Pop-Culturalist.com

Comedy has the ability to bring people together—just ask Marcel Spears. The talented young actor is one of the stars of CBS’ The Neighborhood.

Each week, millions of viewers tune in to see Marcel and his cast deliver some much-needed laughs.

We recently had the pleasure of speaking with Marcel about his career, discovering his passion for his craft, and Season 3 of The Neighborhood.

Career

PC: How did you discover your passion for the arts?
Marcel: I was lucky in that I inherited the arts. I don’t believe there’s anybody in my family who is in the business—acting or singing or performing—but there are a lot of people in my family who are natural-born performers. I was born into a very artistically rich, culturally rich city, growing up in New Orleans. So I just got it. Over the years, I found that as much as I didn’t expect acting to be the thing that I was going to do for the rest of my life, I couldn’t avoid what my mom was saying God has called me to do.

PC: Who or what has had the biggest influence on your career, either personally or professionally?
Marcel: It’s hard to quantify that because there are so many people that I really enjoy their trajectory. I really like their path. I like what they’ve been able to do. As I was graduating grad school, they have you do all these exercises to pitch yourself like, “Who are you the most like? Who’s working now that you think you can vibe with?” Brian Tyree Henry was somebody that I gravitated towards, being a stallion of a man. Being a very voluptuous brother and still playing in comedies and doing really dramatic roles and that versatility that he was able to have. He was a theater kid as well. He’s somebody that I was like, “All right, cool. I feel like there’s space for me. I see a path and it’s been shoveled out for me.”

Wendell Pierce is another one who I always looked up to. He’s from New Orleans, so you see his family around the city. He’s a philanthropist in the area. He was somebody that I looked up to a lot. More recently since I’ve gotten to know him much better, Cedric [the Entertainer]. I don’t think there’s anybody in the business that is as talented on the business side as he is on the creative side. He’s so well balanced. He’s really good at navigating this space as a producer as well as as a lead actor. It’s really dope.

PC: What impact has the city of New Orleans had on your development as not only a man but also an artist?
Marcel: Everything. People from New Orleans are very, very special in that it’s such a small, small town. It’s really a small kind of country town, but it has this big-city personality. There’s big-city flavor in the food. There’s big city in the music. There’s big city in everything. So people from New Orleans carry this extra zeal, this kind of fire. I feel like that’s always been a part of everything that I do. That’s how I approach everything. There’s a certain sort of swagger that I just naturally am able to carry with me. I credit that to New Orleans. New Orleans shaped me one hundred percent. It made me tough. It made me resilient. It made me love music and art and appreciate it in a way that I can’t really explain.

PC: You come from a theater background. What has the transition been like going from the stage to the screen?
Marcel: You know what’s so crazy? When I first booked The Mayor on ABC in 2017, one of the directors that we were working with was like, “My son, I can’t believe this is your first show. I can’t believe it.” The response that I had for him was, “I’ve been ready. I’ve been ready. I was on go from day one.” So I feel like everything that I learned in undergrad at Prairie View A&M University in Houston, everything that I learned in my grad program at Columbia University, prepared me for being on camera.

The stage is the biggest training ground. It doesn’t always translate well when you’re going from stage to film because on the stage you have to be so big and it’s so intimate. You get one chance each show. Every show is different. It’s never the same again. That performance is a very special thing, but I think to be able to do a show night after night makes it special for every audience. You have to be present with your cast.

All of those things are the building blocks to a good performance on film. The beautiful thing about this show is it bridges the gap between stage and film. I mean, not now because of COVID, but usually we film in front of a live audience. You still get that buzz. You still have real human bodies responding to what you’re doing. But you’re also playing to these four cameras that are watching you.

The Neighborhood

PC: Season 3 of The Neighborhood is airing now and it’s been incredibly well received. What do you think has resonated most with audiences?
Marcel: Our audience invites us into their house every week, and I think in Season 3, it’s almost like family. You get to know these characters. Growing up, when I was watching sitcoms, I literally felt like Will Smith was my best friend, watching The Fresh Prince. I literally felt like Steve Urkel was my neighbor. The beautiful thing about multicam sitcoms is you get that nostalgic feeling that makes you feel like you’ve known these people for so long. You feel really attached to them. You see them every week. As our characters develop, as the relationships between these people gel and get closer together, we see the differences in them, but we celebrate those differences. Those differences bring us closer together. That process is happening on the show as we see Cedric’s character get closer to Max Greenfield’s character. The audience is getting to know us better.

PC: Speaking of relationships, which of Marty’s has been your favorite to explore and why? Has that changed over the seasons?
Marcel: It has. It changes every time. The cool thing about the show is everyone is so good. Everybody can act their asses off. So there are so many relationships that we haven’t had the chance to explore yet. My favorite is Marty’s relationship with his mom, Tina, played by Tichina Arnold. That mama’s boy thing is something that I connect to a lot because I love my mom. I can tap into it really, really easily. I can also tap into the brother relationship. I’m the oldest of five kids. I’m usually the big brother, so to have a big-brother relationship on this show where I’m the little brother now has been a lot of fun to explore.

