Roland Buck III, a 29-year-old actor from Chicago, is making a name for himself starring in NBC’s “Chicago Med” and Nat Geo’s new miniseries “The Long Road Home”.
In addition to discussing his character roles and current/future projects – Roland dug a little deeper and shed light on the importance of diversity and representation on screen:
“I love being able to be a young doctor of color that is flawed on TV that has redemption, to show that we are all human and we all make mistakes but you can do this, this can be you as well.”
To know a little more about Roland and his TV roles/characters. Check out our conversation below.
Q: What can fans expect from this new season of Chicago Med?
A: They can expect some high-octane patients, new cases, definitely the love and the romance is upped in this season. You’re going to see a whole bunch of matches you might not expect. And you’re going to see Noah Sexton do some surgeries on his own, which is pretty cool. Because they can finally see my entire growth since I started as a med school student, and now I’ve got the only residency spot, so the dynamic between me and my sister kind of changes as well, since I am the doctor now and she is going to be my nurse. So that conflict and that switch of power changes a little bit too, so it will be interesting to watch.
Q: Talk to us a little about your character, Noah Sexton. What drew you towards playing him?
A: What I like about Noah is that he is flawed, very human. I think that sometimes when you think of a profession, maybe an athlete or a musician may seem more fun to some people, but I think I make it cool to be a doctor, saving lives. It’s cool, you don’t necessarily have to be a “square” or a “nerd” to be in the medical field. He is flawed but he is genuine and he means well, and you see growth with him. He is a ladies man as well (laughs), he can get some ladies too. And I think that it is really great that I am playing a young doctor of color in the city of Chicago, so I can show other men of color they can identify with me and see that there is more that we can do. Sometimes if you are not represented in that field, sometimes you don’t see that. I know specifically for me as an actor I didn’t know acting was a profession because I didn’t really see too many people that represented me on TV or film until I saw this movie called The Wood. One of the lead characters, played by Taye Diggs, his name is Roland in the movie. So I watched it really close and it was fun and I was like “wow, this is great!” You know, when you’re a kid you think about what you want to do for your profession, you think about whatever it is that’s fun. So I asked my mom, “mom is this a profession?” And she was like “yeah,” because I never saw people on TV being that profession and I was like “can I do it?” and she was like “yeah, you can do whatever you want.”
So from there I wanted to play football and be an actor like Jim Brown, and it got me to this point. So I love being able to be a young doctor of color that is flawed on TV that has redemption, to show that we are all human and we all make mistakes but you can do this, this can be you as well.
Q: Do you feel like you share any similarities with Noah?
A: Oh yeah, I mess up all the time. (laughs) No, I mean, I mess up. I got an older sister that be on me as well. I think we all have those relationships with pressure by your family to do certain things. I know my dad always asked me what was my Plan B. It’s just a different perspective. Just like Noah’s parents (in the realm of Chicago Med), who are first-generation Americans, and in my situation, in my real life. My dad grew up in a time when he just wanted to go to school with everybody else. My dad’s older, he’ll be 75 this year, and he was 21 when Martin Luther King Jr. was shot. So back then, his dream was to go to school with everyone else, equality, and he got that. He got to go to school, he got a degree, and that’s what he wanted from me. He didn’t necessarily think of acting as a profession because back then we didn’t really have any substantial roles for people of color, and just what we were going through at that time wasn’t of importance. I heard a quote that brought it full circle, that was “I am my ancestor’s wildest dream,” and that is pretty true in the sense of me and my dad, it’s that he wasn’t able to dream like that, but what he fought for me allowed me to dream big and accomplish my dream. Now that I am a working actor and I brought him on the set of Chicago Med, he told me “You know what, I was wrong. You were right, you don’t need a Plan B.” And it kind of brought it full circle, I understood him and what he was saying, and now he understands that we can have it all, it takes work. And it also isn’t just me on TV. It takes a pretty big crew to put this together, so it employs the city. So it is a job, it is an actual job. And he sees that now, he sees the work that I put into it, and how many hours we work, and preparation and everything. It was pretty great, it was a great feeling.
Q: If Noah wasn’t a doctor, what do you reckon his career and future would look like?
A: Oh, Noah’s a hustler for sure. So if he wasn’t a doctor, I know he would probably be in some tech/app stuff to invent something new and innovative and sexy that would sell (laughs), for sure. He is definitely an ideas man. So he probably would be living in San Francisco somewhere and working for Google, having a side hustle and probably selling it back to Google without them even knowing.
Q: You’re also starring in Nat Geo’s “The Long Road Home. What can you tell us about it and what can fans expect from the mini series?
A: It’s out right now… I play specialist Rafael Martin, he’s an ex-gang member who’s only choice was to either go to the military or go to jail. He turns his life around he chose the military. He was fighting for his life on the streets domestically, and now he is fighting for his life on foreign soil, so it is a crazy switch that’s happening. And also he is fighting for his brother next to him that he wouldn’t necessarily come across in real life, which is Tomas Young. So now he’s getting the chance to understand and connect with people totally different from him.
So The Long Road Home is a great war story about an actual, true event in 2004 in Sadr City, Iraq. It was known as the safest place in Iraq at the time. And then a platoon gets ambushed by thousands of insurgents, and we have to go in and extract them off of the roof. And they call it Black Sunday because no one was expecting this, it was a peace mission. We literally go in with no armor, my platoon rides in an LMTV, which is basically the equivalent of a flatbed truck. And we’re sitting back to back on our butts pointing out while insurgents are shooting from the roofs down on us, and this actually happened to them. So it’s crazy what these soldiers go through for our freedom.
The great part about the story is that it really dives in deep to these soldiers, and it tells the story from the home front as well, so it’s not just the soldiers that it is affecting, it’s affecting families, it’s affecting communities. It also could be your brother, it could be your uncle, it could be your dad out there, and I think when we look at people in uniform, cops or soldiers or anybody, they’re kind of looked at as superhuman. But really they feel what we feel, they bleed like we bleed…
