Emmy-Award-winning actor André Braugher, who delivered so many outstanding dramatic performances in movies like Glory, Primal Fear, Spike Lee’s Get on The Bus, along with television series Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Homicide: Life on the Street, has died. Braugher was 61.
He died on Monday following a brief illness, his publicist Jennifer Allen said.
Braugher spent 100 episodes playing Det. Frank Pembleton on Homicide: Life on the Street, where he won a primetime Emmy for outstanding lead actor in a drama series. He won his second Emmy for the FX miniseries Thief, in which he played the leader of a heist crew.
He became beloved for his imagining of Capt. Raymond Holt, a gay, stoic police captain in Brooklyn, whose ramrod delivery balanced Andy Samberg’s buoyantly ridiculous Det. Jake Peralta.
A newcomer to comedy when he started on Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Braugher went on to garner four Emmy nominations for best supporting actor in a comedy series.
Braugher told NBC’s The Today Show in 2015 the he was eager to make the transition to comedy.
“I felt I needed to grow as an artist,” he said. “I feel like my mind is expanding, my capability as an actor. My ability to mine the comedy is really rising up.”
The show was a critical success and showed Braugher’s acting brilliance to a new audience. It also tackled serious issues, including police brutality, when other sitcoms stayed away from the controversial reality.
Braugher told Variety that the subject was imperative.
“Brooklyn Nine-Nine has to commit itself, as a comedy, to telling the story of how these things happen, and what’s possible to deal with them. I don’t have any easy answers, nor do I have a window into the mind bank of this writing staff,” he said. “Can you tell the same story? Can anyone in America maintain any kind of innocence about what police departments are capable of?”
Braugher’s colleagues and friends took to social media to write about how sad they were at hearing the news. Brooklyn Nine-Nine costar Terry Crews wrote on Instagram, “I’m honored to have known you, laughed with you, worked with you and shared eight glorious years watching your irreplaceable talent. This hurts.”
Comedian Joe Lo Truglio, who also starred in Brooklyn Nine-Nine, took to Instagram to point out Braugher’s joyous energy behind the scenes:
“What you probably don’t know is that Andre could sing, too, and did often at lunch, belting bassy vocals from his dressing room to whatever new music he found,” he wrote. “At first, it was odd because well…*it was Andre Braugher crooning at full volume from behind closed doors*…but then very quickly it made all the sense in the world, because the man was so full of song and that’s why the world took notice.”
A native of Chicago, Braugher earned a B.A. from Stanford University and a graduate diploma from Juilliard.
He was cast in the Shondaland murder-mystery drama The Residence earlier this year. The series began production before the WGA strike and was set to resume in January.
Braugher is survived by his wife, actress Ami Brabson, sons Michael, Isaiah and John Wesley, brother Charles Jennings and his mother Sally Braugher.