Michael Potts

Personal context

Summary

Michael Potts is an American stage and screen actor known for The Wire, True Detective, The Book of Mormon, and August Wilson productions including Jitney and The Piano Lesson. His stage and screen work spans contemporary drama, musicals, and stories rooted in black American life. Potts has described being typecast because casting decision-makers did not know what to do with “my kind of black man,” and has said August Wilson’s work gives voice to a community overlooked by the wider population. In 2017, he described himself and his 1984 castmates as left-leaning liberals and compared the security around Donald Trump’s residence to Orwellian surveillance; no recurring activist affiliations or campaign work are on record.