America, I think they deal with the duality of being patriotic and loving a country and defending a country and sacrificing the greatest sacrifice for a country, that oftentimes doesn’t receive them. Doesn’t on local levels, often protect them when it comes to law enforcement. So a really interesting element of playing Preach is that he has this kind this spiritual awareness to his make-up and he’s a patriot in the brightest light. He is a father of three, married to a sister. He’s a family guy. So he’s sacrificing time with his family to be abroad on all these missions saving the world. But his family lives in a community of Southern Californian, and so what is it like when he does go back home? How is he looked at when he’s just out with his family driving around… and he gets pulled over? What is that like for him and how does that affect his work in the field?
That’s a very real context that many men and women of color who serve in the Armed Forces deal with. Being war heroes, being patriots and having to navigate ethnicity at home, in America, through their own community — sometimes in environments that are hostile and have their own element of terror. So that’s interesting to me because I don’t think one cancels out the other. I don’t think being pulled over for driving while black stops a person from being patriotic or loving their country. I think the two realities inform each other and I think them informing each other is what’s interesting and the decisions that are made and the choices that are made and how that internal conflict is overcome is juicy for drama and introspective for audiences to take a look at.
In terms of the technology used on the show, did you discover anything during your research that truly fascinated you, something that your team uses?
DG: Well, without giving too much away, when we go into Nigeria, we used these thermal sensors that can see through walls. I think we all know about satellites and Google Earth and our ability to see things from way up in the sky but there’s also this surveillance that we tap into where we’re able to see through walls — cinder blocks, brick, and pretty much be able to get an outline of actual persons. And in addition to that, we’re able to get sound feed and we explore a little bit of that in our pilot. We’re able to tap into conversations and monopolize devices. It’s spooky that they can see through walls with thermal reads and hear conversations through tapping lines and monopolizing devices. It’s actually kind of scary but I guess it’s good if it helps keep the world safer.
Has working on this series enhanced your perspective about the American military?
DG: I’ve always realized that we owe a great deal to our servicemen and women. I remember when I was 18, my father forced me to sign up for selective service and I think it’s because I had flat feet or something that I didn’t drafted. Then when I was coming out of high school, the only school that wanted to recruit me to play basketball was West Point, and I obviously didn’t end up doing that. But I have a family member who was a Platoon Leader in Vietnam. My grandfather was a ground trooper in the Korean war and I have a cousin who served in Iraq. So I’ve always seen these people as real, flesh and blood people, not like, as an archetype. And so that’s actually helped me to [bring] a level of compassion and authenticity to the story that I’m telling.
Lastly, what’s the message of “The Brave.” What are you hoping viewers are left thinking as the credits roll?
DG: The message that we’re going to leave the audience with each week is that the good guys don’t necessarily look like who you think they look like and the bad guys don’t necessarily look like who you think they look like. The faces of the men and women who protect our freedoms are diverse and we all have the opportunity to be brave. We all have the opportunity to link arms to partner, to create healthy alliances with men and women who may look different than us but are after the same goal. We all want the same things, safe places for our kids, the ability to earn a decent living. We all want to enjoy the freedom of travel. We’re going to leave our audience with that there is no knight in shining armor riding in on a horse that’s going to save the world from tyranny. Quite the opposite, it might be a Black knight on a black horse, or it might be a princess with flowing hair on a pony. Because we gradually, week after week, get away from this idea that the hero has to look and feel like the stereotypical hero has looked like through the ages of storytelling. And that’s provocative, that’s exciting, that’s progressive and it makes for a great story.
Tune in to “The Brave” Mondays at 10:00/9:00c on NBC.
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