Tyler James Williams remembers that 'Everybody Hates Chris' ads were on NYC buses when he was 12: 'It was kind of traumatic'
He's only 29, but actor Tyler James Williams, one of the stars of ABC's freshman hit sitcom Abbott Elementary, is a veteran of the entertainment biz. He was on Sesame Street by the time he was 7, and, within a few years, thanks to his starring role in the late aughts sitcom Everybody Hates Chris, inspired by Chris Rock's childhood, he was inescapable.
"They put my face on literally every bus in New York City. Like, literally every single one," Williams tells Yahoo Entertainment. "I was just one of the faces in this crowd, beating the block like everybody else was, and now, yeah, they know exactly who I am, whether they want to or not… It was kind of traumatic in the sense of, like, I just wasn't used to that many eyeballs. And at 12 you just feel that as you're walking through a crowd."
But not everything he remembers from that experience was negative.
"There was also something about it that prepared me for what was to come. I would say my teens is where it really started to change. I had to really decide what kind of actor I wanted to be, and I was like 17, and that's when I learned, never take the roles that you're offered. Only take the ones you gotta fight for. Never, never, because the ones that you’re offered, they’re gonna keep you in a box. There's a lot of noise, particularly around child actors. Everyone's saying that you should do this or you should do that."
