- Seventeen-year-old actor Asante Blackk has just been added as a series regular on This Is Us season 4.
- Blackk became one of the youngest Emmy nominees in history this year thanks to his performance in When They See Us.
- Blackk's character Malik, a teenage single father in Philadelphia, is shown beginning a relationship with Deja (Lyric Ross) in Tuesday night's episode, "Unhinged."
There are a lot of new faces in the This Is Us season 4 cast, and one of the most exciting additions is 17-year-old Asante Blackk, who's had quite the breakthrough year. Blackk first caught our attention back in May with his acclaimed performance in the Netflix drama When They See Us, and he'll now be a regular fixture on TV thanks to his role as Malik in This Is Us.
Malik was introduced in the season premiere as a classmate of Deja's (Lyric Ross) at her new school in Philadelphia, and this week's episode, "Unhinged," shows their fledgling relationship hit its first hurdle, as Deja discovers that her crush is also a single father. "The boy I like has a baby," she confesses to Tess (Eris Baker). But given that Blackk was just made a series regular, it's probably fair to assume that this isn't going be a dealbreaker for her.
Below, a few key facts to know about Blackk.
His breakout role came earlier this year in When They See Us.
Blackk's face will look familiar to any prestige TV fan thanks to his unforgettable performance as the teenage Kevin Richardson in Ava DuVernay's wrenching When They See Us. Richardson was one of the "Central Park Five"—five teenage boys of color who were wrongfully convicted of attacking and raping a white woman in 1989. All five were acquitted, years later, having already served their time. At 14, Richardson was one of the youngest of the group.
"It was a challenge trying to snap out of the emotions," Richardson told The New York Times of his experience on set. "It was really easy to feel the pressure of what was happening, but once “cut” was called—in the courtroom scenes I found myself still angry and still really emotional. I couldn’t even imagine myself going through what you went through, and it made me angry for you. This should have never happened."
He's one of the youngest Emmy nominees in history.
Blackk only graduated from his Maryland high school in May, per The Washington Post, and a couple of months later he became one of the youngest Emmy nominees in history at 17. "I was super confused," Blackk told the paper of the moment he realized he had earned a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his performance in When They See Us. “I ran out of my room and told my aunt, ‘I think I just got nominated for an Emmy.'"
His first acting role was in a production of The Jungle Book.
Per the Post, Blackk started acting way back in second grade, when he played Mowgli in a school production of The Jungle Book. After that, he took as many acting opportunities as he could, and realized that he wanted to pursue performing as a full-time career.
He's going to make a major impact on the Pearsons.
Blackk was just made a series regular on This Is Us–which makes sense, given how excited creator Dan Fogelman sounds about his storyline with Lyric Ross, who plays Deja. "We're obsessed with little Lyric, the actor who came out of nowhere for us and has just blown us away," Fogelman told The Hollywood Reporter. "But there's stuff coming with her and this young man, and the two of them are both real prodigies and it's so complicated for the parents on both sides. There's really interesting stuff coming that deals with perception, it deals with class, it deals with race in a really interesting way. But for the kids, there's stuff coming that is so romantic and I'm so excited about it just purely watching these two. We can't get enough of them." Us neither!
He's already bonding with the This Is Us cast.
Given how acclaimed and beloved the show is, and how close its cast appears to be, you have to imagine that joining This Is Us in season 4 could be intimidating. But Blackk told the Hollywood Reporter that he's been "greeted with open arms by the cast. They're all amazing, and it's great to have such a such a great show and have such great writing."
He also gave a very vague hint of what to expect going forward: "My character, Malik, is a great young man. He's connected to the Pearsons in a very, very [key way]. He gets close to them as as the season goes along."
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Emma Dibdin is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles who writes about culture, mental health, and true crime. She loves owls, hates cilantro, and can find the queer subtext in literally anything.
