Make time Tuesday night to watch a hometown boy in an hour-long national television drama.
Salisbury’s Kevin Carroll, who recently got good reviews for his part in a Neil Simon play on Broadway, will be a guest star in “Fathers,” this week’s courtroom drama in A&E’s series, “100 Centre Street,” scheduled at 10 p.m. on Channel 36.
The series, set in a courthouse in New York, is directed by Sidney Lumet, one of the nation’s biggest and most prolific directors, who did such shows as “Twelve Angry Men” and “Dog Day Afternoon.”
“Just auditioning for him was a thrill,” Carroll says, and getting a leading part in one of his shows was even greater, even if the character he plays is not one he admires.
By pure happenstance, the show focuses on a court case involving a dog mauling just when a real, fatal dog mauling is making headlines in San Francisco.
Carroll plays the part of a father whose estranged girlfriend, working several jobs, falls asleep on the job, and her son gets mauled by a dog. The show poses the question: Who is responsible? The child’s mother because she fell asleep?Or the father who hasn’t spent enough time with his son?
It also points up one of the ironies of show business, Carroll says.
Although it will air Tuesday night, the show was actually produced months ago while he had near-star billing in Neil Simon”s “45 Seconds from Broadway,” which opened Nov. 11 at the Richard Rodgers Theatre in New York.
So he was on stage at night, but busy with television spots, auditions and “100 Centre Street” during the day, and you’ll see that show this week. But it’s in the past for Carroll — and so is the Broadway show.
Everybody thought that would certainly run a year, but it closed on Jan. 19, absolutely a victim of the terrorist attacks, which shut down tourism in New York City. During certain times of the season, Broadway depends on tourists.
“In light of people losing their lives on Sept. 11,” he says, the close of the show was certainly “not the end of the world.”
“What happened helps you put everything into perspective. It’s disappointing, but it’s the result of something so much bigger than the show that it’s one of those things I have to take in stride. ... It ran about three months. It was a great experience. And I wouldn’t say I’m back at Square One.”
The son of Mae and Kenneth Carroll of Salisbury, he’s a graduate of Salisbury High and the University of Florida and earned his master’s at New York University.
But he’s in Hollywood now, auditioning three or four times a week for all kinds of parts, including ads. Home folks on the right channel at the right time recently picked him up in a Budweiser ad.
“Hollywood doesn’t offer the same opportunities I get on Broadway,” he says, “but you get experience working with cameras and make more money if you get a consistent job out here.You do New York for the show. You do Hollywood for the business. Doing that show, I felt like I grew as an artist.”
But he’s longing for more opportunities for black actors in television and on the stage.
Contact Rose Post at 704-797-4251 or rpost@salisburypost.com
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