Damian Brown talks selling bag juice, Children’s First and playing sitcom’s leading man

Jamaican-Canadian actor Damian Garth Brown “has come a long way, baby,” as they say in showbiz.

Brown, who at 6 ft 2 inches is also a model, is known for his performances in Doggy Daycare: The Movie (2015), Kim’s Convenience (2016), Downsizing (2017), and Arnold’s Caribbean Pizza (2020). He also snagged a role as a stand-in double for none other than Idris Elba in The Mountain Between Us, and now he is the leading man in a Caribbean-flavoured sitcom, House out of Order.

But it wasn’t really that long ago that Brown, who attended York University in Canada on a full scholarship, was selling bag juice in the Spanish Town bus park in St Catherine, where his family lived.

He gets emotional, almost to the point of tears, when telling The Sunday Gleaner about his rise from nothing to something, through the help of Claudette Pious of Children’s First, and undoubtedly also through his own natural talents and dogged determination. A friend had invited him to Pious’ group, which is an active non-profit organisation founded in 1997 dedicated to improving the lives of Jamaica’s street children. Brown rejected the overtures at first, because Pious was “talking about the importance of education” and he didn’t buy into that initially. He had got a place at Dinthill Technical High School, and his brother had passed for Jose Marti Technical High School, and the reality was that his mother could not afford to send them both to school. So, he went to the YMCA and also worked selling bag juice.

“One day, I was standing by the fence and saw those kids at Children’s First doing a presentation about violence and abuse. And I was thinking, ‘These are things that I see in my community,’ but the deejays were the only people I had ever heard sing about them. So I joined the group, and Miss Pious was the best teacher ever. She taught us that we had value. We would go to conferences with other kids who were from uptown, and Miss Pious would tell us, ‘Don’t shout, just make sure that your arguments have value.’ Miss Pious would take us to Fae Ellington, and she would teach us proper enunciation. None of this would be possible without Miss Pious,” Brown said.

He recalled overhearing a lady who was offering Pious a plum job telling her one day that “Claudette, these kids are going to kill you”. Her answer was, “Well, let them kill me. I am not leaving them. Someone has to fight for these kids.”

Brown, who was elected as a UN Population Fund goodwill youth ambassador and attended conferences in New York and Geneva, shared: “When you live where I come from, nobody takes a chance on you. Miss Pious was never ashamed of us. Wherever she goes, we go. I would go to the theatre with her when she was in a production and sell programmes. She would tell me that as soon as I was finished, I should get inside the theatre and watch and learn all I could. We would write character bios, and whenever we had a production, I know that I would not miss a line; I always self-critiqued a lot even from then.”.

The holder of a bachelor of arts degree in political science/theatre arts, Brown never completed high school in Jamaica, and he recalled that there was a big buzz about that during his first year at York University. While pursuing acting in Toronto, he was also very active as a restorative justice practitioner at a youth court and was even accepted to one of the top 10 law Schools in England before choosing (film) acting as a full-time pursuit, despite many persons’ belief that to be great he had to become involved in either academia or the political realm.

In the sitcom House out of Order, Brown plays the lead character James who does not have his house in order. He plays a husband, ex-husband, father and friend who encounters some unplanned mishaps and poor attempts at keeping the peace, which sometimes causes the entire household to experience upheaval. The production is filmed at Harvest Studios and is directed by critically acclaimed director and producer, Bentley Kyle Evans, of Martin and The Jamie Foxx Show fame and his newest production with MC LYTE called Partners in Rhyme.

“I am still pinching myself; I still don’t believe it’s real. This is not the biggest project I have done, but it is certainly the biggest role for me. My mother is extremely proud … she bawls … she laughs. My sister was telling me that she was watching the show and her words were ‘Bwoy I can’t believe this is my boy.’ When she goes back to the market where I used to sell, she tells everybody. I remember going into Tastee trying to sell bag juice, and the manager would run me out. I would give the bus conductors a free bag juice, just so I could go on the bus and sell. What a journey!”

Brown also expressed gratitude to mentors like Marcia Brown and Paul Campbell, who recommended him for roles or pushed him to excel in theatre or on-screen. His family in Jamaica and the US have treated each of his other projects like blockbuster appearances.

Starting January 23, cable TV viewers in the Caribbean and streamers globally have had a chance to see Brown play his first lead role in a TV show, and the feedback has been “overwhelming”. Brown is looking forward to season two.

House Out of Order airs on FLOW in the Caribbean on channel #214, AppleTV and NBTME.COM.

yasmine.peru@gleanerjm.com