Daniel Sunjata
Age: "It depends on the role."
Currently: Playing pro baseball player Darren Lemming, who shocks his teammates by telling the world he's gay in Richard Greenberg's Take Me Out at the Public Theater. He's previously been seen on the New York stage in Lincoln Center's starry Twelfth Night and the New York Shakespeare Festival's 1997 Henry VIII. Regionally, he performed in Camino Real at Williamstown Theatre Festival.
Hometown: "I grew up on the south side of Chicago," says Sunjata, who is biracial and was adopted by a Caucasian family. To bridge the cultural gap, his adoptive family gave him an African middle name: Sunjata, after the king who founded the empire of Mali in Africa. After undergrad studies at Florida A&M in Tallahassee and a brief stint as a student of Business Administration, he arrived in New York City to continue his graduate studies in theater at New York University.
Don't Take Him Out: Although Sunjata's onstage alter ego in Take Me Out is a cocky, swaggering champion and undoubtably the best player on the team, in real life the actor is hardly a slugger. "I'm not a fan of baseball," he admits. "I don't really like it and I don't follow it. I played when I was in the pony league, but that was just for my dad--I never wanted to play." However, Sunjata says that the psychology of sports wasn't completely foreign to him: "I played other things when I was younger--football, wrestling, track." And these days? "I just go to the gym."
Poster Boy: One of the most winning aspects of Take Me Out is the relationships between Sunjata's character and his business manager, an awkward Chelsea gay man who starts out in lust with Lemming and instead unexpectedly falls in love with the game of baseball itself. Sunjata has nothing but praise for Denis O'Hare Ten Unknowns, Cabaret, who plays his onstage foil. "Denis is very easy to act with," he says. "I've learned a lot from being onstage with him. When we get the chemistry between these two characters right, it's quite dynamic." As for the possibility of Sunjata becoming a pin-up boy in the gay community thanks to his sexy performance, he's game. "That would be fine with me," he says. "I don't happen to be gay, but if they choose to make me an icon then great. It'd be nice to be known as somebody who advocates, through their work, that the gay lifestyle is acceptable and not abnormal."
Screen Time: In addition to his stage work, Sunjata has appeared on screens both large and small over the past few years. He was in this summer's Anthony Hopkins/Chris Rock fizzler Bad Company, had a lead in the Showtime film of Anne Rice's Feast of All Saints "What I'm most proud of," he says and is currently shooting an indie called Brother to Brother in which he plays African-American literary legend Langston Hughes. Earlier this summer he joined the ranks of New York's finest theater actors by appearing in a cameo on HBO's Sex and the City. Carrie Bradshaw followers should remember him--he played the hunky Louisiana Navy boy who wooed Sarah Jessica Parker during Fleet Week in the fifth season opener only to offend her by making digs at New York City. Sunjata had a blast shooting the episode: "It was fantastic. The production staff was very gracious and they didn't have to be." And Sarah Jessica Parker? "She's very down to earth and extremely helpful. She gave just as much when the camera was on me as when it was on her. She was a gem."
Live Nude Boys!: Sure, Greenberg's ripped-from-the-headlines play is tackling touchy social issues, but what everyone seems to be talking about is the extensive locker room male nudity that helped make the show a sold-out hit during its run at London's Donmar Warehouse this summer. Sunjata--who is not a part of the oft-mentioned group shower scene, but has his own bare-ass moments--says that he knew what he was getting into before taking the job, but felt the script warranted the exposure. "Nudity is something that I've tried to avoid at all costs," he says. "But since one of the themes of the play is how a traditionally all-male environment is affected by a homoerotic presence, the nudity almost seemed like a necessity." Although he admits that he still gets butterflies whenever he has to drop trou, he has grown to enjoy at least one advantage of performing in the buff: "It gives you a complete sense of power," he says. "Because you know that you've got everybody's attention."
