It's all about the haircut man
Following his breakout stint on Broadway as a young tap-dancing prodigy in Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk, Dulé Hill has spent over two decades as a television staple, beginning with his tenure as presidential aide Charlie Young on The West Wingthough his still-oft-reprised role as deadpan private detective Burton "Gus" Guster in Psych.
Hill's latest role, as the late-60s-era sessions musician father of the young protagonist of ABC's reboot of the coming-of-age series The Wonder Years, unites all of the actor's various strengths -- his inherent musicality, his facility for heartfelt scenes, and his indelible knack with straight-faced quips -- in one cooler-than-cool character. In just a handful of episodes, both the series and Hill's performance have scored big with critics and audience, affirming that the new incarnation captured the essence of the original while exploring fertile new territory with its racially refreshed approach.
With the network celebrating the return of The Wonder Years with its comedy-lineup-long "Return to Wonder" event on Oct. 13 -- which has original stars Fred Savage, Danica McKellar, and Dan Lauria guest-starring on The Conners, Home Economics, and The Goldbergs, respectively -- Hill joined TVGuide.com for a two-part conversation. In this first part, he reveals his approach to bringing Dean Williams' dad Bill to life.
You and The Wonder Years showrunner Saladin K. Patterson have a history together from your Psych days, and he told me he knew you were the right guy for this role. How did you know you were the right guy for this role?
Dulé Hill: Wow, that's a good question. How did I know? Just something connected to me about this story and this role from the first time that I heard about it. When I saw that they were re-imagining the story of The Wonder Years, about a black family in Alabama, I turned to my wife and said, "Jasmine, if I was going to do a network television, this is the exact kind of show that I would want to do." It's showing a family unit, it's filled with love, it's filled with laughter, it's filled with levity, but it's also filled with heart and showing the challenges of life. And I thought that it would be something that would really connect me in. Even more so when I found out that Bill Williams was a musician.
I love the swag of musicians. I'm a tap dancer and I grew up around a whole bunch of jazz cats, and it's just a different way that they move through life. So for myself, to be able to step into a role where I get a chance to embody some of that rhythm, some of that flavor, some of that swag, In my mind, I thought this would be the perfect match for me. I'm glad that Saladin felt the same way, but from the time that I saw it, I said, "Oh yeah, I can definitely play some Bill Williams."
It's funny, the character never fully came to fruition for me in terms of who this guy is until we were doing the hair test for the show, just before we started filming. And I was sitting there with the barber on the show -- for myself, anyway, and I asked him, I said, "Would a part be right for this time period?" And he said, "Yeah," he said, "Yeah, it would be." I said, "Can we try to put a part right here?" And he put the part in my head, and when he put the part in my head, I said, "This is the guy!" I said, "Can we call Saladin and see if...?" And Saladin came over and I asked him if he dug it and he said, "Oh yeah, this is it."
It's weird that that's what connected me fully to Bill Williams, but putting the part in my hair is what did it. That started to really inform me that much further about who this guy is. It's random, but that's the facts.
I love how the little details like that add up to this person that you're playing. There are so many things about him that are not what we've typically seen you do, from the way he speaks and the way he carries himself. Tell me about finding all of those elements, which are very different from what we've seen from you on things like The West Wing and Psych?
Hill: And that's another reason why I was excited to play the role. I look to keep taking big pendulum swings in terms of the characters that I play. And it's hard to really see that in a short period of time, but hopefully, as my career continues to go along, that will be reflected in the work that I do. But going from Charlie to Gus, I thought it was a big pendulum swing just in terms of their personalities. There were some attributes that were similar, but a lot of who they were were different, and then even more so now going from Gus to Bill Williams is another big pendulum swing.
That's what inspires me as an artist, that's what excites me as an artist, is to keep evolving in the roles that I do as I also evolve as an individual. I don't know if I could play... beyond the age factor I don't know if I just had the life dynamic to play Bill Williams when I was playing Charlie, or even when I was playing Gus. But that's what I wanted to lean into is doing something different. I love how Bill Williams... the fact that he's a musician, the fact that he is a jazz cat, a funk cat, informs everything he does.
I'm a tap dancer and I feel that I move through life through rhythm -- that's how I feel about myself: everything's connected through rhythm. And that's how I feel Bill Williams is as well. He's a musician, so everything is musical. The way he talks is music and in music you have to have rests. You have to leave air for the notes to breathe. That's how the song comes alive. So that's how he moves through life. He takes pauses, he takes rest. He lets the notes move him through his journey. That's a part of his swag. But the reason why I was inspired to play this role is because he's completely different than any of the other roles I've played on television up to this point.
And speaking of swag, I don't know what this says about me, but I would literally wear everything that Bill wears. I love his wardrobe.
Hill:You are one cool cat -- but me, too, I have to admit, me too. I got to definitely give a shout-out to Ceci, who's our costume designer. She's done a phenomenal job. They always say, "Do the clothes make the man or the man make the clothes?" I think in this situation, the clothes have definitely brought this entire world to life. There's a style in all the clothes that we wear and especially Bill Williams, it helped even more so bringing him to life.
Ceci is so detailed in the choices that she makes in terms of our wardrobe that it helps me be detailed in creating the character and bringing Bill Williams to life. But I would too, Scott, there's a lot of things that I see Bill Williams wear where I'm like, "Man, this really could find its way into my personal closet if we didn't have more scenes to shoot and more episodes to fill."
Did you borrow any snippets from anybody that you either know personally or musicians that kind of gave you a glimmer of who Bill was?
Hill: There's not any specific. [person] in particular, to say this came from so-and-so, but because of being a tap dancer and tap dancing is connected to jazz and the worlds are synonymous, I've been in jazz clubs in New York – St. Nick's Pub and the Blue Note and all that kind of stuff. I'm with jazz cats throughout my life. I guess it's an amalgamation of all of these people who I know.
I studied and I danced with Harold Nicholas from the age of 10 years old, of the Nicholas Brothers, and you're not going to meet anybody cooler than Harold Nicholas, you know what I mean? And then when you go with Jimmy Slyde and Buster Brown who were tap dancers, Bunny Briggs, all these cats had their own unique flavor in which they moved. Lon Chaney and then you go to Grady Tate a drummer. Lafayette Harris is a piano player. Patience Higgins, sax player. These are all cats who I've known over the course of my life. Eli Fontaine.
These are all cats who are coming to my head right now. And the energy that they would have, how I would see them move, that all played into to who Bill is. For me, really it was, "I know who this guy is. I know these cats." Even with his band, I know cats just like that. It wasn't really something where I really had to go and do a deep dive to go and try to figure out who these people were. I was like, "No, I know people like Washboard. I know Bill Williams and Bill Williams, the other Bill Williams and the other Bill Williams and the other Bill Williams. I know people just like that throughout the years.
The Wonder Years airs Wednesdays at 8:30/7:30c on ABC. Tune in after the Oct. 13 episode for more with Dule Hill about "The Workplace."