Double Dear

Internet trolls don’t trouble Marque Richardson.

He’s ecstatic to be reprising his role as Reggie Green, an opinionated college computer-science major, in Netflix’s new series Dear White People.

Based on the 2014 film, the series follows the couplings and conflicts of a group of black students navigating a predominantly white (fictional) Ivy League university.

“The show’s even edgier than the movie,” says Richardson, phone-chatting while chowing on a falafel wrap at an eatery near his pad in L.A.’s Silver Lake district. The fact that Netflix’s trailer propelled a legion of trolls to post racist comments online “just shows how much this show is needed.”

Perhaps some of those bullies will be disarmed by Reggie, a seemingly unbending black-rights activist with former Black Panthers for parents. “He’s trying to live up to their expectations, but he’s vulnerable deep-down.”

With a first name that’s pronounced “marquee,” Richardson was perhaps destined to perform. Born in San Diego’s Naval Medical Center — his mom and dad were both in the Navy before switching to contracting — he lucked into his first commercial at age four.

He stuck with acting while studying business at USC (in a bit of kismet that prepared him for People, he lived on the “African-American residential special-interest floor” in one of the dorms). His career really started to click in his junior year: he landed parts on 7th Heaven and The Bernie Mac Show. Even so, he interned with Will Smith’s production company, thinking a career behind the camera — or even with the CIA! — offered more security.

But the guest parts (ER, NCIS) kept coming. In 2012, he landed a recurring role as Kenneth, a werewolf, on True Blood. Last year, Richardson essayed civil-rights hero Bob Moses in HBO’s Emmy-nominated LBJ biopic All the Way. “That made me proud.”

To get away from Hollywood, Richardson cycles in Griffith Park or cuddles with his girlfriend and their rescue Shih-Tzu mix. If he ever does worry about his career, he quickly recalls leaner days. “If I’m healthy and I got my family, I’m good.”

This article originally appeared in emmy magazine, Issue No. 3, 2017