Tory Kittles on his smoldering role and the romance heating up Season Five of The Equalizer
BUST sat down with the exceedingly talented and prolific actor Tory Kittles, who is as charming as ever, to talk all things filmmaking, artistic collaborations, and The Equalizer. (And yes, we got a hint on what will happen with Dante and Robyn’s relationship in Season Five.)
Kittles has become known for his role as Dante Marcus on the Queen Latifah-led-TV thriller series The Equalizer, an adaptation of both the 1985 TV series starring Edward Woodward and the 2014 film starring Denzel Washington. Through this role, Kittles follows in the footsteps of the great network drama leads that came before him while also forging his own path. As the performer has grown throughout his career, he’s also found himself more and more embedded in the entire process of filmmaking. In 2023 he took on dual roles, serving as both an actor and producer for the thriller-drama film Among the Beasts. Having multiple irons in the fire when it comes to creating art, so to speak, has always been something on Kittles’ radar. “From the beginning, what I understood about myself was that [my career] is not so much about me as an actor as opposed to me as an artistic collaborator. Any chance I get to build something that’s not solely about me, whether in helping introduce the world to other great talents or just helping bring certain stories to the world, if I can use any influence or my platform to do that, that’s what I love doing.”
Artistic collaborations have become integral in much of Kittles’ work as an actor and artist, from working with filmmaker Joel Schumacher early in his career, to forming close bonds with artists like Kenny Leon and the late and beloved Chadwick Boseman, to now sharing the screen time and time again with hip-hop legend Queen Latifah. Kittles is constantly uplifting the relationships he’s formed that have inspired him creatively. “I think trust is the biggest thing in any sort of partnership, whether it’s creative or personal trust,” stated Kittles. “If Queen Latifah is involved in something, you know that it’s going to be special. When I first looked at the script for [The Equalizer], I stopped reading when they told me it was Queen Latifah. I immediately said, “Yeah, I’m in,” because we already have a shorthand. She knows that I’m going to challenge her, but I also know that she’s going to challenge me within the space of this creative boundary. We take it moment to moment and trust that in what we’re creating, you have to allow for the magic. And I think we both allow for the magic when we’re together.” Fans of the show have grown to love the dynamic between Latifah’s Robyn and Kittles’ Dante, and we were lucky enough to get a hint about the growing dynamic between the two in Season Five. “The relationship between the two characters has definitely grown,” says Kittles. “People should tune in to episode three because something special is going to happen.”
While creating and maintaining artistic collaborations is a must for Kittles, the ability to be challenged by a role is also something he seeks out in the projects that come his way. Take his most recent role as Cephus Miles in Samm-Art Williams’ Home on Broadway. For eight shows every week, Kittles depicts one man’s entire life story in just 90 minutes in front of a packed Broadway audience. “[Director Kenny Leon] was very adamant about not bringing any bells and whistles to it,” said Kittles about this transformative experience. “It was all about, ‘If you do this right, if you embody this character right, if you live this experience, they will see you as a child. They will see you as someone who’s suffering from palsy. They will see you as someone who’s homeless.’” While Kittles describes this time as one of his most challenging projects, he also emphasizes the beauty of the process and what it meant to him as an artist. On Home, he reflects, “That experience was very, very beautiful each night, but the play…it was a roller coaster. You had to jump on it and just take off. The pace of it was incredible, and the women that I was working with were incredible. It was one of those gifted experiences that I brought into this new season of Equalizer.”
As is exemplified by the creative projects he’s committed to, Kittles is an actor who not only wants to be able to push boundaries but is also committed to telling stories that have been marginalized. Take The Equalizer—as a big network drama, you might not expect there to be episodes exploring ideas like police corruption, but because of the terrific writing and the incredible performances, The Equalizer can give viewers the space to question what we, in our everyday lives, consider to be “normal operations.”
“I think at its core, every great story should educate, entertain, and inspire, if possible,” says Kittles. “And I think The Equalizer does a really good job of joining the long list of shows that I grew up on that inspired me. There are so many network shows I think of, even shows like Heart to Heart or All in the Family, shows that used to talk about racial issues and gave us this platform to actually have the debate of whose perspective is right or wrong, and I think debate is very good. That’s one of the things that art can and should do: bridge divides.”
Kittles aspires to bridge divides in his long catalog of projects that are near and dear to the hearts of many Americans, while also centering honesty and authenticity in his performances.
Photos Credited to Catie Laffoon
