With the Black Lives Matter movement and the George Floyd protests happening in America right now, many celebrities are coming forward with their opinions on the matter including New Girl actor, Lamorne Morris.
We spoke about the Black Lives Matter movement on this episode of It’s Been A Big Day For…
While we previously reported on Riverdale actress Vanessa Morgan speaking out against her show’s tokenism and payment disparity, New Girl star Lamorne Morris discussed how it felt for him to portray a black cop whilst real-world police brutality against African-Americans was occurring in the States. Also, the New Girl actor spoke about how he channelled this into writing an episode for the sitcom that addressed his concerns.
Lamorne Morris admitted that he started to feel “weird” about the profession of his New Girl character in an interview with Metro. He said, “I was in a weird mental state when a lot of stuff started happening in this country, although it’s been going on forever, it’s the camera phones and stuff, everyone seeing it, and once it starts hitting the news in a major way, I felt really weird playing a police officer. I really did. I felt strange, you felt like you were betraying your people, you’re like, ‘pick a side,’ that’s the thought process you’re going through in your head.”
But after expressing his concerns to the New Girl writers, they encouraged Lamorne Morris to channel his feelings through his character Winston. Lamorne Morris said, “There was an episode I wrote with regards to police brutality and what’s going on in America and all over the world… what black citizens deal with on a regular basis with regards to our policing system.”
The episode he is talking about is ‘Par 5’, a Season 4 episode of New Girl that sees Lamorne Morris’ character falls for an activist who isn’t too fond of the police.
Lamorne Morris thanked Liz Meriwether, the creator of the show, saying: “Liz Meriwether was great, she was like, ‘Hey, let’s write about it, what do you want to say?’ that meant a lot to me. That said the show isn’t just for jokes and entertainment – it is, that’s our goal – but you have characters who are people in real life that this affects… They were gracious enough to help me write it… they were really good with allowing you to add your input.’
Since conducting this interview, Lamorne Morris has addressed the passing of George Floyd directly on Instagram saying, “The whole country should be marching. Right now we’re seeing people rioting in the streets but what else do you want people to do? Stay silent and take the loss like we’ve been doing? We. Are. People.” You can check out the full post, caption included, here.
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