GQ: Absolutely.

SB: Public recognition. Hmm. I never assume people are going to recognize me. And I think that's important too. Even now, as many people who watch People v. O.J. or This is Us—the majority of humanity has never seen my face. Never. [laughs] Right? And I think that's a humbling sort of perspective to maintain. Because I've seen people, who have walked up to other people expecting that they know who they are, and aren't always gracious as they could be because they think like, Oh you know who I am, there's no need to say my name.

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GQ: This is Us has connected with people on such an emotional level, and because it's coming into your living room every week—I think it's probably unique with television in particular, this sort of false sense of I know this person, I have an emotional connection with them. For me, I'm sure you get this all the time, but I haven't been able to watch an episode without crying. Straight up. [SKB laughs] Do people come up to you and cry spontaneously?

SB: Yes. It happens. And it's lovely to be in the presence of. We thought we had a good show, right? But we didn't know that it would move people the way that it did. On social media they'll sometimes give us little tags that they want us to share, and they'll be like #getreadyforyourkleenex #hopeforagoodcry—I didn't even know in the beginning that it would evoke that kind of response amongst people. As a matter of fact, I was thinking how funny it was. From the first time I read the pilot I thought, Man this is so funny to me. I did not set out to just have people a mess week in and week out.

GQ: I'm going to switch gears to O.J. for a second. I have two questions. First, were you surprised by how well the show did? Your show did very well, the ESPN O.J. documentary won the Oscar. Does it surprise you how the story has continued to reverberate and that there's continued to be an appetite for it more than 20 years later?SB: When I read the script I was like, This is something that's going to touch a chord. And so I think I had an idea. You never know to exactly what degree it will become the phenomenon that it was, but recognizing that you had a sort of cultural icon in O.J. Simpson being at the center of a murder case, the echoes of having a black man, a high profile black man at odds with law enforcement, was something that was clearly of the moment. As a matter of fact, when we were doing Father Comes Home from the Wars [a play by Suzan-Lori Parks in which Brown starred in 2014 in New York] was when the murder of Mike Brown transpired in Ferguson.

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GQ: That's near where you're from.

SB: Yes. I'm from St. Louis, Missouri, Ferguson is a suburb. And when it happened, I had to do a show that night. And our cast was collectively sort of dumbfounded, and they didn't know what to say to me because I was a mess. Before I had to step on stage I went to the theater, as is my custom, to do my vocal warm up and to sort of enjoy being in the space in solitude, because it's like church. I love being in an empty theater. And I just started crying. And I know a couple of stagehands walked by me, and they gave me my space to just let it out and what not. And we talked as a cast collectively, and we decided, I can't remember if it was immediately after Mike Brown or if was after Mike Brown and then what transpired in New York with [the death of] Eric Garner. Protesters were going by in downtown New York and we wanted to be connected to that protest and so we decided as a cast at our curtain call we were going to lift up our hands into the air: Hands Up, Don't Shoot. And it was such a wonderful moment for us to be able to use our platform, for the 300 people that we were performing for, saying we recognize what is going on in the world around us and this is our way of standing in solidarity with those people who are protesting police violence against the African American community. So I say that to say, unfortunately, our show was incredibly current. It was a period piece of sorts but with what was transpiring in our country at that time, the obvious reverberations were very, very clear.