2 l April
10 - 16, 2022
Northeast Oregon TV Weekly
BY JAY BOBBIN
Courtney B. Vance walks a
treacherous ‘61st Street’
Courtney B. Vance
and Aunjanue Ellis
star in “61st Street,”
premiering Sunday
on AMC.
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After winning many awards by playing
one of the most famous attorneys ever,
Courtney B. Vance is portraying a different
kind of lawyer in a different kind of story.
The actor follows his lauded work as
Johnnie Cochran in “The People v. O.J.
Simpson: American Crime Story” – plus his
turns in “Lovecraft Country” and “Genius:
Aretha” – in the Chicago-set AMC drama
series “61st Street,” which debuts the first
of its two scheduled seasons Sunday, April
10. (The same night, AMC+ and ALLBLK
begin streaming both the premiere and the
second episode, with the two services then
showing each episode a week before AMC
does.)
Vance plays Franklin Roberts, who
becomes the legal representative for Moses
Johnson (Tosin Cole), a young athlete
mistaken for a gang member by police. The
case becomes about much more, as cops
and the prosecution use it to try to settle
some scores over an officer’s death during a
drug raid. Cast members also include recent
“King Richard” Oscar nominee Aunjanue
Ellis, Bentley Green and Holt McCallany
(“Nightmare Alley”).
Also an executive producer of “61st
Street” along with others including fellow
actor Michael B. Jordan and series creator
Peter Moffat, Vance says, “I think we all
had to get our minds around how big this
thing was. We didn’t have one person who
was overseeing the day-to-day operations,
so all the actors and much of the crew had
to pitch in and make sure we were on the
same page.”
Though “61st Street” is quite different
from “The People vs. O.J. Simpson,” Vance
was drawn to both dramas by their shared
theme of the legal arena, and by the ever-
intensifying place the law holds for so many
people in daily modern living.
“It is a prime time for discussions of
right and wrong, of moral centers,” Vance
reflects. “I think we’re at a crossroads about
what’s right for a city, a country and a
society. If someone crosses a line, what is
the right thing to do? We continually find
ways to say it’s the (citizens’) fault, and
maybe we need to look at the way police
are trained and how they react to situations.
Maybe we need a reboot, but at least we
need to talk about it.”
Vance spent much of last year filming
both seasons of “61st Street,” so his work
schedule often coincided with that of
wife Angela Bassett, a star and executive
producer of Fox’s “9-1-1.” He’s not
complaining much, if at all: “We’re blessed
enough to be able to work, and we’ve been
working our entire professional careers,
since we graduated from Yale Drama
School. I don’t think I’ve ever had any other
job, and that’s very rare.”
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