Red’s Celebrity Interviews: J. August Richards

J. August Richards’ mother didn’t want him to become an actor, she wanted her son to be an attorney instead.  In some ways, she got her wish.  After playing a vampire hunter on the hit TV series Angel, Richards’ character, Charles Gunn, morphed into that of a lawyer during the show’s last season.

And now he’s an attorney again in TNT’s Raising the Bar, where he stars as Marcus McGrath, a brilliant a prosecutor with a strong sense of morality and responsibility who doesn’t cut any slack with the people he prosecutes.

Richards, who grew up near Washington D.C., started studying acting in high school and after moving to Los Angeles, found quick success including a break out role as a rapping bike messenger who believes he’s an alien inductee in the play Space.  Richards talked to Red about his craft.

Have you always wanted to be an actor?

It started when I was very young and I saw King Kong with my father. I asked him, “Where is that?” and he said, “That is New York.”  I said “Can we go there?” because I knew I wanted to be in that movie and I thought that was how you did it–by going to New York.  It was like how I thought you had to shrink to be in TV but I was ready to do that too because I never wanted to be anything else but an actor.

But your parents didn’t want you to become an actor at first, did they?

No, there was even talk of me being a priest.  If I had become a lawyer, it would probably have made my mother happy.

Is your mom happy now that you’ve made it as an actor?

My mom isn’t alive anymore but it would have made her happy.  I graduated with a 4.25 grade point average out of 4 and she thought I was throwing my brains away.  But we went to New York together and saw Phantom of the Opera–she had been to a lot of plays before, but for some reason this one made her rethink acting–and then shortly after that I interviewed at University of Southern California to study theater and was accepted the following week and she said to me “Don’t ever do anything else.”

Besides acting, I read that you like to paint and also have an interest in astronomy.  What else do you like to do in your free time?

I love to hang out in large groups of people like the friends I went to college with or other groups.  This weekend I’m going with a group to a fashion show.

Born Jaime Augusto Richards III of Panamanian parents, Richards changed his name at age 14 because most people couldn’t pronounce his first name correctly (it’s pronounced Hai Mai).  Fairly progressive in his political views, Richards plays a straight laced, by the book prosecutor in Raising the Bar.  It’s a role that has caused him to be able to see both sides of an issue.   Richards, who is very analytical, talked to Red about that and more.

Marcus McGrath, the character you play on Raising the Bar, is the type who never gives and never backs down.  In some ways, it makes him the bad guy.  What’s your take on that?

Sometimes people watch the show and–even my friends and family–and call me and say, “How could you do that? Why did you do that to that young boy? Why did you do that to those old men?”  In my own mind and I hope the viewers do the same, I spend a lot of time thinking about the victim of each case, who sometimes we see and sometimes we don’t.  Creatively and imaginatively, I spend a lot of time with whomever the victim is that week. I think about them first walking into my office after they’ve been mugged, after they’ve been beaten, after they’ve been shot, whatever the case may be. And I think about the after effects of violence and crime.  Viewers don’t always see that, but I’m thinking about that.  In that regard, when I start thinking about that, I don’t think about my character as a bad guy. I think of my character as a very good guy and so I play it from that point of view of thinking, that I’m trying to right someone’s wrong.

It sounds as though it’s made you able to see a different point of view.

It has.  And that’s good.  I always liked my character and admired him, but I feel like I understand him now.  And I realize how judgmental we can all be.  When I thought of what my character has seen and done, that I was protected from–acting is more than just throwing on clothes–I can completely understand him now.

This isn’t your first time playing a lawyer.  Besides Angel, you also played a lawyer in the series Conviction and in CSI: Miami.  Are you getting typecast?

I think that sometimes I get a rap of, like, playing a lawyer on Angel, which I played a lawyer for only  half a season of the four seasons that I was on there. It was for half of the last season and then my character went back to the street-fighting, vampire-fighting avenger that he was. And on the one hand, I have to really thank Joss Whedon, who wrote Angel, for putting me in those suits and showing me in a courtroom because I guess it gave some other people an idea as well, which has kept me working and that’s great.

Are you beginning to think like a lawyer?

Sometimes.  Sometimes it seems like I am a lawyer.  At this point I feel like I could defend myself.

Well, don’t go getting in trouble and testing out that theory.

I won’t.

So if all your lawyer characters ended up in the same courtroom–what would be the outcome?  

That’s hard because Gunn knows laws in every dimension, every species known to man and was a defense attorney as well.  He’d be a very tough opponent, but Marcus is so scrappy. I’m going to have to say Marcus.

Do you miss being a vampire hunter?

I loved doing a different genre.  There are certain elements of Angel I miss. I miss the fight scenes.  I really worked hard at my fight scenes.  And I’m a night owl.  I love close-ups at 4 in the morning.

TNT’s Raising the Bar can be seen on Mondays at 10 p.m. (ET/PT).

–Interview by Jane Ammeson, Red Editorial Staff