PASADENA, Calif. _ You'd never guess by watching actor Carl Lumbly in his myriad incarnations on screen, stage and television that he's inordinately shy.
Soft-spoken and pensive, Lumbly says, "I was raised in a wonderful home with three sisters. And my father was very dominant. So I think a lot of air was taken up, and I learned to keep my own counsel, to keep pretty quiet, and spent a lot of my time in books and to myself.
"So when I stumbled across acting or acting stumbled across me, I found it an interesting outlet _ almost like a laboratory. I suddenly saw myself as an individual of possibility," he says.
He found the idea that he could become other characters exciting. "And I think it was also a way for me _ without running out and engaging other people _ to deal with my shyness."
After five years on "Alias," seven years on "Cagney & Lacey" and parts on every primetime show from "West Wing" to "NCIS," it's not surprising Lumbly was chosen to play the shamanlike Martian M'yrnn J'onzz on CW's "Supergirl."
He jokes that it was stunt casting since he'd played J'onzz's son in the animated series "Justice League Unlimited." But it was more than that.
"They asked me if I'd be interested in playing essentially my own father. I probably have always been sentimental and know I can be very emotional, and things resonate with me. So that's an important one to me."
The father-son relationship was critical for the boy who grew up in Minneapolis. His parents were immigrants from Jamaica. "My father had a lot of hopes and aspirations when he came to this country. He was a welder and electrician, a very hard worker. He and my mom had heard the beacon sent out from this country about freedoms, so they came in the early '50s and encountered, among other things, racism ... So there was a lot of fear in the way he raised me as an only son," he says.
"He was very protective. He was also insistent that all of us value education and strive to be successful in whatever we do. He had limited ideas about what that should be _ doctor, lawyer _ but he was an incredibly good example for me in the way he operated. But he was a tough standard to live up to. And there was no equivocating in my father."
When Lumbly had a son himself, he began to understand his father's intransigence. Not only was Lumbly proud, he was elated because his wife, actress Vonetta McGee, had suffered several bouts with cancer and was told she could not bear a child.
"He was always a miracle in my mind," says Lumbly, 66. "I thought him, being a boy, I had this opportunity to, among other things, do justice in the way in which my father and mother raised me."
There exists an odd gap among Lumbly's multiple credits. It corresponds with the loss of his wife of 26 years in 2010. "She'd been a cancer survivor several times in her life, and in the last episode of it she was battling, but I think her system gave up," he shakes his head.
That heartache threw him into a deep depression, and he lost all interest in work. "Reality had come knocking at such a level that it made this work of fiction seem inconsequential," he says, "and I had great difficulty because I probably did not handle my grief well. I may have extended the amount of time in which I was not as functional," he says.
"At a certain point _ as is the nature of this country _ it was suggested to me that there was a pharmaceutical that could probably aid me in my depression. And I waited, was even given a prescription. But I thought if there was a possibility that I could be happy, where did I find happiness? And that was with my son, who I wanted to try and set a good example for. And it was also in this work, in theater. So I decided that before I would take a substance, I would try to reconnect myself to the work."
He began accepting what he calls "small pieces." "Shortly after she passed, it was 'Criminal Minds.' I played a fellow who was attacked by someone and who was burned badly. I remember being strapped to this gurney in the teleplay, dying, and all I could think of was what had happened. I thought, 'I can't get outside of myself to give myself to the characters.'"
But he did manage to metamorphose. "Not only did I come out of my state to the degree that I could work, also in 2015 I remarried," he nods. His wife, Deborah, is a writer, philanthropist, and business woman whom he met through a mutual friend.
"Supergirl's" season finale arrives June 18, and Lumbly isn't sure what's next. But he's not worried. "The impermanence for me is opportunity. It's not so much that I get tired of what I'm doing, but I think everything has a duration. And while it lasts I'm completely there, and when it ends, I'm looking out for whatever it is that cones next," he says.
"In between any artistic endeavor I think there is life, which is wrapped around and inside it. It's the experience of life that is ultimately feeding your art. So even the gaps that I've taken, even the moments when I thought maybe I won't be doing this, I was still fully living. And it was that life-force that I had to fall back on when I did come back to the work."
HIGGINS TO HOST NEW GAME SHOW
Funny man John Michael Higgins has snagged a new gig. He'll be hosting the GSN's new survey-based contest, "America Says," come June 18. Two teams will compete to see who can discern the results of surveys taken across America on every conceivable subject. Higgins, who's so good at improvisation (he's a Christopher Guest favorite in films like "Best of Show"), should be the perfect emcee.
He has been acting since he was 9, but now says, "As I have aged, the good news is for me I went out of an obsessional phase with acting and film and theater and all that stuff _ because I'd done it so long _ I started looking around and saying there are other subjects that interest me. I'm not an actor who gets lost in my job or anything like that. I leave work behind, go home, have great family life, and almost never consume entertainment products, just never do it. I don't watch film, don't watch television. I try not to."
MARGOT KIDDER'S UNEASY FAME
So sad to hear of Margot Kidder's death on May 13. She will always be the definitive Lois Lane, no matter how many others try it. The last time I spoke with her she told me she enjoyed the ride to stardom; she didn't like the destination. "I found that I really didn't particularly like being a movie star, nor was I very good at it," she said. "When people decide that you're something more than another schmuck in the subway, it's a very uncomfortable feeling because you know you can't live up to the expectations of whatever this 'thing' is you're supposed to have turned into. And you also have to live up to your own expectations. I remember thinking that I'd turn into this princess, and suddenly _ I'll be perfect. And, of course, you're not."
DEL TORO TO CREATE HORROR ANTHOLOGY
Netflix has corralled Guillermo del Toro to create an anthology series of horror dramas aptly called "Guillermo del Toro Presents 10 After Midnight," coming to the streaming site soon. The two already work together on the animated series, "Trollhunters," returning Friday. The Mexican filmmaker will write and direct some of the spooky episodes; others will be helmed by his hand-picked colleagues.
