Oris Erhuero
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Oris Erhuero, star of HBO’s Sometimes in April, strolls in the coffee shop with a light swagger carrying a huge bottle of water. Immediately, his calm demeanor brings my frenetic pace down 10 levels. Although it’s Saturday morning at 10 a.m., he has been up for five hours, having already meditated and practiced Yoga. My eyes are red and puffy from a late Friday night as I chug my café Americano while waiting for him in the corner.
The British born model, actor and Red Box Films Pesident speaks with an intensity of a wise monk as he remembers his London to Hollywood journey that has been plagued by rough waters.
He first saw acting while shadowing his Nigerian mother to the National Theatre of London, where she cleaned. While he watched the actors and longed to be working along side of them, his mother gently pulled him by the ear to remind him they were at work.
Years later he would find himself playing Othello on that same exact stage.
Ultimately however, music is what really brought the actor to the United States. He is a founding member of the hip-hop collective Zulu Nation in London.
“Hip-Hop is like Rome, where the artist is the gladiator and the fans are the mob,” says Oris. “If you cross the line, you get the thumbs down; if you are real you will get the thumbs up.”
He had an appearance on Public Enemy’s It Take’s a Nation of Millions to Hold us Back before tragedy stuck. While with a rap colleague in the Bronx, he was shot eight times in the back. It was 1993 and he spent two weeks in a coma before he decided that hip-hop had to be put on hold.
While pursuing acting, he scored a number of major ad campaigns as a model, including Armani, Dior, Versace and others. He has starred in numerous action-packed roles before he took on his most infamous and important role to date in the HBO Film, Sometimes in April.
The film recounts the 1994 Rwandan genocide and subsequent criminal trials where over 800,000 people were killed in a 100-day period. Oris plays Honore, a radio journalist who spreads propaganda that Tutsis are to be killed.
The whole film was shot in Rwanda at actual places where the murders had taken place.
People who experienced the war were on set to make sure it was filmed just how it happened. This film changed Oris’ perspective on the world and made him feel enormously responsible to tell the world about what happened in Africa.
“This continent is ours, the continent of Africa is ours, we have got to be honest and truthful, and not make it about us and Hollywood,” says Oris. “Tell the stories so the souls of these 800,000 people, lives who were just wasted can rest.”
Despite the normal rigors of being on set, the emotional impact of re-enacting the story was hard; he visited the jails to speak with the individuals who were imprisoned for their role in the genocide.
“You are sitting in this place with 50 guys in one little room, their legs are just swollen, they are as content and as happy as they can be that the whole thing is over,” says Oris.
On one particular visit to a chapel, the same location where 1,000 refugees who were seeking safety were killed by machete hackings and bullets, the skeletons were still there as a reminder. Outside there was a crowd of beautiful women clapping, singing and dancing when his escort gave him some disturbing news.
“All those women have AIDS and were raped by the militias,” Oris says, pausing and looking at me in the way the stories were recounted to him—seemingly emotionless and dry, matter of fact mostly.
When Oris speaks, the constant chatter in the small Hancock Park coffee shop seems to drop to a quiet murmur as customers jump into our conversation and he graciously banters with them at ease. When I ask him if he is looking forward to the future, he smiles wide and instead of talking about red carpets and more premieres, he talks about what he hopes to be able to accomplish one day.
“This whole thing has made me love to give, so before I get caught riding around in a Ferrari, I want to make sure everyone around me is fully fed to the best of my ability,” says Oris. With that he finally leans back in his chair and lightly closes his eyes, and then opens them slowly. The monk has spoken.
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This article was originally published in Flossin Magazine. This article is edited by Edna Waters. This article is optimized for web by Steven Christian (Artist | Author | Podcaster).
