Michael Emerson Quotes

#1. There's a lot of terminology, like "washes whiter than snow," and these things which when they're said in a uniracial congregation, they just go fine. But when they're said in a mixed congregation, some people will get offended and wonder, "Why are you saying that? What are you saying?"

Michael Emerson

#2. And sometimes the clergy are blindsided by that. Other times they realize that ahead of time and say they're not going to use those terms. So it gets complicated for sure.

Michael Emerson

#3. Yeah, it's funny, working on a show with as large a cast as we have here, your work gets sort of compartmentalized. There's still about half the cast that I've never had a scene with but I have missed working with Terry.

Michael Emerson

#4. So the tradition from Europe is that you're supposed to emphasize the mind over the body, so you sing from a very kind of staid perspective. Again, there are charismatic white congregations all over, and they don't sing that way. But, you know, on the average.

Michael Emerson

#5. Downsides, yeah, and when there are more downsides when churches first start - they go through stages of transforming to becoming multiracial. So in the beginning stages there's often a lot of pain, a lot of confusion, a lot of people leave.

Michael Emerson

#6. It worries me a little bit the reach and power of TV. More people saw me in 'The Practice' than will ever see me in all the stage plays I ever do. Which is sort of humbling. Or troubling. Or both.

Michael Emerson

#7. It's the sad fact of how race still works in our country. We find that over and over again.

Michael Emerson

#8. I think it's pretty dynamic. There's a lot of energy there and life, and you'll have women dressed in their traditional African dress when they come, and you have people from all over the place, and some people have headphones on because they're listening in Spanish.

Michael Emerson

#9. In your actor's heart, you know when you're playing well. Others may not always agree with you, but I'm always aware of when the scene is cooking or not. You have an instinct about that from years of doing scenes and plays, and I think it stands you in good stead even in the TV world.

Michael Emerson

#10. In part because they had no choice, right? If you were a slave, you did what the master said. And they said to worship: "You're going to worship with us."

Michael Emerson

#11. What's happening is that Asian and Latino and other groups without that history are more likely to end up in either black churches or white churches and then make them multiracial churches. I talk about that in the US we have two cultures.

Michael Emerson

#12. But what we found in the study is that churches are ten times less diverse than the neighborhoods they sit in. So there's something more going on than just reflecting the neighborhood, yeah.

Michael Emerson

#13. There's a lot of life there, but it's a different sort, because there's a lot less immigrants and a lot more racial, the mix of black and white in particular. I've actually never been to their worship for an extended period of time, so I can't comment wisely on it.

Michael Emerson

#14. I think of myself as a problem-solver. I want to go in and help the director and the writer to get the best they can out of the text they're working with.

Michael Emerson

#15. We've had people say, "Now when I go to work, I don't feel uncomfortable talking to people of different races, and I go up and introduce myself, and I start making a new friend I wouldn't have done otherwise."

Michael Emerson

#16. My mother always told me growing up I had a punchable face. Little did I know she was predicting my television career.

Michael Emerson

#17. I may have to shop with them. But on Sunday I don't want to have to worship with them. I want to be able to just be myself and let my hair down. It's also, of course, as we know, the seat of political organization and the affirming of your blackness and so on.

Michael Emerson

#18. There are roles that are terrifying because they're large or you may feel that they're out of your line, but I'm never terrified once the actual work begins. Once you begin rehearsal, then it's small building blocks. It's solving little problems one at a time.

Michael Emerson

#19. There's always the question of time. Does time at 10:00 mean 10:00 sharp? Or does it mean give or take a few minutes? And a few minutes, is that plus or minus two minutes? Or plus or minus ten, or maybe a half an hour each way?

Michael Emerson

#20. One of the things I like about performing on the stage is that it is a kind of meditative experience. Time does stand still. You have no concept or feeling of the passing of two or three hours' time. It's all kind of one present moment, which is a kind of a description of meditation.

Michael Emerson

#21. So you find a lot of these sixth Americans congregate in these interracial congregations. They hang out together at work, at school, wherever.

Michael Emerson

#22. We've done a lot of studies to see when they do happen, why, and I mean there's a variety of reasons. But one, it starts with a commitment where they decide this is going to be who we are. Maybe it's out of their faith, a new way of looking at their faith, that we must be integrated across race.

Michael Emerson

#23. And then they would have the shoe removers on one side, and the non-shoe removers on the other side until they could work through coming to understand why we might both be trying to worship authentically, and because of our cultural background we have these different ideas. But it took a while.

Michael Emerson

#24. So it may be a language that separates you - again, social networks. But second-generation Asian and Hispanics, second, and third and fourth and so on, they are much more likely to be in integrated churches than are blacks or whites.

Michael Emerson

#25. Preaching styles and people being slain in the spirit and things like that. Now it doesn't happen in all black churches, and it happens sometimes in white churches, right? But on average they're quite a bit different.

Michael Emerson

#26. Maybe there's even anger. But if they make it through that they come to a new agreement, and they start creating a new culture, and it becomes something that people just - a lot of times they'll say, "I couldn't live without it. I just have to be there."

Michael Emerson

#27. I meet almost no one that goes to an African-American church or thinks, "I'm going to do that." Now there are whites in African-American churches. They're interracially married. They're highly committed. Maybe there's a professor or two, or a student.

Michael Emerson

#28. But in the US, when you have two separate cultures, each with its right, each of which has come to exist in this political entity in the last couple hundred years, each feeling like, "I have the right to hold onto my culture," and that's what makes it difficult.

