Veteran actor and three-time Emmy Award winner Sterling K. Brown is sharing how his oldest son’s handling of a recent incident showed him just how more emotionally mature than he is. During a recent roundtable discussion about the second season of Brown’s hit show Paradise on Hulu, he spoke about how his son Andrew responded when called the N-word during a soccer game.
“My 14-year-old was in a soccer game where a young boy spat on him, and he saw the spit and he walks up to the ref and he goes, ‘Ref, this dude just spat on me.’ And the ref was like, ‘I didn’t see it, so I can’t do anything about it,’” Brown began. “Then, afterwards, the young man came up to him and called him the N-word and just kind of kept it going. And my son didn’t tell me until after the game, and I was like, ‘Yo, man, how come we didn’t beat his ass?’ And he was like, ‘Because that wouldn’t have solved anything. He already did what he was going to do. The ref didn’t respond to it or whatnot. So I didn’t want to make you any more upset, which is why I didn’t tell you until after the game.’”
“So he’s a more evolved person than me. I would’ve beat his ass,” the Washington Black star joked. The 49-year-old actor reflected on how much his sons help to shape his relationship to his work, and that he makes sure to communicate with Andrew and 9-year-old Amaré amid all of his projects, which include a new Voltron movie he wrapped up in Australia. “Being a father is the most important job that I have in my life right now. And so for the next nine years, if I can keep working in L.A. and be like the one dude who figured it out, I would be very, very excited about that, [because] I don’t want to miss too much of their growing up.”
Ultimately, Brown expressed his pride in his children and how they’re becoming great human beings, and also credited his wife, actress Ryan Michelle Bathe in helping to guide them. “[That’s all you can do is try to do a little bit better than what your parents did for you. And hopefully he’s able to do a little bit better as well,” Brown said.
