Those check-ins you mentioned, what does that mean, exactly?

BROWN At each point in the journey, Brian was a key check-in for me. I left “Army Wives,” here’s a big contract renegotiation, and I decided not to go back. He’s like, “Good, Brown, you need to be doing some theater anyway. I don’t know what you’re doing.” I was like, “Yeah, man, but it’s a lot of money.” He’s like, “No, Brown, you need to be doing other things.” I had a recurring role on “Person of Interest,” and when I came to New York to shoot the show, whose couch did I stay on, except for Brian Tyree Henry’s? We’d sit up, we’d talk trash, we’d watch TV, we’d eat food, we’d kick it. And we’d talk about what it’s like to be in this business. And you keep throwing jabs until you get an opening for that left hook or that straight right, and hopefully people will take notice once that punch comes. And we both got that good punch at the same time.

HENRY How long have you been saving up that boxing analogy?

BROWN That was off the dome.

“This Is Us” was the first time you worked together since the New York stage days, right?

BROWN We didn’t have that much to do in “This is Us.” The episode was just black people in it —

HENRY And we still didn’t get the chance to play in it. So I guess it wasn’t until “Hotel Artemis” that we finally got to show what we can do together, and that was great. I always wanted to see Brown as an action hero, kind of like Wesley Snipes in “Passenger 57,” you know what I’m saying? There were moments where I got to watch Brown look over his shoulder and give a one-liner. What would they call it, Brown, the hero shot?

BROWN They call it the hero shot, but it’s because of the angle of —

HENRY Whatever, dude. It was a hero shot, because it was really the dopest thing to watch and to know his inner Bruce Willis. It was something I’ll never forget.