When we chat over Zoom a couple of days into the new year, Pierre has temporarily paused his forward momentum. It’s hard to blame him. He’s just finished a whirlwind press tour for Mufasa, the culmination of a busy breakout year that included portraying Malcolm X in the Genius: MLK/X series, flexing his best Rambo in Netflix’s hit fall action thriller Rebel Ridge, and signing on to play DC Universe space cop John Stewart in the upcoming Green Lantern streaming series Lanterns. These days, Pierre’s rising star is everywhere—and in need of a little recuperation and reflection.
“I have not stopped pinching myself. It feels so surreal,” Pierre says from his apartment in London, where he spends his time outside of Los Angeles. “I’m learning to prioritize rest in a new way. It’s not something that I’ve been very successful at in my adult life so far.”
There’s a reason he’s been so busy. On screen and stage, Pierre carries an effortless gravitas, a magnetism and stoicism that’s no doubt buttressed by his broad shoulders, hypnotizing hazel eyes, and that dignified voice—one that can calmly instill fear, read you to sleep, or (as of very recently) nail a song’s most intimidating high notes. That’s been evident from the jump, whether Pierre was playing Cassio in a 2018 production of Othello at The Globe, channeling a rapper named Mid-Sized Sedan in M. Night Shymalan’s Old, or capturing the weary, world-beaten pain of the runaway slave Caesar in The Underground Railroad, his first collaboration with Barry Jenkins, who kept giving him more scenes because his presence was “immediately a part of the spiritual essence of the show.”
The past year’s hustle (the premieres and parties and talk shows) has been an adjustment, not exactly aligned with his reclusive tendencies. The eldest of three, he spent his Christmas quietly, surrounded by his parents, siblings, and some extended family in London’s West Croydon neighborhood, where he grew up. “That’s my ideal version of the holiday season every time,” he says. “I’m very much someone who’s a homebody.” Case in point: Had we spoken in person instead of by Zoom, Pierre says, he would have taken me to Gail’s, a low-key London coffee chain, because “it feels like your living room.”
