‘Like They Do It in the Movies’: Laurence Fishburne’s One-Man Show Pulls Back the Curtain on the Acting Icon

You could type “Just like they do in the movies” – a one-man show by Laurence Fishburne, currently playing at the Perelman Performing Arts Center in downtown Manhattan – expects a monologue that includes entertaining anecdotes about the veteran actor’s long history in Hollywood. From the ’70s classic “Cornbread, Earl and Me” to career-defining roles in “The Matrix” and “John Wick,” the 62-year-old actor actually has loads of stories to his name. That’s not it in any respect. “Like They Do in the Movies” is as a substitute autobiographical in an intensely personal way, ultimately focusing on the actor’s turbulent relationship along with his mother. A therapeutic and cathartic performance for Fishburne, but additionally very funny.

“More on that later,” he says continually throughout the first half of the play, leaving out narrative crumbs about palliative care, paternity testing, and more intimate details developed in the second act. Opening the show wearing a large sequined kaftan, his moderately androgynous attire allows him to seamlessly adopt his mother’s occasional mannerisms and dialogue. According to Fishburne, Hattie Crawford – by all accounts a superb, “fast” Southern woman – instilled in Fishburne her own unrealized creative impulses that made him the Oscar-nominated actor he’s today. This upbringing also involved its share of sexual abuse, regret and deceit. But more on that later.

Between the opening and shutting set pieces featuring his mother, there are several character studies in which Fishburne alternates between roles as a surly Irish-American at a Manhattan bar, a friend who survived Hurricane Katrina along with his family, a homeless automotive wash attendant in Tribeca, a celeb security guard and a black emigrant from Los Angeles who runs a brothel in Australia. Throughout the telling of the story, the five interact with the unseen and unheard Laurence Fishburne, and his embodiment of the roles shows the influence of character monologues similar to Whoopi Goldberg, John Leguizamo AND Anna Deavere Smith (which Fishburne thanks everyone for in the production notes).

Like They Do in the Movies rests on the twin pillars of politics and Fishburne’s personal history. He warns at the starting that some stories are true and others are highly embellished, but a story told from the perspective of a Hurricane Katrina survivor will still move viewers. The New Orleans native explains that his wife, an area obstetrician-gynecologist, refused to go away her patients at the hospital as the storm approached; abandoning evacuation plans, the husband and wife (together with their young child) remain in the hospital because of power outages, running out of food, and death. This segment explores the same social issues explored in Spike Lee’s 2006 documentary When the Levees Broke, but from the engaging, personal viewpoint of one among the survivors.

Best watched live. Fishburne details his private family history, alternately evoking humor and sympathy for each the actor and his octogenarian mother. As a baby, Hattie Crawford ran a charm school – his Brooklyn home was decorated with several full-length wall mirrors, and ladies took turns striking poses and strutting down the catwalk in his front room. In the play, Fishburne portrays the character playing his mother as someone who occasionally dosed her child with “nasty pills” and sexually abused him during the same years that she pushed him into early film roles like “Mr. Clean” in the Vietnam War epic “Apocalypse Now.”

More details about his mother’s eventual diagnosis of lifelong narcissistic personality disorder and Fishburne’s paternity deception enrich “How They Do It in the Movies” – again, best watched live to completely appreciate them. Viewers are left with the eccentric love story between Hattie and Fishburne, which can have launched one among Black America’s best actors, nevertheless it left no scars on his soul.

“Like They Do in the Movies” is on view at the Perelman Performing Arts Center through March 31.

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Miles Marshall Lewis (@MMLunlimited) is a Harlem-based author and cultural critic whose work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, GQ, Rolling Stone, and lots of other magazines. Lewis is currently completing a cultural biography of comedian Dave Chappelle, the sequel to Promise That You Will Sing About Me: The Power and Poetry of Kendrick Lamar.