Michael Emerson

#29. I've played villains on stage - you know, the Iagos and so on - but I think of myself as a funny person. I mostly did comedies before I did TV work.

Michael Emerson

#30. I see this in the way that sermons are preached. How would you give a Black Nationalist speech or campaign for the Republicans when you're an integrated congregation? It doesn't happen.

Michael Emerson

#31. So different groups have different definitions, and then they clash on those. So it takes adept leadership to say we're going to work through these.

Michael Emerson

#32. Life will be simpler when I don't spend two-thirds of the year in the middle of the Pacific.

Michael Emerson

#33. It may be changing, but still it's the one place, that total control of an institution, that African Americans have. So sometimes, you know, you'll hear the statement of African Americans saying, I have to work with whites.

Michael Emerson

#34. Then of course there are bigger things that matter, like who do I see up there in the congregation? Do I see myself up there? Well, I don't.

Michael Emerson

#35. So they actually put it into their mission statement, and they start changing things as a result. They may change how worship works. They may actively recruit folks and try and get them to come and help them to feel comfortable and get them involved in leadership, and there's a variety of ways.

Michael Emerson

#36. If we go into white congregations, non-whites will sometimes say it felt like worship never started. It was sort of dead and didn't feel that warmly received. But so - and there are different realities either way, and it makes it difficult for all groups to try and cross boundaries.

Michael Emerson

#37. Call-and-response style, yes, exactly. So whenever different groups get together then there has to be this long period of negotiation. How will we worship? What's acceptable? What's not? If I want to say "Amen" can I?

Michael Emerson

#38. We just say there are five, you know, racial groups in the US. I say that these folks are what we call a sixth American. There's something different. They are somebody who - they don't exist in any particular racial category, so they all feel it and they kind of congregate to each other.

Michael Emerson

#39. What happens is sometimes these congregations will still have the white style of worship, even though they're mixed, because folks are willing to give up whatever they may have come with. So it's still quite a stretch for African Americans, yeah.

Michael Emerson

#40. To a large extent, people's interest in the character is the mystery of the character.

Michael Emerson

#41. Every pastor I talk to says, and particularly if they're African American they'll say, "I'm not black enough for African Americans. I'm not white enough for the whites. I'm not Hispanic enough."

Michael Emerson

#42. What sort of difficulties would happen when people of different cultures try to come together to worship? Tiny little things such as let's tell jokes with each other.

Michael Emerson

#43. We go where our family goes. We go where our friends are, and because our social networks are so segregated by race, we end up with what we have. We also find that, you know, if you're immigrants, you're not part of that history.

Michael Emerson

#44. And again, this connection that you get: I meet Joe at church. Joe's connected to a whole network of people I don't know. Joe likes me. He invites me over to his son's birthday party, and I meet his whole family. I meet his friends. I get to know his neighborhood. That happens all the time.

Michael Emerson

#45. There's always that sense of because we're so racially defined, if you're trying to cross the boundaries you don't fit into any particular space.

Michael Emerson

#46. Absolutely, although every congregation will say, you know, every worship leader will say it's vital. It's very important, but again these are, you know, these are different cultural styles.

Michael Emerson

#47. I ask the clergy why don't I see myself represented in leadership? And I'm told, and this happens quite a bit, "We don't think about race when we hire. We just hire the best person for the job."

Michael Emerson

#48. I see it happen in uniracial congregations all the time. But people - when they're in mixed company, we speak differently.

Michael Emerson

#49. I think it's going to open up a wider place for a discussion about we ought to come together in our churches, in our neighborhoods, in our work places, in our clubs and our networks. I think it'll be more acceptable to talk about it. We'll see what happens. It'll take some time. But I think it will.

Michael Emerson

#50. I think people respond to villains because people in general are more villainous than heroic.

Michael Emerson

#51. I've been blessed by doing classic plays on Broadway, which was one of my great dreams forever.

Michael Emerson

#52. I think it's easier, I really do, because of not having that similar history, so that's why I think two-thirds of these mixed congregations are either white with Asian and Hispanic, or black with Asian and Hispanic.

Michael Emerson

#53. Now they had to sit in separate places and sometimes they'd even have to sit outside and look through the windows. But they did worship together.

Michael Emerson

#54. I spent a lot of time developing in books why worshipping separately actually impacts inequality, economic, social, on and on. So I really do believe there are huge advantages to being together even though it's difficult, even though we have a lot to learn.

Michael Emerson

#55. We do not have an American culture. We have a white American culture and a black American culture. So when those two groups try to get together, [it's] very difficult because they each feel like they have the right to their culture.

Michael Emerson

#56. I think with President Obama there's going to be a discussion, because he himself is multiracial, because we have for the first time a non-white president. There's going to be talk about what does this mean? What is it? Are we in a new era?

Michael Emerson

#57. I really do think that every time you play a role well, you are in danger of being identified with that role until the next big thing comes along.

Michael Emerson

#58. We're going to see more, and we are seeing more, and I'll tell you exactly why. Not because white and black are more likely to get together. Only a third of the seven percent of congregations that are interracial are black and white.

Michael Emerson

#59. So there was great clashes when, you know, if you believe you shouldn't remove your shoes and someone's taking their shoes off, how can they do this? That actually was such a big clash in this case that they had to put a curtain down the middle of where they would worship.

Michael Emerson

#60. I think whites are used to being in power, so when whites think we ought to have integrated churches they think, "People ought to come to our church. What can we do to get them to come?"

Michael Emerson