So when the part of Davis MacLean, the avaricious defense attorney who straddles both sides of the system in the Starz crime drama “Power Book II: Ghost,” came his way five years ago, the actor was skeptical.
Yes, actor. But one who claims full citizenship in “the culture.” To prove it, he lifts his foot to show off some blindingly white sneakers.
“My shoes ain’t laced. I’m 53 years old,” says the man born Clifford Smith Jr., chuckling. “Hip-hop is always going to be in my veins because that’s where I’m from. I still live in Staten Island. I see it every day” — the streets, the struggle, the cycle. Sitting on the other side of the table? How could he make that believable?
“I never put myself in a light where I would have to make a big stretch to play any character,” Smith says. “So I had bad habits as far as acting goes. When you don’t hone your skills enough you fall back into comfortability.”
Smith’s shtick was certainly working. He got his first big break with 2001’s stoner sendup “How High” before popping up in some of this era’s most celebrated shows, like “Oz” (as a shank-wielding inmate) and “The Wire” (as a nepo-hire gangster). But he credits the Power universe, the decades-spanning TV epic created by Courtney A. Kemp and rapper 50 Cent that now includes four shows, for getting him out of his comfort zone.
It was 2019, and his audition for “Ghost” was in a few days. He was struggling to find a through line between Method Man, Cliff Smith and Davis MacLean. The answer was Denzel Washington.
Smith had been taking acting classes for years. For an exercise, he was assigned one of Washington’s roles, the attorney Joe Miller from 1993’s “Philadelphia.” When he queued up some key scenes to prep, it clicked.
“I’m watching Denzel be Denzel. He’s a great actor. You can tell it’s thought out and some of it is spontaneous, which is some of his best s—. But it was him. And I was like, this is what they want,” says Smith. Meaning … you? “Right,” he says.
“I always say, ‘Method Man brings ’em to the church. Clifford Smith, though — he’s gonna keep ’em coming back.’”
So who are those two guys? Clifford “Method Man” Smith is an actor. One whose IMDb credits reach back decades. He’s also still a rapper, showing up in features, not just a legacy torchbearer for one of hip-hop’s greatest acts. He’s a Men’s Health cover star whose Instagram feed is packed with more dead lifts than the Rock. And yes, he’s the “zaddy” your auntie and all the internet girlies are salivating over.
“What makes Method so incredible at everything he does is that he has the gift to commit totally,” says Mary J. Blige, the actress and queen of hip-hop soul. Blige, who sang the unforgettable hook on Method Man’s 1995 Grammy-winning hit “I’ll Be There for You/You’re All I Need to Get By,” also stars alongside Smith on “Ghost.” “He puts so much heart and integrity into everything he does.”
The man — Method or Smith — flips through alter egos like the pages of his beloved comic books. Ask him about hip-hop and he’ll deliver a dissertation on the culture. Ask about the sex-symbol stuff and his answers will surprise you. Ask him about acting and that’s when he really gets going. It’s clearly his happy place.
“Meth has always been more charismatic and had a stronger presence than other artists around him,” says 50 Cent, who has also leaped from concert stage to screen. “This won’t be the last show of mine you see him in.”
Still, it took audiences a few episodes to adjust to a briefcase-toting Method Man in a power suit. The Power franchise, which began with the eponymous show in 2014, is beloved. But Smith remembers the online peanut gallery after the spinoff’s 2020 premiere. “Method Man? Cringe. Method Man as a lawyer? LOL.” By midseason, though, the tide shifted.
“By the fourth episode it was, ‘I don’t like Davis MacLean,’” says Smith, reveling as he shifts into character. He leans in close, cocks his head to the side and drops his voice low. “Where’d Method Man go?” The answer, increasingly: where he’s wanted.
Earlier this month, Method Man performed with Redman, his frequent partner-in-rhyme, at Hot 97’s annual Summer Jam concert on Long Island. Videos of the set show the crowd at the UBS Arena only half-listening as the duo eats up the stage with the energy of guys half their age. It wasn’t enough. “Not our crowd at all,” he commented later on Instagram, vowing never to return: “… at this point, the generation gap is too wide for me.”
Smith is two years older than hip-hop itself, but it doesn’t weigh on him. He’s not the old head on the stoop reminiscing about back in the day. Mostly because he’s kept a foot in the music business, plus he doesn’t remember half the stuff he did. “When you smoke a lot of weed, it’s kind of hard to reflect,” he says only half-jokingly.
The rapper-actor clarified his stance to TMZ. This was an “It’s not you, it’s me” situation. The crowd was the crowd. It was Method Man who had changed. “That was me having a self-awareness moment,” he told the gossip outlet.
Turns out 30 years in the game can provide not only perspective but also peace — if you let it. Go where you’re wanted and leave them wanting the world over. And Summer Jam was far from the first time he’d found himself on the wrong stage.
In 2004, the Fox network premiered “Method & Red,” a fish-out-of-water sitcom about two rappers living hood-rich in an all-White New Jersey suburb that most agreed was unwatchable, including the stars. (Tag line: “Puttin’ the URBAN in SUBURBAN.”)
“We were so naive,” Smith says. Once the half-hour comedy went from idea to execution, Smith had to confront two questions: Was this the show he pitched, and what exactly was he doing? The answers were no and “I don’t know.”
