Life after “The Shield”: Actress CCH Pounder explores her comedic chops in a new television sitcom

“At first I thought that perhaps they had made a giant mistake in offering me the role,” laughs Pounder, “for I haven’t done any comedy in almost twenty years!”

She’s referring to her latest role in the Fox television comedy “Brothers” in which she plays the mother of a former hot shot NFL player (Michael Strahan) who returns home to live with his family.

An iconic, award winning actress with impressive projects in both television and movies, Pounder is one of the greatest stars of our time with a long list of credits that spans decades. Best known for her role as the tough Detective Claudette Wyms on FX’s police drama “The Shield”, a show with a loyal following, the three-time Emmy nominee’s first film role came in 1979’s “All That Jazz.” This was followed by a steady stream of movies including “Prizzi’s Honor”, “Face/Off” and “Baghdad Café.” But it was in television where the actress found her best roles, including that of Dr. Angela Hicks on “ER” from 1994 to 1997, and in memorable guest turns on “The Practice”, “Hill Street Blues”, “L.A. Law”, “The X-Files” and “The West Wing”.

Humble beginnings

[“I really remember fighting to get a judge role on “L.A. Law.” When I originally got the script, it was for something very different and I had given myself a pledge that I wasn’t going to play a victim for a while”.]

Born and raised in Georgetown, Guyana, Carol Christine Hilaria Pounder was educated in Sussex, England. It was there that she began acting in earnest, immersing herself in William Shakespeare and the other classic playwrights before finally moving to the United States in 1970 where she joined a regional theater company to refine what a drama teacher coined as a natural acting skill.

“Regional Theater gave me a chance to do the classics and the experimental new plays. It also gave me a chance to grow as an actress,” Pounder claims.

During a seven-year tenure in theater, Pounder appeared in such Broadway and off-Broadway plays as “Open Admissions”, “The Mighty Gents” and “Mumbo Jumbo” at the Lincoln Center and worked with such actors as Denzel Washington, Bill Cobb and Morgan Freeman before being cast in her first motion picture twenty six years ago and recalls how different the audition process was.

“I remember going to auditions then and finding the reception received incredibly rude and I also remember at that time they were doing quotas. How many black people did you see today? How many Spanish? Asians etc., so most agents felt that they were trying to be diverse because they saw other races. I haven’t seen

that at all in many, many moons. I also really remember fighting to get a judge role on “L.A. Law” and having to prove to them that there were real life black judges.”

In the television sitcom “Brothers”, Pounder plays Adele, a tough mum who is the mastermind behind the family finances. A powerful actress who can be credited for her consistent portrayal of strong female characters, Pounder admits to sharing some characteristics with her television character.

“I think I am more vivacious and more buoyant than what they were looking for. I am constantly changing and evolving and so I think some of my personal spirit is included in my character,” she says.” Football pro-turned-actor Carl Weathers who gained fame as Apollo Creed in the “Rocky” movies plays her television husband and rounding off the family of four is Daryl Chill Mitchell (“Veronica’s Closet”).

With elements of “Family Matters” and “Cosby Show”, “Brothers” is a heartwarming family sitcom which centers on the relationship between brothers Mike (Strahan) and Chill (Mitchell) and despite the fact that it’s the only comedy with an African American cast on primetime television, Pounder doesn’t feel the pressure to ensue its success.

“Maybe it’s because I am as old as dirt and I won’t take any pressure, but I don’t feel the pressure anymore of representing the race. I think back in the day that was a huge pressure especially the roles that I played. Now I am thirty years into it I want to be an actor again and just act.”

Most recently, Pounder appeared in the feature film “Orphan,” the cable series “The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency” and the independent feature “Rain” which garnered praise at the Los Angeles Pan-African Film Festival. Known for her versatility and dramatic intensity, Pounder had no apprehensions on finding work after wrapping up on “The Shield,” a show which had kept her gainfully employed for the last seven years.

“My greatest joy with “The Shield” was knowing that it was ending at the right time and that I had completed a fantastic journey with the show. At first I thought maybe we should sit down for a year and do absolutely nothing and this show happened to come along and because they [producers] were really insistent and felt so positive about it, I thought let’s throw caution to the wind. Plus in these economic times, I don’t think I have that kind of privilege to turn things down especially with a big and extended family. I don’t think it would have occurred to me to go ask somebody to do a comedy staring me,” says the actress who divides her time between acting and her numerous charity organizations.

[“I adopted eight children from Mozambique and my mission is to see to their education yearly”.]

A co-founder of ANSA (Artists for a New South Africa), a nonprofit organization dedicated to combating the African AIDS pandemic and advancing democracy in South Africa, Pounder has helped increase awareness of HIV/AIDS.

“We actually started back in the 90s’. Then it was Artists for a Free South Africa and this was prior to Mandela being president. We got a lot of press from it and we were able to go to South Africa to speak on the civil rights movement. Once apartheid was abolished and Mr. Mandela became president, we realized our work had really begun because fifty years of apartheid had left such a huge devastation in the country in areas such as education, aids and housing. So we decided to dedicate our lives to that. Because it’s such an enormous problem, it’s probably a drop in the bucket, but I do offer to the world that if we all have little drops in the bucket, we could eventually get that bucket filled. It may seem like a small thing on the surface, but you are impacting one person’s life.”

Headquartered in Los Angeles, ANSA now has 1,200 supporters nationwide and is just one of the few organizations Pounder is involved with.

“I also work with the African Millennium Foundation which deals with AIDS orphans. These are children whose parents died and we try to keep them in the homes they grew up in so that they have some familiarity because there is no tradition of orphanages. There are two women who have an organization that we have also partnered with and we encourage people that we know to ‘adopt’ children and see them through their educational lives. I adopted eight children from Mozambique and my mission is to see to their education yearly”.

Pounder and her anthropologist husband, Boubacar Kone, divide their time between Los Angeles and his native Dakar, Senegal, where he is the founder of The Boribana Museum in Dakar, which studies cultures of the African disapora. Recently, she spent several months working on James Cameron’s new film, “Avatar” which tells the story of humans who embody avatars to explore a fictional planet called Pandora and despite a December release date, it has already generated an incredible buzz due to its innovative approach to 3-D filmmaking and its motion-capture techniques.

“I think it will change the way big films are made and I am really tickled to be part of the new movement. I feel like I got swept up in that sort of youth culture and to work with no physical thing is mind blowing and I am thrilled to death. I think it’s going to be an extraordinary film. Regardless of all the bells and whistles, they have a very solid and very wonderful story and it really reminded me again that film is about storytelling and I get to be part of that and follow an African tradition.”

“Brothers” airs on Fox, Fridays at 8:00pm ET/PT