Neil Brown Jr. – Beach Babe

Q.  What are some of the current projects that you’ve been working on?

A.  I just did a guest spot on “Surface,” that will air in January and everything is wrapped on “South Beach.”  So, I’m going to go and film a short out here in California and that’s about it right now.  Doing that and writing, just trying to film and write.

Q.  You play “Felix” on the new show “South Beach.”  Tell us a bit about the premise of the show and your character.

A.  The premise of the show focuses on really “Matt” and “Vince,” played by Marcus Coloma and Chris Johnson respectively.  They move down from Brooklyn, New York and my character “Felix” is friends with “Vince’s” brother.  We kind of grew up together and they move down to South Beach and kind of move in with me for a little while.  “Vince” is kind of a bad apple, he just finds a way to get into trouble every time and he’s a naughty kid.  Marcus’s character “Matt” is kind of a really cool, down-to-earth guy, the type of guy that just goes to college and wouldn’t do anything so crazy like move down to South Beach.  They do though and Marcus’s character “Matt” is looking for his next girl and it’s “Ariel.”  The show just centers around that and those guys and then they move into this hotel and then the club Nocturnal which is inside the hotel, the bottom of the hotel.  It is run by Vanessa Williams’ character and she kind of rules with an iron fist and then there are the drug lords, played by Giancarlo Esposito who wants to move in on the hotel and all of its money.  The story starts off with those guys but then it’s really an ensemble, it goes into this whole mix where there is love, etc.

Q.  What made you want to be a part of this project?

A.  When I read the character “Felix” I actually was testing for another project and I got the script from my agent when I was in-route to that.  I read the script and it just really read well.  The character, what was going on and the show, I could tell it had kind of a very New York, Brooklyn feel.  It was very gritty to begin with and I really liked it.  It kind of stood out to me to be something that UPN hadn’t done before and I fell in love with the character “Felix.”  He’s a-typical of what I do, he’s a DJ and knows all about spinning records and I know nothing, I just like to listen to the music.

Q.  Why should viewers take the time to check out this show?

A.  Because it is something UPN hasn’t done before and it’s a fun show.  It’s got a lot of things that just haven’t been seen lately on TV and it is written well.  It’s got drama, the happiness, the laughter, the violence, the beautiful women, the beautiful men.  It’s got some eye candy in it and it’s got good stories, if you like a good drama, “South Beach” has got good drama.

Q.  Do you have a most memorable moment from filming “South Beach”?

A.  It wasn’t actually during filming, it was right after filming when we filmed the original pilot.  For me the most memorable moment is when the entire cast was relaxing at Nobu and Matt Damon was right there.  I had never met him before and I like his work and one of his friends was an extra on “South Beach.”  Matt was all excited to meet us!  “Oh hey guys, oh ‘South Beach,’ my friend was an extra!”  He was excited to meet me, there were a lot of experiences.  “South Beach” we’re a drama and with that there comes a lot of instances that we can’t talk about.  We have fun on “South Beach,” put it that way.   That’s the most memorable moment, and all of the beautiful women that was just popping on set the first day.

Q.  What made you want to be an actor?

A.  I have always wrote stories since I was a little kid, since I was around seven.  I always had these things in my head and I would act them out, I was a kid, you do those those things.  I guess I couldn’t let go as a kid, I like to pretend.  So, I was a martial arts champion, I had won some trophies doing karate and one day a lady named Patty Robinson came in and saw me doing my thing.  My master had me do these fancy kicks over this guy’s head and he put me in a show called “WMAC Masters” and they gave me some lines and they were like “Oh my gosh, this kid can act!  He can actually act!”  That was it from then on, I was doing it from fourteen.

Q.  You’re trained in various forms of martial arts.  What got you interested in learning them all?

A.  My father really initially started because I came from a rough neighborhood, lower than middle class.  It can be tough at times in the “hood” and I’m really light-skinned.  I’m mixed Black-Italian, there were really no light-skinned kids around the neighborhood, there were tough brothers.  My father was worried about me getting pushed around and so he had me start learning karate when I was really young like five or six years old.  I fell in love with it, I thought I could do the things that they do in the movies and video games. 

Q.  You can do voice impressions with great accuracy.  Is this something you practice or is it a natural talent?

A.  It’s a natural talent, it’s just becoming more pronounced.  The more sets I work on, the more I work with people, the more I get comfortable.  I really don’t think about it, somebody will stick out in my head and I’ll just start imitating them.  They’ll catch on and they’ll be like, “Hey, are you doing me?”  Or they’ll realize, “Hey, that’s Tom! That’s exactly like Tom!”  I will not even realize I was doing it, just something in the back of my head that pops up, nothing I really practice. 

Q.  What do you enjoy doing in your spare time?

A.  In my spare time I train, I work out, I write a lot.  I do a couple of typical guy things, play some video games and play a little golf, I’m into sports.  I go out and I love to eat, I love restaurants, such a good thing to eat.

Q.  What is your latest obsession?  Are you into any particular book, sport, music group or activity?

A.  My latest obsession I would have to say is my writing because I had laid off of it for a couple of years.  I hadn’t taken it really seriously and just in the past couple of weeks I have pounded out two scripts and one short.  I’m just pounding away at the keys, that and Resident Evil 4 for Playstation.  It’s a great game, it’s fun, the graphics are amazing, I love shooting zombies.  I want to do a zombie movie where I’m dead or killing dead people, you always gotta do one of those.