I was in a drive-thru waiting to order carne asada nachos and cajeta churros when I learned that Andre Braugher, one of the underrated thespians of our time, had just died.
I learned via one of my customary scrolls through Twitter — I won’t call it X — at the end of the day. I stopped and exclaimed loudly, enough to pull my wife’s attention and probably startling the employee behind the speaker who had just asked us to wait a moment. My wife asked me if this was the level of celebrity death that would make me emotional. It probably was.
I checked in on a Discord server, to find that someone had shared the news already. Another paid respects to Braugher’s character Capt. Raymond Holt; I replied with a correction — Frank Pembleton.
I will not pretend to have seen all or even the majority of Braugher’s films and television series. However, I became deeply engrossed with his two most significant roles at different points in my life. Despite my half-serious correction, Braugher was just as much Ray Holt from “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” as he was Frank Pembleton from “Homicide: Life on the Street,” even though the two shows ran decades apart. I wrote here in 2020 that the two roles complement each other in many ways and that they might just bookend his acting career. I did not anticipate that to become true so soon.
While there are of course an infinite number of performers out there, Braugher — who took great pride in challenging himself with Juilliard’s program — had distinguished himself as someone who fully disappears into a role and makes it inextricably tied to them. There was a script and persona written for Pembleton, the distant Jesuit homicide detective who smoked like a chimney, but no one on Earth could have done what Braugher did with him. And the very same goes for Holt, the gay cop who was the straight man in a precinct of comedians. While you simply see Alec Baldwin on the screen when you watch “The Departed,” Braugher is nowhere to be found on “Homicide” or “Brooklyn Nine-Nine”: instead, we only see Pembleton or Holt.
In the days following Braugher’s untimely death — he was 61, which my mother reminded me is her age — I further reflected on the parallels I drew between Pembleton and Holt. It occurred to me that in their own ways, they represented men who were ideal cops in spite of their flaws, who struggled to fit in with their precincts and did not count on their adversity to give them virtue. The actor I think captured this sentiment during an emotional scene in “Brooklyn” in which he told a colleague that “every time someone steps up and says who they are, the world becomes a better, more interesting place.”
Pembleton had a high opinion of himself, resented the idea of working with colleagues and struggled to acknowledge friendship. Still, he never viewed himself as special; he defied any deference to the badge, refusing to circle the wagons for his fellow cops even when it made him enemies within the department. And he did not let past and present discrimination against him, as a black cop in Baltimore, define who he was.
Holt insisted that his subordinates grow up, and his droll by-the-book approach did not help him. But as he kindled mutual respect with his subordinates, he warmed to their antics and everyone helped each other grow as complicated humans. He backed one of his detectives in arresting the serial criminal son of a deputy police commissioner, and he took responsibility when it did not serve his ambitions. And while he was informed by his past treatment as a black and gay man in a New York Police Department that respected neither, he did not shoulder that in the form of a grudge in the present day.
In death, Braugher leaves behind wonderful gifts in his capacity as a performer. In a scripted media environment that is increasingly defined by characters who are too ambivalent to admire or hate, he gave us men who are imperfect yet stand as unambiguous role models — role models for husbands, fathers, police officers and leaders. Perhaps this was a testament to just how much of himself he lent to his roles on-screen and on-stage.
Thank you Andre Braugher — for making the world a better, more interesting place.
