Comment

Comment by truth on April 17, 2009 at 5:22pm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AL-bvQ8Zsc

video of Daniel Sunjata at Webster Hall, NYC 9/9/07

at We Are Change 9/11 First Responders fund raising benefit.

Comment by TheLasersShadow on April 8, 2009 at 5:20am

I wonder if he wrote that or if it was spontaneous / improvised. Kinda odd that they let him talk like that to the public, i mean they might start to catch on to the reality of our situation and READ something.

Comment by Marklar on April 8, 2009 at 5:10am

I don't watch the show so thanks for the post. Awesome.

Comment by truth on April 7, 2009 at 11:56pm

A stranger looking at Daniel Sunjata's sports-filled high school years would find it difficult to guess his chosen career. Could it be football player, business executive, sports agent? Wrong. The answer is actor.

How in the world did that happen?

Sunjata, who grew up in Beverly and was a star football player at Mount Carmel High School, laughingly admits acting was a long shot for him.

"I remember our English teacher, Mr. Taylor, would direct the school plays and was always after me to audition," Sunjata recalled. "But I never did. I was pretty consumed by sports."

Now 37, Sunjata has a long list of accomplishments. He's been nominated for a Tony Award ("Take Me Out"), acted in films ("The Devil Wears Prada," "Melinda and Melinda") and is a member of the ensemble cast in the critically acclaimed television show "Rescue Me," where he plays Puerto Rican firefighter and ladies' man Franco Rivera.

"Dan is a very solid actor," said "Rescue Me" co-creator and executive producer Peter Tolan. "Whatever you give him, he does something interesting with it."

Sunjata will get extra attention in the fifth season of "Rescue Me" (beginning 9 p.m. Tuesday) when it's revealed that Franco believes in a 9/11 conspiracy theory, a view the actor shares (see sidebar).

Of mixed-race descent (Irish-German and African-American), Sunjata was adopted as a baby by a Caucasian couple. To keep ties to his heritage, his parents gave him an African middle name, which he uses professionally.

Sunjata remembers being a "generally reclusive" child. "There was a period in my life when I was definitely figuring out who I was and what it meant to be adopted," he recalled, in a conversation from his home in Harlem. "Which group do I belong to and all that."

Sunjata remembers his years at Mount Carmel as "one of the most formative and important experiences of my life." After his team won the Class 5A championship he had plans to become a "world-class athlete" but realized years later that the real goal of an education at Mount Carmel was to "produce world-class citizens with courage, class and self-esteem."

"Dan was a very focused kid with a great work ethic," Mount Carmel football coach Frank Lenti said. "He always led by example and worked toward his goals."

The Goodman Theatre is where actors and acting first caught Sunjata's attention. Like droves of other youngsters, he was taken on an annual excursion to the downtown theater for its production of "A Christmas Carol."

"I remember watching Tiny Tim and thinking, 'I wish I could do that,'" Sunjata recalled. "But that wish definitely became a dream deferred."

Sunjata would not return to that dream until college. At Florida A&M University, he planned on studying business until one day in his sophomore year he "stumbled across the theater program" and was smitten for good.

"The experience at Florida tipped me off to the fact that I definitely had a propensity for acting," Sunjata said. "I thought if I could go further and learn the details of the craft, maybe this was something I could do for a living."

A few years later, Sunjata was at New York University working on a masters degree in acting. After graduating in 1998, he gave himself 10 years to make the "acting thing work." He needn't have worried. His first job out was a role in Lincoln Center's staging of "Twelfth Night," starring Paul Rudd and Helen Hunt.

"It was a low-level job in a high-profile piece of theater, and that was fortunate," Sunjata said. "But after that I definitely went through periods of unemployment and had to beat the pavement and work to become a fixture in the minds of casting directors."

With talent and a bit of luck, Sunjata found interesting work in several Broadway productions. In 2003, he received a Tony nomination for his role as gay baseball player Darren Lemming in Richard Greenberg's hit play "Take Me Out." He also starred with Jennifer Garner and Kevin Kline in a 2007 staging of "Cyrano de Bergerac."

While theat