"Somebody said, 'Did you ever meet Aaron Spelling?' I said, 'By fax.'" When director Scott Silver was auditioning actors for the role of Lincoln "Linc" Hayes in the ultra-hip film version of TV's The Mod Squad, he knew he had his man when Omar Epps walked in. The twenty-five year old actor had barely begun his reading when Silver stopped him and said, "You're Linc."
So what is it about the Brooklyn native that made him so right for Linc? He may not be as imposingly badass as his television predecessor Clarence Williams III, but he's certainly got the cool factor covered. Epps reveals that it wasn't cool he projected during his audition but a very bad mood. "I just walked in really careless," he explains. "I wasn't acting like I wasn't having a good time, I wasn't having a good time."
Decked out in a green and white checkered shirt topped with a camel-colored jacket and a jauntily placed hat, Epps defines cool. And he defines cool as "really tight pants. When you can wear tight pants and women say you look halfway decent, that's really cool." Linc's wardrobe, especially those tight pants, looks fabulous onscreen but were a definite chore to wear. "Every scene was all on the same level because of those damn tight pants. Ridiculously [tight]. They had a whole slew of them. If I didn't like this color, they had one in [another] color. Relentless," he says, shaking his head. "Running around for eight hours and then getting out of them. Just cut them off. I liked them, the pants were hip. It's cool, you know, for Lenny Kravitz."
Though this was one movie where he preferred not to keep the wardrobe, he urged costar Claire Danes to keep a particular red patch leather jacket she wears as the troubled Julie. "I told her she better keep it or I'd steal it for my girlfriend," he laughs. Off the set, he found Danes "real cool. She's like, you know, New York chick. She's really intellectual." As for Giovanni Ribisi, the third member of the squad, "you already know that guy is a b.s. artist," he grins. He and Ribisi passed set breaks kidding around and keeping each other going. "Me and Giovanni would just be sitting around and say, 'You know, they're going to make a porno film out of this, right?''Yeah? What are they gonna call it?''The Rod Squad'" Danes was amused by their locker room antics. "Claire is down," Epps confirms.
Epps first made his mark as Q in Juice and quickly followed that with roles in The Program, John Singleton's Higher Learning and HBO's recent Deadly Voyage. He found his biggest audience as the med student who shockingly commmits suicide on ER. "The way they filmed that show was amazing," he remembers though he has ambiguous feelings about the way his character was handled and the way the show portrays African-American characters in general.
PAMELA'S FILM AND ENTERTAINMENT SITE (PV): Did they tell you you were going to be killed off?
OMAR EPPS (OE): No, [but] they had the idea.
PV: They never shared that with you?
OE: No, they didn't. It was like two episodes before.
PV: Would you have done it if you knew?
OE: That's a really, really good question. I would have wanted to do it but I wouldn't have. I probably would have done it if they had a meeting and explained it to me. My problem with the whole ER thing -- and I didn't want to be crass about it -- but you have Jeanie Boulet and she has HIV and then there's Dr. Benton. He's an asshole and that's the hit of the show. As long as he's an ass, you'll have a hit show. Then you bring this young black guy with all this energy and Benton isn't giving him the same stuff he's giving Carter and then this guy couldn't take the pressure. It didn't sit well with me. They at least recognized what I was saying and that's why they made it an issue of "Was he pushed?" And they leaned more towards suicide. It wasn't even a big deal. What can you tell the producers of the number one show on TV? "You mere peasant?!"
Epps laughs and why not? Rather than fade into ER's ensemble, he's secured a stronger foothold in the film industry. Aside from The Mod Squad, he has three films set for release. The Wood, costarring How Stella Got Her Groove Back's Taye Diggs, tells the story of three best friends, one of whom gets cold feet on his wedding day, reminiscing about their childhood. "It's about the fundamentals of growing up," Epps remarks. In Too Deep relates the true story of a cop who went undercover and brought down a drug cartel. "He never came back mentally," he says. Then there's Breakfast of Champions, director Alan Rudolph's film adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's novel which costars Nick Nolte and Bruce Willis. "Nothing," Epps chuckles, "can beat Nick Nolte coming in the set every day in Twin Falls, Idaho in pajamas. Every day."
- Omar Epps
