00:00 Andre Braugher, the Emmy-winning actor who mastered gritty drama for seven seasons on
00:08 Homicide, Life on the Street and modern comedy for eight on Brooklyn Nine-Nine, died on Monday
00:13 at 61.
00:14 "Braugher died after a brief illness," his publicist, Jennifer Allen, said.
00:20 No further details were given.
00:21 The Chicago-born actor established himself in the role of Detective Frank Pembleton,
00:25 the lead role on Homicide, Life on the Street, a dark police drama based on a book by David
00:30 Simon, who went on to create The Wire.
00:33 The show, which focused on the homicide unit of the Baltimore Police Department, ran for
00:37 seven seasons on NBC and won critical acclaim with Braugher as its dramatic center and breakout
00:42 star.
00:43 He won his first career Emmy for the role, taking the trophy for the lead actor in a
00:47 drama series in 1998.
00:49 He feared that he would be typecast after spending most of the 1990s as the brooding
00:53 detective.
00:54 "If I do it too long, then I'll stop really searching and probing inside my own world,"
00:59 he said in 1998.
01:00 "That's just a great danger.
01:02 I think I'm going to escape that trap and get an opportunity to do some work that would
01:06 be more challenging for me.
01:08 That would not prove to be a problem."
01:10 He went on to play a very different kind of cop on a very different kind of show, shifting
01:14 to comedy as Captain Dreyhold on the Andy Samberg-starring Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
01:19 It ran for eight seasons from 2013 to 2021 on Fox and NBC.
01:23 Though he had dipped his toe into comedy in the TNT dramedy, men of a certain age, Brooklyn
01:28 Nine-Nine still represented a major shift for Braugher, who was known for acting in
01:32 dark and heavy dramas.
01:33 "I just felt as though it was an opportunity to do something strikingly different from
01:38 the rest of my career," Braugher said.
01:40 "I like it because it just simply opens my mind and forces me to think in a different
01:44 way.
01:45 So I think I've become much more sort of supple as an actor and more open to the incredible
01:49 number of possibilities of how to play a scene."
01:52 He was nominated for four Emmys during the run.
01:55 Braugher's Brooklyn Nine-Nine co-star Terry Crews paid tribute to him on Monday night.
01:59 "Can't believe you're gone so soon," Crews said on Instagram.
02:02 "I'm honoured to have known you, laughed with you, worked with you and shared eight glorious
02:07 years watching your impeccable talent.
02:09 This hurts," he added.
02:11 "You showed me what a life well-lived looked like."
02:14 Braugher most recently starred in, she said, the 2022 film about the New York Times journalists
02:20 who broke the story of Harvey Weinstein's years of sexually abusing women.
02:24 Braugher played Times editor Dean Beckwith.
02:27 Born and raised in Chicago, Braugher graduated from Stanford and got a Master of Fine Arts
02:32 degree from Juilliard.
02:33 He had his breakthrough role in 1989's Flory, starring alongside Morgan Freeman and Denzel
02:38 Washington, who won an Oscar for the film about an all-black army regiment during the
02:42 Civil War.
02:43 Braugher played the bookish, frightened Union corporal Thomas Seales in the film.
02:48 "I conceived that character as heroic, but I got a lot of scripts after that where I'm
02:52 constantly crying," he said.
02:54 Despite the part, in 2019, Braugher said that he struggled to find work in Hollywood where
02:59 roles for African-American actors were few and far between.
03:03 Period.
03:04 Braugher won his second Emmy for lead actor in a miniseries or movies for the 2006 limited
03:09 series Thief on FX.
03:11 Braugher was nominated for 11 Emmys overall.
03:14 His other film credits included Primal Fear and Get on the Bus, and his other TV credits
03:19 included Hack, Gideon's Crossing, and The Good Fight.
03:23 He also acted frequently on the stage, often doing Shakespeare.
03:26 He won an Obie Award for playing the title role in Henry V at the New York Shakespeare
03:30 Festival, where he also appeared in Measure for Measure, Twelfth Night, and As You Like
03:34 It.
03:35 Braugher was married for more than 30 years to his Homicide co-star Amy Brabson.
03:39 He is also survived by sons Michael, Isaiah, and John Wesley, his brother Charles Jennings,
03:44 and his mother Sally Braugher.
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