Jay Ellis Comes Home to Harlem

Jay Ellis was acquiring treats at a corner bodega in Harlem when a female in a crop prime and Ray-Bans approached him. “Oh my God, I’m so joyful!” she explained.

This was on a sticky Monday in September, halfway by way of a walking tour of Harlem, the place Mr. Ellis experienced lived, on and off, in the mid-2000s, when he was a product hoping to split into performing. After yrs of sporadic do the job, he landed a starring purpose on BET’s “The Activity,” a comedy-drama set in the earth of specialist soccer, then booked the romantic guide on the HBO comedy “Insecure,” actively playing Lawrence, the boyfriend of the series creator Issa Rae’s Issa.

At the conclude of the show’s very first time, Issa cheats on Lawrence. Lawrence retaliates by dangling the assure of a reunion, then bedding a co-worker. Which means that attitudes towards the character — and Mr. Ellis — are quite divisive. (“Insecure” returns for a fifth and ultimate period on Oct. 24.)

“I’m not a supporter of yours,” the girl in the bodega clarified. “That payback was not correct. However you are a great actor.”

Mr. Ellis, 39, favored her with his Sunday morning smile, then remaining with his drinking water and unsalted cashews.

A skyscraper of a man with dizzying charisma, Mr. Ellis, 6-foot-3, experienced overdressed for the working day in denims, a Comme des Garçons striped shirt, a slate jacket and sneakers the blinding white of new veneers. He satisfied the tour guideline, Neal Shoemaker, at the workplaces of Harlem Heritage Excursions on Malcolm X Boulevard. Jointly they established off for a shambolic stroll by the neighborhood.

“You may possibly satisfy my mother any moment now,” Mr. Shoemaker stated as he led Mr. Ellis on to the basketball courtroom at the center of Martin Luther King Jr. Towers. Fourteen flooring up, Mr. Shoemaker’s aunt waved furiously from a window. Mr. Shoemaker shouted up to her, teasingly introducing Mr. Ellis as her “new nephew.”

Next, they walked as a result of the African market place in close proximity to West 116th Street and earlier the Masjid Malcolm Shabazz, where by incense clouded the late summer time air and a nearby cafe marketed male enhancements and veggie burgers. Mr. Ellis had hardly been back in 15 years. The burned-out brownstones had been renovated, he noted. And the police presence appeared lighter.

The tour continued earlier Minton’s Playhouse and together with Marcus Garvey Park, the internet site of the 1969 Harlem Cultural Pageant that was chronicled in the documentary “Summer of Soul,” which Mr. Ellis experienced just noticed. He stopped outside the house the residence where Maya Angelou after lived, admiring the ivy that tumbled from the lintel.

All over the walk, admirers stopped Mr. Ellis for greetings and pictures — “Take it with me, not of me,” Mr. Ellis reported to an excitable middle-aged lady who experienced halted her car just to snap him. Good friends and relations stopped Mr. Shoemaker, much too, and Mr. Ellis, who life in Los Angeles with his wife and child daughter, appeared a little jealous of the humming road lifetime.

“It’s the music mecca for Black society,” Mr. Ellis reported. “It’s the style mecca. Religiously, it is a mecca. I appear in this article, and I’m like, ‘Why am I living in LA.?’”

Mr. Ellis, the only youngster of an Air Drive family, moved to Los Angeles just following his Harlem several years. He briefly gave up on performing, then recommitted. A plucky hustle — he pretended that a casting agent experienced encouraged him — hooked him a first rate supervisor, and following a pair of several years of performing lessons, he began to guide roles.

None has intended as considerably to him as Lawrence, a character who struggles with the obligations of Black masculinity. Lawrence was not intended to make it past Year 1, but anything about Mr. Ellis’s layered portrayal built him a admirer favorite. And a the very least favourite.

“I often say that if folks are mad at me, if persons are delighted with me, if they are sad or regardless of what, then I did my job,” he reported. “Even if you dislike Lawrence, I did my job for the reason that you felt anything. I hope you like him simply because I like him. But I get it if you never.”

Are Lawrence and Issa endgame? Mr. Ellis understood superior than to comment. “I want both of those of them to be satisfied,” he mentioned diplomatically. “I hope that it’s with each and every other.”

He has presently started his publish-“Insecure” occupation, with a starring part in “Top Gun: Maverick,” owing out future year. (His character’s nickname? Payback.) He lately signed onto a romantic comedy, “Somebody I Employed to Know,” and is the co-creator of the podcast “Written Off,” which capabilities the do the job of formerly incarcerated authors.

Mr. Ellis adopted Mr. Shoemaker earlier Dapper Dan’s atelier, into the Harlem Haberdashery and cater-corner to Harlem Shake, where by Mr. Ellis would return for a article-walk burger. On 125th Street, he stopped to read the text on a monument to the politician and civil legal rights chief Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

The tour finished at the Apollo Theater, “where stars are born, legends are manufactured,” Mr. Shoemaker mentioned. Mr. Ellis is by now a star, but he nonetheless fantasizes about showing up in one of its newbie evenings. Would he sing? Tell a joke?

“All of it,” Mr. Ellis explained, flashing that gradual dance smile. “I’d do it all.”

Mr. Shoemaker pointed to an unoccupied rectangle on the Apollo’s Wander of Fame, following to Lionel Richie. “I can see Jay Ellis correct there,” he explained.

Mr. Ellis posed for a photo with a supporter or two, which include a teen who identified him from the thriller “Escape Room.” Then he and Mr. Shoemaker reported a helpful goodbye.

“Appreciate you, chief,” Mr. Ellis referred to as as he headed back down 125th Avenue. “Tell your mama I’m coming, I’m hungry.”