E-mail a friendRobert Guillaume
airdate August 7, 2007
Robert Guillaume continually helps to defy stereotypes. He was the first African American to play the lead in Phantom of the Opera and earned a Tony nod for Guys and Dolls. He starred in the acclaimed TV series Sports Night and won two Emmys for his role as the self-assured butler, Benson, and a Grammy for The Lion King. With his wife, Guillaume co-founded Confetti Entertainment Company, which produced the award-winning HBO series of ethnically diverse animated fairy tales, Happily Ever After.
Robert Guillaume
Tavis: I'm pleased and honored to welcome Robert Guillaume to this program. The two-time Emmy award winner of course starred for seven seasons on the very popular series "Benson." He's also enjoyed great success in film and on Broadway, for that matter, earning a Tony nomination for his role in "Guys and Dolls." The complete first season of "Benson" is finally out on DVD. Here now, a scene from that classic series.
[Clip]
Tavis: You've got to be the most smart-aleck Negro in the history of television. (Laughter)
Robert Guillaume: Yeah, it's a wonder I'm not dispatched immediately.
Tavis: How you doing, man?
Guillaume: Pretty good, Tavis, and you?
Tavis: I'm doing the best I can. You're looking well.
Guillaume: I know; I've been watching you.
Tavis: I appreciate it. I've been watching you for a lot more years than you've been watching me.
Guillaume: No, you - listen - you have?
Tavis: How many seasons was this?
Guillaume: Seven.
Tavis: See? Yeah. How did "Benson" come to be? For those of us who are fans of yours, we know your "Soap" days. But how did "Benson" actually come to be?
Guillaume: Well, we were a spin-off from "Soap." And somebody got the idea that since this character, Benson, could get so many laughs, maybe he merits a show. So that's why we got spun off.
Tavis: Take me back to sitting around the table, I assume, and somebody pitching the idea to you and being in the governor's mansion and all - tell me what you made of the original pitch for the kind of character that Benson was going to play in the spin-off.
Guillaume: Well, where I was coming from was I wanted a character who was involved in upward mobility, so that if I started as a porter somewhere, that I would eventually rise out of my own industry to another position, higher. And when they started talking about spinning off the character, I was hoping that we could keep some of that brash quality that he had on "Soap," I was hoping - I was wondering, well, how much of that are we going to have to lose?
And everybody - they thought, well, if he's going to be the lead in the series, he can't be that profligate in his attitude. So I think we lost a little edge, but we managed to come up with a tried-and-true formula for a sitcom.
Tavis: Profligate is a good Scrabble word, if you can match it up.
Guillaume: Yes, would somebody please explain it to me?
Tavis: You used it; it's a good Scrabble word. Tell me what it meant to you - and beyond that, I want to talk about what it meant to Black people - but what did it mean to you to have the chance, during this era, to play that kind of smart-aleck Black person - not just smart-aleck, but smart. You were the smartest cat around. You weren't just a smart-aleck; you were smart.
Play that kind of character on television, because I'm going back to your point earlier that you wanted a character to have some upward mobility. That was important to you. But how important was it to be able to play a smart Black male character on TV during this era? I know how much I loved watching it, but you were playing the guy.
Guillaume: Well, I thought I'd died and gone to Heaven, because it had always been something close to my heart to try to, as much as I could - I wondered if I'd ever get the chance to change peoples' notions about a common man, common Black man, and it's like I was born for it. That was my attitude, and that was something that I held close to me. I really wanted to change peoples' minds about a common Black man, which Benson was.
Tavis: Where did that come from? And I'm probing here because I love the fact that you insisted on playing a character that had, again, that upward mobility. There are a whole lot of folk nowadays, Black, brown, otherwise, in this business especially where it's so tough to get work, who'd do anything to get on television, particularly if it leads to a series that run seven seasons.
So there's no meeting where they're putting their foot down saying the Black character, the Black male must have upward mobility. Please, you got a paycheck, I will do whatever you ask me to do is how it typically goes. Where did that sense come from for you?
Guillaume: I can't really explain it, except that when I was growing up in the thirties and forties it just stayed with me, this idea that if I could ever get on TV, if for any reason - I wasn't thinking that I'd be an actor; it wasn't a profession that I thought I was qualified for. But as I grew older I started to think, I guess, about show business, because I could sing a little. (Laughter)
And so that when singing did not work out the way I wanted it to - I wanted to be, of course, somebody else - I wanted to be -
Tavis: Don't we all?
