The following article contains major spoilers for Eric.
Every missing kid story needs its detective. In Netflix’s noir-ish potboiler Eric, that's Michael Ledroit, a dedicated, moral cop who embodies everything many of us our told as kids that cops should be: firm, empathetic, dedicated to lives of service (the reality is, uh, more complex).
He's also Black, gay, and in the NYPD in the ‘80s. Naturally, then, he's regularly pulled apart: by the racist and homophobic institution that is his workplace, his long-time partner dying of a hideous, deeply stigmatised new disease called AIDS, and his obligation to the victims and survivors for whom he has pledged to find justice. It's a lot to carry on one's shoulders — and that's without having to hide your sexuality from the people around you on a daily basis.
GQ spoke to the actor about Netflix's cerebral new crime thriller, in which he plays another broken genius
One of many performance elements that McKinley Belcher III nails is the thousand-yard stare of a man who has seen some shit. He embodies Ledroit like he's being physically compressed by the hand of a cruel god, or at least is in dire need of better sleep hygiene. He teems with personal history, inviting us to read between the lines of what we see on screen: who did Ledroit call his friends? How many of them have already died to the virus ravaging his community, sapping the life force from the one person he can escape to?
Such is why Belcher III, best known for One Piece and Ozark, comes away from Eric as its breakout scene-stealer. This is a show about a family torn asunder by the disappearance of a mad puppeteer's son, but Ledroit equally sticks with you: his guilt, his quiet rage, his determination to exact the change he wants to see in the world.
Here, the actor breaks down Ladroit's arc, taking us through some of his most emotionally difficult scenes.
GQ: Was Ledroit's sexuality a draw for you?
McKinley Belcher III: Absolutely. I was really excited that… there'd be a lot of space for me to honour the journey of what it would have been to live through the AIDS crisis in the '80s. And then all of the managing and wrestling; you’re working in an institution where it's not actually safe to be yourself. To me, that's a lot of weight to be carrying around.
He's already under the foot of a systemically racist organisation. It comes across in casualised ways: there's this line where a white cop comes up to him in very loaded manner, like, “You remind me of Eddie Murphy.”
It's easy for people to think of racism and discrimination in ways that are quite aggressive and overt, but the more subversive and hidden ways in which in manifests in daily life, in institutions like the NYPD, are almost even more dangerous, because they can go undiscovered or unrealised.
As a Black queer man, it was really important to me that we get to see how someone like him would navigate that stuff. With the storyline of Marlon; you see in real-time the difference of the lens of how Edgar is viewed, and how Marlon is viewed. How we allocate resources, the attention given, the time given. It speaks to something that was real not only in the ‘80s, but is still real now.
Abi Morgan speaks to GQ about some of the key moments in Netflix's noir-ish missing kid drama, from Good Day Sunshine to that final cautionary shot
Abi Morgan has spoken to how she wanted to use the ‘80s setting to speak to the present day. It feels like ‘80s New York works as a great analogy for the current divisions.
I think it's helpful that it's a period piece because now can be incredibly polarising; it gives us the benefit of distance, and time, to look and be like, ‘Well, it’s obvious that this is a problem.' And then when we do a comparative study, it's like, obviously there’s been progress in many ways, but I think sometimes there's an illusion of progress, and we haven't come as far in all of those categories as we think we have.
For Ledroit specifically, he's also Black — Black people in the US and in many places have a complicated relationship to the police. So he's confronted with that from his community; he's confronted with that from his internal experience of what it is to be queer; he's confronted with this very real corruption that he's bumping up against constantly.
How do you get into the mental space of someone who is carrying that much baggage?
The beauty of what I get to do for a living is that I get to conjure real things that I've had to metabolise in my own life. I'm really comfortable with myself now, and comfortable with who I love, but there was a time where that was not true. So I think that weight is incredibly familiar to me.
For me, it was a lot of thinking about where I was a couple of years ago and what it would be like to be navigating those same things, but in the ‘80s. Then in the middle of the AIDS epidemic, when there’s a whole lot of stigma, confusion, and fear. And fear is dangerous in the way that it can turn into violence.
How did you interpret his relationship with Gator?
I feel like Gator is like the first love of his life. And if things had gone differently with his relationship to the law, and how responsible he was with running the club, they probably would be together.
In some ways it makes the relationship with William make even more sense: I feel like [Ledroit] went in an opposite direction because of the hurt he experienced with Gator, so he veered towards someone who made him feel safe, and who offered a very different quality of life, who's artistic, and quiet, and established in life in a way that would not be having all of these unsavoury characters running in and out of your life.
Talk to me about the scene where Ledroit goes to see William's body in the hospital. It's one of the more poignant moments in the show, I think.
The truth of queer people in the ‘80s and ’90s is that people just disappeared. Someone was here, smiling, and then very quickly they weren't anymore; it ravaged a community, and it's a very real thing that gets captured over the course of the show. It's a dangerous thing with [Ledroit] specifically, because he's so hellbent on solving this case, that he's not able to say goodbye. And I think that's also real – how quickly some people deteriorated. They might have felt they had months, or even years, and it turns into weeks and days.
I find it heartbreaking because I'm married to a man, and I think after being together for seven years, they would've been married, but that wasn't possible. He's not protected in a way that he can just show up to the hospital and see his partner. I have to literally flash my badge to see the man I love after he's gone.
He plays a Jim Henson-esque master of puppets who runs a hit kid's show — and whose own 8-year-old goes missing in grimy '80s New York
What was your most emotionally demanding scene to shoot?
The moment of release in episode six was one of the most difficult; we did three takes, and every one was a little more painful. It's something that I was not necessarily looking forward to, but I thought was really important, because we don't see him in that way again. It's a chance for me to give a window into his heart.
I also found the moment with the sister [in episode five] difficult, because as a queer man, I've had my own relationship with my family, who are very Christian, and very conservative. To be denied by someone that you would or do care about, because of her own inability to let go of stigma… that's a painful thing to engage with. It's like getting slapped in the face constantly.
And if you're drawing on real-life experience, as you've just touched on, that comes with its own huge difficulty.
Absolutely. One of the things that broke my heart the most in my coming out journey is that my mom is one of the biggest examples of what it means to love to me in the world. And when I came out to her, it was the first time that I ever got evidence that her love was conditional. That's the sort of earth shattering moment when what you perceive to be pure, and a guiding light, is suddenly perverted in some way. At the end of the day, I have to resign myself that she is also human and she's capable of making a mistake, or not seeing a thing clearly, and sometimes you have to teach people how to love you; but in the moment, it feels like a huge betrayal.
I think that's something that Ledroit is confronted with over and over again; having the rug ripped out from underneath him. It happens with losing William. It happens with the betrayal from Gator. It happens being in the NYPD, and feeling like you're being betrayed by this institution that you dedicated your life to. Being inside the man who is figuring that out is both exciting and sobering.
In this sense, can performing actually be therapeutic?
Yes. That is one of the things that I'm attracted to about the job. I think about what I do as an opportunity to change the world and people around me; I'm offering up representation and the story of the other in a way for people to understand or see themselves in, but it works reflexively, also. I'm being worked on as I'm putting a thing out there.
I'm changed by the work that I lend my heart to. It's a chance for me to exorcise some things, but it's also a chance for me to meditate on these defining, pivotal things that happen to us. I like to think of life as a series of forks in the road. If you change left or right a couple of times, it's like changing the person. So it allows me to contemplate who I am, who I want to be, what my place is in the world, and how I can be the change.
Eric is out now on Netflix.
