NORTH CAROLINA PEOPLE WITH WILLIAM FRIDAY {THALMUS RASULALA} (TV)
Summary
One in this series in which host William Friday, the president of the University of North Carolina, interviews successful people who reside in or hail from North Carolina. In this program, William Friday talks with theater, film, and television actor Thalmus Rasulala, who currently serves as coordinator of cultural arts and artist-in-residence at Shaw University. Rasulala discusses the following topics, among others: the experience of playing "Omoro" in the miniseries "Roots"; how "Roots" affected public consciousness; his role on "One Life to Live," and the grind of acting in a daytime serial; working on Broadway with Pearl Bailey in the musical "Hello Dolly" and with Cicely Tyson on television in "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman"; the differences between working in film and on stage; advice he gives students interested in careers in show business; actors as "teachers" who draw on personal experience -- and how a period in his life, when he worked as a rancher, enriched his acting; his praise of North Carolina's commitment to the arts; his current project for the Department of Education -- a one-man show about Frederick Douglass for grade-school audiences; his current concentration on writing and his wish to direct film and television; his prediction that PBS will become more commercial due to budget cuts and that television programming will become more fractionalized with the growth of cable; his distaste for working in the Los Angeles television industry; the hard work and commitment it takes to be an actor; the important role of the predominantly black college; and a script he is writing about the unionization of Pullman porters.
Cataloging of this program was made possible by the William R. Kenan, Jr., Charitable Trust in honor of William C. Friday.
Details
- NETWORK: PBS North Carolina Public Television
- DATE: November 30, 1980
- RUNNING TIME: 0:28:45
- COLOR/B&W: Color
- CATALOG ID: T:40203
- GENRE: Talk/Interviews
- SUBJECT HEADING: Actors; African-American actors; North Carolina
- SERIES RUN: UNC-TV - TV series, 1970-2012
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- William C. Friday … Host , Interviewer
- Rasulala, Thalmus (See also: Crowder, Jack) … Guest