For 'Soldier's Play' Star Blair Underwood, the Uniform Fits

The retired Army colonel who served for almost three decades was there on opening night watching Golden Globe-nominated actor Blair Underwood deliver a spirited performance as the dogged Capt. Richard Davenport, who investigates the murder of a black sergeant near an Army base in Louisiana in 1944.

The play, written by Charles Fuller and first produced by the Negro Ensemble Company, is a nuanced exploration of segregation, race relations and colorism that won a Pulitzer Prize in 1981.

Frank Underwood, 87, grew up on a farm in Wintersville, Ohio (“Our existence was trees and dirt”), and had never seen the play or the 1984 film adaptation. Though he began serving in the military after it had been integrated by President Harry S. Truman in 1948, the issues raised in the drama were instantly recognizable.

And his son, best known for his prolific screen work (“L.A. Law,” “In Treatment,” “Dear White People”) was able to draw on his experience as a member of a military family. Until Blair Underwood was in high school, they moved from Army base to Army base about every two years. The stops included Colorado, Michigan, Kansas, Georgia and Virginia. There was even a stint in Germany.

When Kenny Leon, director of the Roundabout Theater Company revival, asked Underwood whether he’d want to take the lead role, the answer was a quick yes.

“I always joked with my dad that I may not join the Army but I’ll be in the military in a movie or on a stage somewhere,” Underwood, 55, said Wednesday, sitting next to his father, who wore a black leather jacket with “A Soldier’s Play” emblazoned on it.

In a joint interview, the Underwoods discussed Army base life, what makes a good salute, and that moment in the second act. The conversation has been edited.

Q: What was running through your mind as you watched the play?

Frank Underwood: What it does, for the public, is unveil what society was like in that time, the lack of receptiveness to African Americans. The system allowed that.

Q: Did you talk to your father in preparing for this role?

Blair Underwood: Not too much. My preparation was my lifetime growing up in a military family. I didn’t have to ask a lot of questions. It was very natural.

Q: Do you have a particularly vivid memory of growing up on Army bases?

Blair Underwood: We would be outside playing flag football, hide and seek, tag, whatever it may be. At 5 o’clock every day they would play either reveille or the national anthem, and whatever you were doing, you would stop and stand at attention and face the flag. You could be on the football field or in the woods. You could hear it all across the base.

Q: Do you see your father in the characters onstage with you?

Blair Underwood: Absolutely. I see him in my character. He’s an officer among enlisted men. This man, Capt. Davenport, like my father, as an African American man, you have to make your presence felt and understood, and you have to find a way for people to respect you beyond the rank. My dad’s battalion used to call him “the man of steel and velvet” because he ruled with a discipline but he had an empathetic quality to him. That’s what I tried to infuse in Davenport.

Q: What parts of yourself did you see in the play?

Frank Underwood: I certainly saw it in the role Blair had to play. I felt, “OK, yeah, that’s what I would do.” I liked his salute. He had a very good salute. It’s authoritative.

(BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM.)

Q: Did you teach him how to salute correctly as a child?

Frank Underwood: He saw it enough.

Blair Underwood: One thing I did ask my dad over Christmas: I didn’t understand if you could actually sit down and salute. We stand up mostly in the play, but you don’t have to. The beauty in the saluting is that it’s really layered and infused with the relationship of the person you’re saluting. The salute itself is a language unto itself.

Frank Underwood: That’s the key thing to understand. Why do we salute? Respect. When you don’t salute, there’s a message there.

(END OPTIONAL TRIM.)

Q: Your father just said that he saw your performance and said, “That’s what I would do.” That must be source of immense pride.

Blair Underwood: He’s seen me play so many characters in 35 years, some very bad. It’s nice when you can play a character aligned with his values, because I respect those values.

Q: Growing up, what kind of conversations did the two of you have about racism?

Blair Underwood: I have to tell you, we didn’t talk about it a lot. We talked about it in terms of, “You are an African American. You are a black man.” My dad taught me when I was 10 years old: “Everything you do as a black man in this country is a political statement. Everything you do. Not what you say.” The way I’ve built my life and my career, I don’t need to talk a lot. It’s what you do. I’ve always known and understood that excellence is the best deterrent to racism, period. That’s how we were raised.

Frank Underwood: There’s an old saying in the military: “You lead by example.” That’s what I always tried to do with my men in the military.

Q: I’m sorry, I have to ask this in good conscience, Blair, otherwise my fiancée might predivorce me. During the second act, there is a moment during a monologue when you’re getting dressed and the crowd goes wild. Was this moment planned?

Underwood: What’s planned is that the script says the character is getting dressed. You can never plan the reaction.

Q: Were you surprised by it?

Underwood: I was the first time. Maybe the director knew something I didn’t know. During rehearsals, I just have two buttons unbuttoned; I’m thinking about my lines. When we moved from the rehearsal hall to the stage, the director, Kenny Leon, said, “Blair, this is a real note; don’t laugh. I think you should just unbutton a couple of more buttons, because I think some people in the audience might appreciate it.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .