WNYLaborToday.com Editor’s Note: Pictured above, distinguished African-American Actor, Director, Educator and Actors’ Equity/Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) Union Member Stephen McKinley Henderson recently sat down with WNYLaborToday.com Editor-Publisher Tom Campbell for a wide-ranging conversation on not only his stellar and award-winning Union-represented acting career, but the Union role he has continued to play over the years.  (WNYLaborToday.com Photos and a sampling of screen shots taken from some of the many entertainment productions that Henderson has starred in over the years - via the Internet)

(BUFFALO, NEW YORK) - Fifty six years is a long time to work in one job or profession for anyone these days, but Stephen McKinley Henderson has done just that - and over the course of time he has been widely honored for his work in the theater, on television and on the Silver Screen.

So when the distinguished African-American Actor, Director, Educator and Actors’ Equity/Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) Union Member recently sat down for a wide-ranging, three-hour conversation with WNYLaborToday.com, our talk began with - no surprise, discussing the many and well-known roles he’s played in movies, such as in: Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln (as White House Servant William Slade) with Daniel Day-Lewis; Fences (as Troy’s best friend, Jim Bono) with Denzel Washington and Viola Davis; Manchester By The Sea (as Mr. Emery) starring Casey Affleck; and recently Dune (as Head of Security Thufir Hawat, a human robot) starring and Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Josh Brolin, Jason Mamoa and Dave Bautista - which was just nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture; or in Law and Order on television; and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom on theater’s stage, to name just a miniscule few.

In fact, on the morning we met, Henderson had gotten up early to watch Hollywood’s announced slate of best pictures, Actors, Actresses, etc. - all nominated for an Academy Award. 

Unbeknownst to myself, Henderson let me in on a bit of secret as we sat down with our coffee, he was one of the more than 10,000 who’d cast a vote for nominees in those categories. 

He smiled when telling me that Dune, where he had traveled to Budapest and Jordon for filming, had been nominated.

But before I begin to go into details of our talk, I’d like to say that all one has to do is Google Henderson to read in awe the list of characters he has so well-played and the major awards and recognitions that he has received over the years - all spilling out like an over-packed trunk of professional memories that have taken him across the United States and around the world during his continuing professional career.

Even now, at the age of 72, he just finished playing the role of Pops, a trainer of MMA fighters, in Actress Halle Berry’s first directed movie, Bruised, for which Berry personally called Henderson to offer him the role which he agreed to portray. 

“(Berry) called me,” said Henderson, adding the Academy Award-winning Actress told him she hoped he wasn’t upset, since she had gotten his cell phone number from a mutual friend. 

“Yeah, ‘like I’m never going to speak (to that person) again,’” he joked.

There was so much that Henderson and I discussed in three hours that I cannot possibly include it all here in just one Labor News Story, since the original premise was to discuss what his Union Memberships mean to him and what he imparts on those Union-represented Actors and Actresses as they work on crafting their own careers.

So, why is he here?  Living in Buffalo - and not Hollywood?

It’s because his ties to the City are deep - having a long-time association over the years at Studio Arena Theater in Buffalo’s Theater District and as Professor Emeritus of the University of Buffalo’s Department of Theater and Dance (He retired from that position in 2016).

In fact, the Kansas City, Missouri-born Henderson laughingly admitted that he rooted for the Buffalo Bills against the Kansas City Chiefs in the American Football Conference Playoffs (an overtime shootout won by the Chiefs, which broke the hearts of Bills’ fans), telling WNYLaborToday.com: “You ‘gotta root for Buffalo.’  Kansas City ‘had their day’ (going recently to two Super Bowls and winning one).”

But back to Henderson’s Union’s roots…

“The reason I am ‘here (in the acting profession) is because I joined’ Actors’ Equity (in 1976 - He became a SAG-AFTRA Member/Chicago Branch in 1979).  ‘It meant being paid and being able to afford a place to live.’  ‘Not being’ a Union (Member), ‘you had to sleep on someone’s couch until you could find a place to live’ (because you didn’t make that rate of pay),” he said.

Offering his professional advice to those in the craft who ask, Henderson met with a number of young SAG-AFTRA-represented Actors from Buffalo and Rochester here in February 2020. 

“I was asked, ‘Is it worth paying’ (Union Dues).  I tell them ‘I paid my dues,’ paid them since 1979, through the eighties, nineties and through the (2000s).  I tell these (young Actors) that ‘now I get a Social Security check, an Equity Pension and a SAG Pension,’” said Henderson, a National SAG-AFTRA Rep himself.

“Then I told them about ‘working on their craft, not on their career.’  ‘To be (patient), that it will come.’  ‘It’s like a painter.’  A painter ‘doesn’t wait to paint.’  A painter ‘sees something (that inspires he or she) and paints.’  ‘You get better.’  I told them to seize every opportunity to work on your craft,” he said.

When Henderson was a young man, he became interested in acting (in fact, he was eventually headed to the famed Julliard School of Acting in New York City, which was quite an accomplishment at that time for any person, no matter what color) - something his Father, a Union-represented Meat Packer in Kansas City where he grew up, was having a hard time understanding. 

His Father worked in a slaughterhouse and was “AFL-CIO all the way” - a Member of the local Meatpackers Union, laboring beside animal entrails, blood and manure, Henderson said.

“I wanted to go to New York City and become an Actor.  He said ‘I could be a great Government Doctor’ (a Meat Inspector).  ‘He thought that would be the greatest thing I could be.’  But (years later), when I showed him my (Actors’) Equity (Union Member) Card and he saw ‘AFL-CIO’ (on it).  He asked: ‘They got a Union?,” recalled Henderson.

That, in itself, was apparently more than good enough for his Father.

Henderson’s Father only got to see him perform on stage once. 

A friend of his told him about Henderson’s performance and gave him a ticket to see his son. 

“Poppa ‘didn’t know anything’ about Julliard, ‘but when people came over to him (to congratulate him afterward), that was good.’  ‘He definitely let me know’ (how proud he was),” Henderson said.

While Henderson has been nominated for a Tony Award, it was very special, he said, to receive the 2010 Actors’ Equity Foundation’s Richard Seff Award for Best Performance in a Supporting Role - as Jim Bono in Fences, in a Broadway or Off-Broadway production.

“To ‘get an award from your’ Union,” Henderson beamed.  “It ‘all came back to Poppa’ - ‘it was about the AFL-CIO and it was in conjunction from my fellow’ Union Members (fellow Actors).”

Fast forward to his expansive acting career and his interaction with other Unions associated with the entertainment industry, as well as in the theater. 

While he’s worked with all, his favorite, Henderson says, are the Teamsters.

“The Teamsters ‘are my favorite,’” “It’s ‘the people behind the camera who always step up.’  They always tell me, ‘We got you covered.’  Say you have a ‘tough’ day, they ask: ‘What do you need? A little vodka?’ And it means a lot to me to have friends in all those other Unions, but (the Teamsters) ‘are nice guys,’” he said with a big smile and a subsequent laugh. 

Our conversation then turned to Black History Month, which caused Henderson - who’s received a NAACP Theatre Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male, to touch on a number of memories, observations and reflections.

Henderson, who spoke respectfully, fondly and lovingly at length of the late Actor and Civil Rights Champion Sidney Poitier, said he “rejoices every time I see a film produced, director and filmed by (African-Americans).”

“I ‘rejoice in the progress that has been made in film, but societal change has to come from far more than grass roots.’  The African-American experience ‘is not that we were slaves.’  ‘We were never’ slaves.  ‘We were en-slaved.’  ‘We have to break those psychological chains,’” he said.

Henderson also recalled his first exposure to the Ku Klux Klan in the State of Kentucky, which came when the Civil Rights Leader, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in 1968.

Henderson was performing in a Black contemporary theater group “when I first saw the Klan, who were riding in their cars.”

“They were celebrating the death of ‘Martin Luther Coon,’” he recalled.  “They ‘kept us up all night’ (where he and other group members were staying).  A Teacher said we should call the police, but a White waitress told us, ‘You look at them (the police).  Their eyes ‘are blurry’ (meaning it was the same people who drove and packed those cars celebrating Dr. King’s death).  ‘They’ll stop you on the highway.’  ‘It was nice of her and it was clear, she was warning us.’’”

Even though he did not know much about Julliard (he auditioned for the legendary John Houseman and became a member of Group 1 at the Julliard School Drama Division in 1968), combined with “the world I was now (living) in” and a “foreboding big city” in New York where the renowned acting school was located, Henderson made the decision to go after being told “there’s nobody (performing Off-Broadway) than you.”

“New York City ‘was so multi-cultural and people didn’t know where I came from.’  My first (role) in theater ‘was to play a ghost’ - ‘but because my skin is so light, I instead (called the character) a spirit.’  ‘I found my spirit and I became more spirited.’”

With all that has happened over the past several years, mostly notably the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis by Police Officers and the many cases of racial and hate crimes perpetrated on People of Color, Henderson offered this: “Police Officers ‘have to remember the people whose doors they knock down aren’t afraid of who’s coming to their door.’  ‘They have a weapon because they need to have a weapon’ (because of the neighborhood they live in).  ‘Empathy has to come.’  ‘It’s the same with breathing.’  ‘How can you not let a person breathe if they say they cannot breathe? ‘‘It’s human.’”