Andre Braugher urges ‘Brooklyn 99’ to rise to the moment in new ‘Variety’ cover story

Brooklyn Nine-Nine hasn’t gone back into production on its upcoming eighth season just yet, but that’s not only because of Hollywood shutdowns in the wake of the coronavirus. As Terry Crews previously pointed out and as Andre Braugher reiterates in a new interview, there’s an opportunity to address the current Black Lives Matter movement and calls for systemic change in the upcoming episodes of the police comedy.In a new cover story for Variety, Braugher once again says that it’s important that the series address some of the previous mythology set up around police characters in cop dramas, of which he too has been a part of thanks to his Emmy-winning turn on Homicide: Life on the Street.[video_embed id='2023378']RELATED: ‘Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s Andre Braugher on what needs to change about police shows[/video_embed]“I look up after all these decades of playing these characters, and I say to myself, it’s been so pervasive that I’ve been inside this storytelling, and I, too, have fallen prey to the mythology that’s been built up,” he tells interviewer Michael Schneider. “It’s almost like the air you breathe or the water that you swim in. It’s hard to see. But because there are so many cop shows on television, that’s where the public gets its information about the state of policing. Cops breaking the law to quote, ‘defend the law,’ is a real terrible slippery slope. It has given license to the breaking of law everywhere, justified it and excused it. That’s something that we’re going to have to collectively address—all cop shows.”Following the deaths of people like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor at the hands of police officers, there seems to be consent among those in Hollywood that the way cop shows and movies are being delivered to audiences needs to change. Braugher adds that he hopes in particular that means acknowledging the silence surrounding police misconduct, the lack of civilian control over police departments, and “the myth that the outcomes of the criminal justice system are not dependent upon your race.” He also hopes that existing shows that do rely on that hero-worship are willing to tackle these subjects, and not make “this revelation about police departments and their interaction with Black people in general [in] a ‘B-story’ in Episode 16.”

 

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In terms of his own current series, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Braugher reveals that he doesn’t know exactly how showrunner Mike Schur and the rest of the writers will handle the new season while maintaining the comedy and tone of the show itself. But he does think it’s important to tell the story of how these things happen and that the show should commit to trying. “I don’t have any easy answers, nor do I have a window into the mind bank of this writing staff,” he said. “Can you tell the same story? Can anyone in America maintain any kind of innocence about what police departments are capable of?”If any current show can do it, Brooklyn Nine-Nine seems to be it. The series has integrated tough issues into its comedy before, including LGBTQ+ issues and racial profiling. In the fourth season episode, “Moo Moo,” Crews’ character was almost arrested by a fellow officer after he was stopped for being Black. In the episode, Braugher’s character, Holt, advised him not to file a police report following the incident. Braugher is curious how his character might handle a similar situation now, in light of recent events.“It might mean that Holt is a staunch defender of the NYPD, or that he tries to burn the whole thing down. I know that he is a pragmatic man; I do know that he’s a loving, [if] robotic person. I’m anxious to see what that’s all about, and I have no idea what Season 8 of Brooklyn Nine-Nine is going to be, because everything’s changed,” he said.“Can a comedy sustain the things that we’re trying to talk about? I don’t know. 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 continued. “But I think this is a staff, a cast and a crew that’s willing to take it on and give it our best. I think we have a damn good chance to tell the kinds of stories that heretofore have only been seen on grittier shows.”[video_embed id='2035851']Before you go: Jimmy Kimmel teases what to expect from this year's (virtual) Emmys[/video_embed]