Laurence Fishburne Has the Sweetest Reason for Joining the Cast of 'The School for Good and Evil'

The star also explains why he thinks the world still need fairy tales.

The Matrix and Black-ish actor Laurence Fishburne, 61, gets magical as the headmaster in The School for Good and Evil (Oct. 19 on Netflix), a modern fairy tale about an enchanted academy where young heroes and villains are trained.

Fairy tales have always taught lessons to children. Do you think that they’re still relevant in 2022?

Of course, absolutely. Fairy tales and myths and all those old stories are vital to human beings. We need them.

What brought you into School?

My daughter, who is 15 now, was reading the books three or four years ago, right around when she was 11 or 12. They were her favorite books, so I was sold on that, just knowing that she loved them.

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The tone of the new series feels like the “Fractured Fairy Tales” parodies from The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show in the 1960s.

It is kind of campy. And that campy tone is one of my favorite things about it, particularly with the adults. [And for] young girls, it seems to speak to their humor and their time in a way that’s genuine. That was so impressive to me.

What can you tell us about your role as the schoolmaster, a loner hiding away in a tower full of books?

It’s hard to talk about him without giving away his secret. But I liked what I was able to do with him because he’s part of the campiness.

An interesting aspect of The School for Good and Evil is that everyone gets labeled. They’re either Evers (good) or Nevers (evil). But isn’t the lesson we want kids to take away from this that there is room for ambiguity and grayness, that nothing is actually black-and-white?

Yes, I think that’s beautifully illuminated in the show. I think it’s probably the core of the piece.

Do you think that we need to go back to the original sources of fairy tales, which were darker, or do you think it’s better to modernize and remake them?

Well, it depends. It depends on your point of view and what’s important to you. I think that ritual is important, I think that initiation is important, and all of those things were part and parcel of those stories. Sort of like a ritualized instruction manual.

Having done a show like Black-ish, at this point in this career, will you choose roles more carefully because of how you want to be seen, or the impact that you want to make?

I’ve always tried to choose my roles carefully. I don’t think I’m going to stop doing that. I always look for different things. I’m always trying to change it up a little bit.

You just wrapped Black-ish a few months ago, which was a groundbreaking TV series. What do you see as its impact?

We talked about things on television in a way that nobody’s really talked about them before or since. And I think we created a space for a lot of dialogue around race in this country in a really humanistic and sensitive way. I think we moved things forward a little bit.

Most of your career has been in film. What would make you say yes to another TV show?

I don’t know. It may appear that most of my career has been in film, but I’ve done a lot of television too. I did three seasons of CSI, I did three seasons of Hannibal, I did multiple seasons of Pee-wee’s Playhouse. I started out on a soap opera [One Life to Live] in New York with Tommy Lee Jones. I feel like it’s been fairly balanced.

Yes, I’ve made a lot of movies, and I love movies and I’ll continue to make them. My company Cinema Gypsy, we’re developing a couple of shows right now. So it’s really about whether or not the material speaks to me. I can’t tell you anything specific like it has to be X or Y or Z for me to say yes. It’s just has to speak to me and the quality has to be there.

When you look back, you have quite the impressive career. But was there any point where you thought, This isn’t going to work, I need to get a real job?

Not quite. I had some moments of despair for sure, but it didn’t get to the point where I thought, Oh, this is not going to work.

Was there a plan B?

Plan B was be better. Plan B was try harder.

John Wick: Chapter 4 is going to be the next thing to hit the screen, and you’re returning as the Bowery King. Will it be worth the wait for John Wick fans?

I can tell you that it’s the best one that I’ve read. I can tell you that it’s a super-international kind of thing that happens with this one. They’ve all been very international, but this one, I think, it’s in more cities than all the previous ones. Yeah, the Bowery King shows up in unexpected places.

What are you working on for your own production company?

Cinema Gypsy has an animated family series called Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur that’s coming in January. It’s based on a Marvel comic called Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur. It’s a collaboration between Disney and Marvel, and it’s about a 13-year-old African American girl named Lunella Lafayette. She’s a superhero, and her sidekick is a 50-foot red tyrannosaurus rex. And she’s the smartest person in the Marvel Universe. My company developed it and produced it. Disney’s going to stream it across multiple platforms starting the beginning of 2023.

What do you think it is about all these superhero movies and TV series that people are now so attracted to them?

For the same reason that we love fairy tales: the story of the hero. The story of the hero is important to all of us because we all have a hero inside of us.

What do you like to do when you’re not working?

I like to spend time with my family and my friends. I love to ride my motorcycle, and I like to just kick back at the beach.

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