One of the breakout stars of Taylor Sheridan’s Western expansion saga 1883 is LaMonica Garrett. Though familiar to audiences for his roles in Designated Survivor , Sons …
One of the breakout stars of Taylor Sheridan’s Western expansion saga 1883 is LaMonica Garrett. Though familiar to audiences for his roles in Designated Survivor, Sons of Anarchy and the Arrowverse, Garrett truly comes into his own as Thomas, a buffalo soldier turned Pinkerton agent who uses his hard-earned skills to take pioneers along the arduous Oregon trail alongside his former Captain and friend, Shea Brennan (Sam Elliott). While protecting the settlers from the various dangers on the journey, Thomas finds love with Noemi ( Gratiela Brancusi), a recently widowed Roma woman. Though his life has been full of hardship, Thomas remains a beacon of hope in treacherous terrain. “Thomas is the humanity and the soul of the show,” said Garrett during our phone interview. “With everything that’s happened to him, he makes the choice to live life in the now. We all have choices. It’s a choice to be hopeful for tomorrow,” mused Garrett. As Shea’s partner, Thomas is often put in a position of stopping him from making a rash decision. Garrett explained: “Thomas is the cool and the more collected person. In those times, Thomas can’t really afford to be too hotheaded.” It is important to note that even though many years have passed since the Civil War, Thomas must still be wary of the prejudices in the West that surround him and the immigrants he’s determined to protect. Over the course of our chat, Garrett gave us his take on past and modern-day Black cowboy culture, going to cowboy camp with the rest of the 1883 cast, Thomas and Noemi’s romance and why Taylor Sheridan is truly the best in the business. DECIDER: You join a small but important legacy of black cowboys on screen. Given that you and the character of Thomas are being recognized by actor/cowboys Glynn Turman and Reginald T. Dorsey, what does it mean to you to join this remarkable community? LAMONICA GARRETT: It’s incredible, and I didn’t really see this happening for me. It just wasn’t in my realm of a possibility. I was just trying to bring Thomas to life and do justice to Black cowboys of the past. There is a wonderful culture of contemporary Black cowboys and that shouldn’t go unnoticed either. People ask me where I get Thomas’ sound from, his speech and his dialect. I took inspiration from Floyd Frank who passed in 2020. He was from Southeast Texas, and he was a legend down there in the Beaumont area. I’m just so honored to be the same category as great actors like him who have played black cowboys, both past and present-day, on screen. Taylor Sheridan is containing to explore the legacy of black cowboys on screen with his upcoming series about Bass Reeves, the Black US Marshall who was the true inspiration for the Lone Ranger. Why do you think black cowboys are coming to the forefront of Western storytelling? People just want authenticity. We’ve been regurgitating the same things for so long, and the old stereotypes just don’t go across like they did before. Black cowboys aren’t portrayed now just for diversity; they are part of our history. I look through the comment sections of 1883 and pretty often I see people saying, “The show is great. The show is historically accurate. I’m just not sure if I’m buying the black cowboy being there with him.” I’m like, “What?” For a long time, if black audiences wanted to see themselves on screen, the subject matter was either slavery or the civil rights movement from the 1850s to the 1960s. There’s a whole hundred-year gap in between! There were so many wonderful things in this country that black people were doing that just do not get talked about in history class or and in cinema. It’s true. With the exception of Mario Van Peebles’ Posse and a few others, we haven’t seen a lot of Buffalo Soldiers portrayed on-screen.
