James Pickens Jr.
James Pickens Jr. is an actor, born 1954.
Read the film credits in order and you get a map of what the 1990s offered a working Black character actor in Los Angeles. Police Officer Reese in Trespass. Man #2 in Menace II Society. Prison Officer in Boiling Point. Mr. Curtis in Dead Presidents. Supervisor in Gridlock'd. Black Orator in Nixon. An uncredited zoo doctor in Red Dragon. James Pickens Jr. did years of this, showing up for a scene and leaving without a name.
One credit in that stretch breaks the pattern. In Ghosts of Mississippi he played Medgar Evers, which is not a bit part in any sense, and it is the clearest early evidence of what he could carry.
Television is what changed the arithmetic. Chuck Mitchell on Roseanne from 1988, a part he returned to on The Conners three decades later. Deputy Director Alvin Kersh in the later seasons of The X-Files, where his job was to be the immovable object in the doorway. Then Grey's Anatomy in 2005 and Dr. Richard Webber, a role he has now played for two decades on one of the most-watched dramas on American television.
What he is good at is authority without volume. Kersh and Webber are both senior men who never need to raise their voice to end a conversation, and Pickens plays that stillness better than almost anyone in either cast. The later film work, Prosecutor Ben Williams in Traffic and Mr. Brock in 42, uses exactly the same instrument.
Movies (20)
- Traffic (2000)
- Menace II Society (1993)
- 42 (2013)
- Dead Presidents (1995)
- Sphere (1998)
- Nixon (1995)
- RocketMan (1997)
- How Stella Got Her Groove Back (1998)
- Just Wright (2010)
- Ghosts of Mississippi (1996)
- Trespass (1992)
- Venom (2005)
- Boiling Point (1993)
- Red Dragon (2002)
- Gridlock'd (1997)
- Liberty Heights (1999)
- 8 (2012)
- Home Room (2002)
- Trial by Fire (1995)
- White Rush (2003)
TV (14)
Where to start with James Pickens Jr.
Skip the obvious for a moment. Ghosts of Mississippi is where to start, because it is the only thing in this filmography that hands him a real historical figure and lets him build a person rather than a function.
Then the television. Grey's Anatomy is the reason the name is familiar, and Richard Webber is a genuinely well-written part buried inside a very long show, so start anywhere in the early seasons. The X-Files is the useful contrast: same authority, no warmth at all, a man who exists to stand in the way.
For film, Traffic and 42 show the polished later version, while Menace II Society and Dead Presidents are worth a look purely to see how little he was once given and how much he did with it. Roseanne and The Conners complete the set.