Lakeith Stanfield Is Tired of Being Called 'Weird'

Lakeith Stanfield graces the cover of CR Men‘s Issue 7, hitting newsstands on September 13.

Here’s what the 27-year-old Get Out actor had to say…

On being tired of being called “weird”: “It implies that there is such thing as being normal and that I’m deviating from it. I just think we haven’t seen enough black men who express themselves in a certain way. I’m not special, I just express myself. I think if more people did that, we would see how beautiful we all can be.”

On different projects: “I situate myself in projects that may go one way or the other, a lot of the time. I’m drawn to things that challenge me or that can challenge an audience. Also, there is an increasing space for black voices to explore many caveats and aspects of what it means to be black, and that’s exciting to me. So when something like that springs up, like [the idea of putting on] a white voice in Something to Bother You, that’s something we’ve been talking about forever, but we’ve never really had a platform the say it!”

On newfound success: “Things have opened up for me quite a bit. There are some interesting things I’m thinking about moving forward with that I’m very excited about, projects that would be very very challenging for me. But that’s the thing I want to do is challenge myself. If I crash and burn, I want everyone to still believe in me, and think I’ve got something left. There are a lot of different perspectives now. I have a movie called Someone Great with Gina Rodriguez that’s coming out. It’s a romantic comedy but a beautiful take and a unique perspective. The things I’m diving into now, which I wish I could talk about, are so crazy. It’s getting much much better.”

For more from Lakeith, visit CRFashionBook.com.