“And that right there made me uncomfortable,” Smith says. One day sticks out. The show’s director had a note for his stars: “You guys need to smile more. Be more happy.” The duo begrudgingly cranked up the grins, which in turn cranked up the cringe. It didn’t hit Smith until he saw the trailer.
“I was like ‘Oh, God. They got us.’” Variety dubbed it “The Beverly Homeboys.” Fox canceled it before the first season was over.
After that Smith made himself a promise. Hollywood he could do. He’d even do more comedy. But he would never, literally or metaphorically, “put a dress on.”
“I come from hip-hop, you know? And in my head, it was trying to emasculate the thing that they’re most afraid of.”
Once “Method & Red” flamed out, Smith shed the ghetto Cheech and Chong act and got serious about acting. Eventually — years after he’d found acclaim for parts like Cheese on “The Wire” — it meant hiring a coach.
“I was being nosy,” Smith says. As many scripts as he’d seen over the years, he was convinced there had to be some secret passcode, directions behind the words on the page that he was missing. One of his first teachers was the famed Ivana Chubbuck, author of “The Power of the Actor.” He didn’t read the book, but he did commit. He remembers looking around at the talent in his first class and wondering, Who’s gonna be next? and Do I belong? “I wanted somebody to explain it to me. And … it’s nothing. It’s just human interaction, bro, and being honest with yourself.”
That last part took even more years to unlock.
Smith and another coach were trying to figure out who the actor’s “substitute” was — the real-life figure he could call upon to dredge up certain emotions in a scene. He always thought it was RZA — the unofficial-official leader of Wu-Tang Clan who conceived its mashup of kung fu imagery and urban grit.
“The coach was like, ‘You know what? I don’t think RZA’s your substitute. I think it’s your dad,’” Smith says before shooting his fingers from his skull. Mind blown. “I’m sitting there like, ‘Oh, s—, it is my father.’” His coach connected more dots: “Whether you know it or not, you’re looking at RZA as a father figure.”
Smith slaps his hand down on the sofa cushion. Now he’s really tuned up, the memory of that moment charging him like a battery. He leans over with a Cheshire cat grin: “So this is what acting is.”
After his parents separated, Smith moved with his mother to Staten Island, the eventual birthplace of Wu-Tang Clan. In middle school he and his best friend, future group member Corey “Raekwon” Woods, cut their rhymes in the stairwells of the Park Hill Apartments. He wove in and out of high school, dabbling in the drug game but abandoning it completely when their rap group got going. Wading through the land mine of suppressed childhood trauma is a lot like therapy, Smith says. He doesn’t get into what happened, but he knows it’s there now: a fault line to either avoid or, when the role calls for it, stomp all over.
“Getting it all out will make you feel lighter. A whole hell of a lot lighter,” says Smith. At this point, he’s not worried about giving too little on a set, but too much. “Sometimes I feel overly exposed.” But he knows he’s done a good job when he goes to that fault line.
This isn’t Method Man hopping on the mindfulness train. Consciousness has been a staple of his music since day one. And if there’s a secret to Smith’s staying power, it’s self-awareness. Like when he looked up from the “Method & Red” set and realized he wasn’t in on the joke. When he decided that a ’90s hip-hop act — even one as formidable as Wu-Tang — had to diversify into other creative fields. When he knew he needed an acting coach. When he announced that some crowds just weren’t for him.
In his next act, Smith wants to produce the kind of tales from the hood that will make the folks from there proud. Authentic stuff. Stories that come from the concrete up and not corporate down.
“Take ‘Crooklyn’ and mix that with ‘New Jack City,’ right? Just a little bit. Not a lot. And you mix that with a little ‘Good Times.’ That right there can make for a really good movie,” Smith says. He wants to be the guy in the room who gives the next Ryan Coogler his shot. Heck, the next Steven Spielberg.
“You can have a seat at the table. Cool. But if you don’t have a voice, you’re just eye candy,” Smith says.
But let’s also talk about the eye candy. Guys, he knows. He’s fully aware of his elevation to sex-symbol status. It all started with a 2022 digital cover of Essence Magazine.
“He’s striking. He’s statuesque. He has a commanding spirit about him,” says Cori Murray, Essence’s former deputy editor and the brain behind that shoot. Some of the younger ladies on the editorial team weren’t convinced about Smith, but Murray recalled him sauntering behind the stage at the magazine’s annual music festival in a white tank top. “He was literally just walking and I remember my mouth was agape.”
But even Murray was surprised by how well the cover story was received. “It immediately went viral. Listen, I just gave the readers what they want,” says Murray. “When he bristles at people wanting to celebrate his sexiness, I think we’re seeing Cliff Smith.”
Don’t get him wrong, Smith likes being admired. Who wouldn’t? But he’s thoughtful about the energy coming his way.
“Sometimes you don’t want to be lusted over. You just want to be respected,” say Smith, who met his wife, Tamika, in the early ’90s and has been married since 2001. “The problem becomes when you’re objectified or sexualized. They don’t think men feel that s—. We actually do. If you’re going to admire the outer portion, admire the inner as well, because I have a lot more to contribute than just a smile,” Smith says.
The man did appear this month in the season opener of “Ghost” in a buck-naked shower scene. There’s that. But could fans also be registering that he still looks like he’s having a lot of fun? Lighter? Healed, even?
“I’m not healed, but I’m constantly working on that word: happy,” Smith says. “Once you learn self-love and s—, it’s a constant battle to keep it.”
