Robert Townsend
Robert Townsend has always been a force of nature—actor, comedian, writer, director, and producer—a true Hollywood hyphen, born for this. His body of work speaks to this uniquely gifted artist, who got his start in Chicago theater when he was the ripe old age of 14 years old. He started out by doing extra work in classic films like Mahogany, starring Diana Ross and Billy Dee Williams, and his first speaking role was in the urban classic film Cooley High. He also appeared alongside Academy Award winner Denzel Washington in the Academy Award-nominated film A Soldier’s Story, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play from Charles Fuller and directed by Norman Jewison.
Townsend was truly born in the industry in 1987 with his first film Hollywood Shuffle, which he co-wrote with Keenan Ivory Wayans, directed, starred, and self-financed, doing it like no other indie producer had at the time with only a handful of credit cards. That film launched his career and he has been dancing back and forth in front of and behind the camera ever since. With the success of the film, Eddie Murphy asked Townsend to direct his stand-up concert film Eddie Murphy Raw and Townsend said yes in a nanosecond. It became the highest-grossing standup concert film of all time.
Townsend went back to the stage doing stand-up comedy, creating his first variety show Robert Townsend‘s Partners in Crime on HBO, featuring stand-up comedy, music, and singing, as well as introducing the world to a who’s who of future comedians, including a young Damon Wayans. In 1991, he produced his second film that he co-wrote again with Keenen, starred in, and directed: The Five Heartbeats. The film wasn’t a box office hit, but because of television and DVD sales, it has become an American classic with over a billion clips and reenactments shared on social media.
Townsend is one of the most versatile African American creatives, willing to take on any genre or subject matter fearlessly. He directed the Showtime film Holiday Heart, a dramedy about a non-traditional family. It features a struggling young mother with dreams of being a writer who is trying to stay clean, raise her young daughter, and finds help in an unlikely hero: a gay man who is a drag queen by night. It stars Ving Rhames and Alfre Woodard, who was nominated for a Golden Globe for her performance.
In 2001, he took on Georges Bizet’s Carmen, but flipped it upside down and directed it for MTV Films, the first ever hip-hop opera. Many say it was the precursor to Broadway‘s smash hit Hamilton, but the real first for Townsend was directing a young first-time actress from a girl group called Destiny’s Child: the one and only Beyoncé. Townsend then took on 10,000 Black Men Named George, a historical period piece about the legendary Pullman Porter strike starring Andre Braugher, Mario Van Peeples, and Charles Dutton. The film received multiple NAACP Image awards with Dutton winning for Best Actor. Townsend then directed Leon in the award-winning television film about Little Richard, and worked on another biopic, directing Natalie Cole in her Image Award-winning performance in Livin’ for Love: The Natalie Cole Story.
Townsend, forever the visionary and pioneer, decided to take on comedy fantasy next, creating the first African American superhero Meteor Man with an all-star cast that included everyone from James Earl Jones to music superstar Luther Vandross to hip-hop groups like Naughty By Nature. Now there’s a debate on social media about the first Black superhero going back and forth between Meteor Man and Black Panther. Townsend feels so flattered to be in the conversation. Townsend directed B*A*P*S for New Line Cinema, starring Halle Berry. The film was a pure comedy about two country girls from Georgia who come to Hollywood to audition for a music video and find themselves in a scam, kind of like a new Beverly Hillbillies. The film received mixed reviews, but now it’s become a hood classic with hip-hop rappers clamoring to be a part of any remake.
Over the years, Townsend has truly danced through many genres, taking on a story about real-life events at an alternative school for at-risk youth in the indie film In the Hive, starring Loretta Devine and Academy Award nominee Michael Clarke Duncan in his last starring role. His family was so moved by the film that they showed a clip at his star-studded funeral. Townsend continues to challenge himself, working with Ava Duvernay in Colin in Black and White, a Netflix limited series about NFL superstar, Colin Kaepernick‘s, life. The series won best-limited series at the 2022 NAACP Image Awards.
Townsend also took to the stage in 2019 to work on a one-man show about his life called Living the Shuffle, workshopping it at the Marsh Theater in Berkeley and opening to rave reviews. Recently, Townsend continued touching new genres, directing two episodes of the critically acclaimed suspense thriller series Kaleidoscope for Netflix and directing two fan-favorite episodes of Green and Violet. Townsend worked with Malcolm Lee on his limited series for Peacock, The Best Man: The Final Chapters, directing two series episodes that went on to win the NAACP Image Award for Best Limited Series.
Townsend rarely acts these days, but he’s been bitten by the acting bug again and he’s so happy to be a part of the FX mega-hit The Bear, currently guest starring as the father of Ayo Edebiri’s Sydney. Though he has a body of work that has continued for decades, he really feels like he’s only just beginning!