But I’m really curious to explore my relationship with Max’s character. What is Marty and Dave’s relationship like? What is Marty and Gemma’s relationship like? Real talk, Beth [Behrs], Sheaun [McKinney], and I are closer in age than everybody on set. Beth is also a theater nerd too. We really click off camera. That’s my sister for real. I’ll be excited to see how Gemma and Marty’s relationship develops on the show. There is a lot of potential there.

PC: This is the second time in your young career that you’ve lived with a character for an extended period of time. How did The Mayor prepare you for The Neighborhood?
Marcel: The Mayor was the perfect training ground. I was really sad to see that show go because I believed in it so much and it was so good. I felt bad that we didn’t have the response from the audience that I felt like we needed to continue. But I learned lessons on The Mayor set about professionalism, about how to save your money, about having agency when talking to a director. I was lucky on The Mayor in that a lot of the directors that came in were really active directors. They were collaborative. They welcomed ideas. They encouraged me as a young artist to speak up. If you got something to say that you could make the scene better, go for it. Be respectful, obviously, to the writers because they’re sensitive about their work and they want their words to be heard, but if you have an idea, advocate for yourself.

Yvette Nicole Brown was really essential in helping me speak up for myself. That was my first-ever series regular role. When I got to The Neighborhood, I was joining a space where Cedric, Tichina, Max, and Beth are veterans. They’re comedy veterans. They know how to do this. They know what they’re doing. I feel way more comfortable being able to bring my special whatever to the table. Cedric is just as collaborative as a producer. Showrunner Jim Reynolds is just as collaborative. I was able to really connect to this ensemble. This family that we’ve built created a really great show. I’ve always worked with collaborators. I’ve always worked with open people that welcome ideas, and I’m spoiled that way. I can’t go backwards.

PC: This show does an incredible job touching on real-life issues and experiences but through the lens of comedy. Why is that so important for you, the cast, and the creators?
Marcel: Comedy is one of the things that brings people together. It’s like medicine. It’s disarming. It’s healing and invites people in to have different ideas and to think outside of the box. It’s one of those things that’s like a roux. I’m from New Orleans. When you’re making gumbo, that roux is your base. You need that to tie everything in. You need that to bring everything together. The roux is the base of it, but it also highlights the different flavors of whatever else you put in your gumbo. Comedy does that for us as artists and performers. It connects us to our audience. It connects us to the ideas of the show, which are also reflective of what’s happening in real life. It brings everything together and invites everyone to sit down and enjoy that as a whole.

PC: Season 3 is airing right now. What can you tease about it? What’s ahead? What can we expect from Marty?
Marcel: We’re watching my character, Marty, grow up in a lot of ways. He’s really smart, very career-driven, really, really intelligent, but he’s still young. He’s still got a bit of that naïveté that young people have, like when you’re a bit full of yourself, not really knowing exactly what you’re doing. He’s learning a lot about himself, and his brother is going to teach him a lot about that. They’re going to bump heads a bit in some coming episodes. It’s going to bring them closer together, but it’s also going to help them grow as men a bit too.

Pop Culturalist Speed Round

PC: Guilty pleasure TV show?
Marcel: Love After Lockup and 90 Day Fiancé. 90 Day Fiancé is my jam.

PC: Guilty pleasure movie?
Marcel: I’m not ashamed of any of the movies that I enjoy. Maybe the guilty pleasure is Under the Cherry Moon. It’s a movie that Prince did. I don’t know if it’s that good of a movie, but Prince is so big. He’s so funny in it. My mom introduced it to me, but I’ve never seen Prince in this way. He’s so reserved and poised. You only get to see the bigger side of his personality in his music. Watching him in this movie, I was like, “Yo. This man is probably the funniest dude in the world.”

PC: Favorite book?
Marcel: Right now it’s Tomi Adeyemi’s Children of Blood and Bone—selfishly, because I’m hoping that when they bring it to the movies that I get to play one of the characters. I don’t care which. I just want to be a part of that situation.

PC: Favorite play or musical?
Marcel: Anything with August Wilson. Anything by Dominique Morisseau. Favorite musical? It’s a tie between A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and Once on This Island.

PC: A band or artist that fans would be surprised to learn is on your playlist?
Marcel: Brandi Carlile. Brandi Carlile sings her ass off. Brandi Carlile sings down, and you feel the music. And I really, really enjoy her voice—the texture that she has in all her songs. That woman is dope. I’m a big fan.

PC: Who would play you in the story of your life?
Marcel: Who would play me in the story of my life? Hopefully me. I mean maybe by the time they want to tell a story about my life, I’ll be too old. So I wouldn’t know who could do that at that point, but hopefully me. But you know whose life story I would like to tell? I think right now, because I get a lot of comparisons in the sitcom work that I do, I think it would be fun for me to play a slightly younger version of Kenan Thompson and just navigate that life story. I think that’d be cool.

To keep up with Marcel, follow him on Twitter and Instagram. Watch new episodes of The Neighborhood oat 8/7c on CBS.

Photo Credit: CBS