On this episode of Fake Doctors, Real Friends, Donald Faison and Zach Braff welcome Shirley Faison, Donald’s mother, to talk about Donald’s childhood hanging out at the National Black Theatre in Harlem, how she became a talent agent, and share some great stories about Donald’s first auditions and jobs. Shirley has listened to the podcast three whole times, so she is ready for anything. She got involved with the National Black Theatre after they performed at Rutgers University when she was a student; she started as a performer, but was running the whole place before she left. Donald would come with her to rehearsals and sit in the front row for all the performances. “He almost got beat up by one of the performers because he would say their lines before they did!” she remembers, laughing. But she knew even before that that he was destined to be a performer when she would take him out for walks in a stroller, “and he would raise his hand like he was in a chariot and there was a horse in front of him – I always knew that he liked to imagine.”
When Donald started auditioning at the age of 12, Shirley was running the theatre, so he would take himself to auditions on the bus – or she would ask actors to take him for her. Donald and Zach talk about how nerve-wracking an audition room can be, especially when you can hear an actor before you crushing the scene, or when other actors waiting with you play mind games to throw you off. Once, after signing in, Donald asked Marlon Wayans (who was a friend of his) where the audition room was. Marlon directed him to a room down the hall that turned out to be the bathroom; when Donald got back to the audition room, “he’s sitting there like ‘Hey man!’ Totally mindf**ked me,” he laughs.
Donald got a lot of parts in movies and television shows, but it wasn’t until Remember the Titans that he felt like he had really made it. Disney rented a theater so Donald, his mother, and all her friends could watch the movie before it came out, and he could see that they were really caught up in the film – especially because of who he was working with. “I used to joke that there were three pictures in my house growing up: A picture of Jesus, a picture of Dr. Martin Luther King, and a picture of Denzel Washington,” he laughs. “I knew walking out of that theater that my mom was on Cloud Nine because of that s**t.” Plus, how Shirley became an agent (“I would so watch that movie,” Zach comments), some of her famous clients, the Covid-safe programming she produced for the building she lives in to enjoy from their balconies during quarantine, and so much more; don’t miss this great conversation with the one and only Shirley Faison on Fake Doctors, Real Friends.
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