Guillaume: Yeah. But it never worked out for me that way. But then I kept hanging around until somebody finally said, "Hey, come over here, kid, we got something for you to do." And when I first went to New York, that's where I wanted to establish myself. And I got to New York, and I fell into the theater. And I finally was able to come up with something there, because I would go and do my little auditions and whatnot.
(Singing) (Unintelligible) next. (Laughter) And finally somebody said, "Here comes that guy again. We got anything for him to do?" "Hell, no, we don't have anything for him to do. Who is he?" "He said his name is Robert Gilliam." "What does he do?" "Well, he sings a little bit. Can't we put him in something?" "No, where are we going to put him, out in Ohio somewhere?"
Tavis: See, you're being way too modest, because this story fast-forwards to a Tony nomination -
Guillaume: But this was a long time in coming.
Tavis: Yeah, but it fast-forwards to a Tony nomination for "Guys and Dolls," it fast-forwards to me taking such great pride in sitting in the audience and watching you in "Phantom of the Opera."
Guillaume: Oh, yeah, yeah, well, that was way down the line.
Tavis: But you were great in that, though.
Guillaume: Thank you very much. Thank you. But there again, "Phantom of the Opera" was a dream of mine that I'd finally do a role that was complete in all its aspects that did not require - that was not written for a Black man. So let me see how I can do this. And I had seen "Phantom of the Opera" in London, I'd seen it in New York, I'd seen it in L.A., and finally I said to my wife one day, I said, "Donna, I think I can do that role." And she said, "Yes." (Laughter) So.
Tavis: Is that a quote?
Guillaume: Yeah. (Laughter) And so the manager I had at the time, a man by the name of Hilly Elkins, knew the executive producer of "Phantom," just by chance. His name is Cameron Mackintosh. So we called him up one day and I said, "I hear that Michael Crawford wants a rest." And he said, "What are you talking about?"
I said, "Well, I'd like to do that role." "And what is your name?" "Robert Guillaume." "You mean the guy who plays 'Benson?'" "Yes, yes." And so there was a long, long silence, and finally he came back on and said, "Well, we'll get back to you."
Well, they didn't get back to us for about half a year. And then they did; they got back and said, "Well, we were just wondering where to put you." And I wanted to go back to New York because I had a little following back in New York, as I had done "Guys and Dolls," the last thing I had done there. And he called back about two weeks later and he said, "Well, we're going to put you in the L.A. company, but you'll have to go back to New York and audition for -” now, this is another audition.
So I went back and he ran me through the wringer for two weeks, and my blood was running out of my throat. (Laughter) I was screaming and yelling and trying to make this thing happen.
Tavis: But you made it happen, though.
Guillaume: Yeah, and he finally said, "Well, that's enough, you can go on back to L.A." And when I got back to L.A., I came in my home, I opened the door, and my house - the person I had working for me said to me, "You got it, Robert." I said, "Got what?" He said, "They just called and said that the job is yours." So.
Tavis: Worked out.
Guillaume: Yeah.
Tavis: Let me go back to "Benson" before I let you get out of here. Did you have any idea that this thing was good enough to last for seven seasons, and when it started to move in that direction, then did you get worried about being typecast?
Guillaume: Well, I was always frightened of "Benson."
Tavis: Right. You were frightened of "Benson."
Guillaume: Yeah, I was frightened of how is this character going to be received? Because I did not want to just do something which was an update on 1936. I was not interested in that at all, but I couldn't see any way not to do it as people had done it before, perhaps. And I kept worrying that oh my God, people are going to see this and they're going to say, “What is that child doing?”
But we found a way to maneuver around and avoid all those racial pitfalls that were just so -
Tavis: Well, he avoided those racial pitfalls, the ones he wanted to, at least, (laughter) for seven seasons, and finally, you can get the DVD of the entire first season, at least. Robert Guillaume starring as "Benson." He is running the house and the state, and you know what that means if you checked "Benson" out any of those years.
Robert Guillaume, an honor to have you here. Listen, you've got to come back again, because there's so much to your career that we didn't get a chance to even scratch the service on.
Guillaume: Tavis, thank you very much.
Tavis: Come back and see me sometime.
Guillaume: I will.
Tavis: Good to see you, man.
Guillaume: I'd love to.
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