He didn’t desire a Mob hit.
“Tulsa King” star Michael Seaside hoped to not get TKO’d by Sylvester Stallone’s character Dwight, a NY Mafia capo exiled to Oklahoma, within the Paramount+ sequence, which premieres its second season Sunday.
In Season 1, Seaside’s character, the daddy of Dwight’s cab driver, confronts the displaced mob boss after he hires his son as his private driver.
“It’s weird, the idea of going toe to toe with Sylvester Stallone. . . . You never know if he’s about to punch you or something, that character, cause he’s always knocking people out,” Seaside, 60, informed The Publish.
The veteran actor, who landed his breakthrough function within the 1995 movie “Waiting to Exhale” reverse Vanessa Williams, had by no means met Stallone, which made co-starring with him “surreal.”
“I’d never even been in his presence. It’s definitely a career check because he’s Sylvester Stallone. He’s Rocky. I was a teenager when ‘Rocky’ came out,” he gushed.
On set, Stallone inspired the solid so as to add comedic touches to the script — and had endurance with those that had been much less skilled.
“He’s always trying to help people find the humor . . . ‘Why don’t you just try to say this.’ And a lot of the people in his crew, some were not seasoned actors, and that didn’t bother him at all,” Seaside stated.
“He was always just trying to help them find a way to help them develop a character. He was really cool about that.”
The daddy of eight stated his personal experiences as a father or mother helped him play the function of a involved patriarch in “Tulsa King.”
“One of the things about being a father is always hoping, praying that your children follow a path that you think is the right one,” Seaside stated.
“And it doesn’t mean that you have to do this or you have to do that. But what you do, you do it the right way . . . you make sure that you’re being respectful, responsible, accountable and honorable. And I think the father in ‘Tulsa King,’ the dude has no money. He works his ass off, but he feels like he has honor in that. And I think he’s concerned that his son is going down the road where honor doesn’t exist.”
The Boston native, who now resides in Los Angeles, as soon as lived on St. Nicholas Avenue and West 145th Road in Washington Heights whereas attending Juilliard, and recalled the roles he had whereas in school.
“I was teaching at a camp up in East Tremont in the Bronx. I was an usher in a movie theater on the East Side. Wendell Pierce worked there as well,” he stated, referring to the man Juilliard alum recognized for his function on HBO’s “The Wire.”
After commencement, Seaside discovered appearing gigs rapidly, and labored with one other icon, James Earl Jones, a number of occasions — and even performed his son within the 1996 movie “A Family Thing.”
“Probably the most amazing voiceover actor in history had a stutter,” he stated of Jones, who died this week at 93. “That’s something he overcame early on in his life, but he never got rid of. In ‘A Family Thing,’ every once in a while, he would stutter. And if the scene worked, then they would keep it.”
Early on in his 40-year profession, Seaside was in two motion pictures, “Waiting to Exhale” and “Soul Food,” the place he performed a dishonest husband.
“So every once in a while, a female would come up to me and would just berate me. And a couple of times, I was pushed. I was just vilified, just hated for those two movies.”
Even now, nearly 30 years later, he can’t shake the stigma.
“Even to this day, in the black community, I am considered the actor who cheats on his wife.”
This yr, Seaside was engaged on 4 tasks without delay that each one shot in other places — “Tulsa King” in Atlanta; the Paramount+ crime drama “Mayor of Kingstown” in Pittsburgh; the film “I’ll Be Right There” in upstate New York; and the Netflix’ sequence “The Perfect Couple” in Massachusetts.
“So I spend a lot of time on planes jumping around from place to place,” he stated.
“You know, it’s a great life. It’s nothing to complain about.”
