When Veep and Detroiters star Sam Richardson was 12 years old, he was falsely accused of shoplifting at a sporting goods store.
“I was walking through the aisles and kind of just looking around perusing. I went to walk out of Sports Authority and this woman grabs me and yanked me into this room. ‘I know what you did, I know what you did, the cops are coming, the cops are coming. I know what you did. And then the police showed up and they’re like, ‘We know that you stole something,’ and I just couldn’t… I was just fully confused,” he said. “They check the footage of me in the aisleway, and I had taken off my watch to put on a baseball glove and put my watch in my pocket. And the response as though I had committed army robbery, and she knew that calling the police was going to elicit that sort of response.”
That experience, as Richardson explained to host Conan O’Brien on Thursday’s at-home episode of Conan, is what it’s like to grow up black in America.
In response, Conan asked the I Think You Should Leave legend how he lives with that anger. Robinson replied with a Marvel Cinematic Universe quote. “I mean, we all have to. If we were all to shoulder the amount of frustration and fear that we feel, we wouldn’t be able to exist in society,” he said. “To make it nerd, in the movie The Avengers, they’re surrounded by the villains, the aliens are attacking, and Captain America’s like, ‘Hulk, now would be a good time to get angry,’ and Hulk looks at him and says, ‘That’s my secret… I’m always angry.’ I’m always angry, but I can’t let that anger dictate my life.”
You can watch the entire interview above.
