Life right now for "black-ish' star Marcus Scribner is, in his words, "kind of strange but kind of cool."
What's given him that mixed feeling is how life and art have aligned when it comes to the young actor and his role of Junior on the ABC comedy. The episode where Junior graduates from high school will air May 8 while Scribner will be going through his own real-life graduation at the same time.
He likes how fact and fiction are running a parallel course.
"In the show I get a little bit of a head start to see how this is all going to go down," Scribner says. "It is like a warning system before the real thing happens. I am really excited to graduate so that I can be done with high school and go on to my next chapter of education. With home schooling it is just a matter of getting the work done. Hopefully, college will be more of an experience."
That next chapter most likely will be at a Southern California school such as USC or UCLA. Scribner thought he knew that his major was going to be psychology, but after campus visits, he's a little uncertain about the direction of his studies. He does know that there's time to decide as he's planning to take a year break before enrolling. Scribner's looking forward to a time when all he has to worry about are the crazy family antics and the serious subject matters that have become the hallmark of "black-ish."
Scribner describes working on the series with the likes of Anthony Anderson, Tracee Ellis Ross, Jenifer Lewis and Laurence Fishburne as a master class in comedy. He's blended the knowledge that he's gotten from them with his own acting experience, which dates back to 2010 when he landed a role on "Castle." Since then, Scribner's credits include "New Girl," "The Good Dinosaur," "American Dad!," "Home: Adventures with Tip & Oh" and "Alexander IRL."
All of the experience � his own and that of his co-stars � has come in handy because Junior has grown and changed over the years.
"A lot of characters in comedies stay stagnant. You can see the kids on the show growing up and getting older but their personalities stay relatively the same, which I don't think is true to real life," Scribner says. "On 'black-ish,' our characters have definitely developed and grown into who they are going to become when they get into their late teens and early adulthood.
"It has been a blast to play Junior and to get to see the evolution of the character. Him getting older. Him realizing what he wants in life and standing up to his dad for bullying him all the time. Every character on the show has developed from the first episode into this sprawling network of arcs and characteristics. It feels like a real-world situation around the Johnson family."
Along the way, Scribner got to participate in more high school activities through episodes of the series than in real life, because he has been home schooled. It was necessary for Scribner to do his school work at home and or on the set because the laws for young actors are very clear as to how much time they have to spend in classroom work and not in front of cameras.
Classroom time was a little easier on Scribner before Yara Shahidi landed her own spinoff series, "Grown-ish," and left "black-ish" because he at least had someone close to his age to be around. The rest of the young actors on the series are far younger than Scribner.
Now the school work is done. The reaction Junior has to graduation is far different than the way Scriber's dealing with it. He explains that on the series, Junior has a purpose when he's going to graduate because of "outside events" that are happening. That serves as the groundwork for everything in the episode from the graduation ceremonies to Junior's valedictorian speech.
Scribner's a little less focused on the ceremony than Junior. It's going to take some work, but there is no way Scribner would miss the graduation ceremonies being put on by the online school that provided his home educational curriculum. The school, Laurel Springs, is based in Ojai, Calif., but has students around the globe.
"They are hosting their graduation in Florida, which I think is a midway point for everyone. We are going to be going to Florida to do the whole graduation situation," Scribner says. He pauses and then adds, "The real reason I want to go out there and do the whole ceremony, walk the stage, is because I get to go to Disney World afterwards.
"That was the selling point for me."
"BLACK-ISH"
9 p.m. Tuesday, May 8, ABC
