A note from Wild Card host Rachel Martin: So we all get this one life, right? And we're lucky if we find that thing that truly brings us joy and gives us purpose. And if that thing also ends up touching other people in some way and making a difference in their lives – well, that's something to be grateful for.
And LeVar Burton has done that over and over. He got his big break when he was just 19 years old, starring as Kunta Kinte in the TV miniseries Roots. There had never been a depiction of American slavery like that before. And that role won LeVar Burton an Emmy nomination and a permanent place in our culture.
To me, LeVar Burton will always be Lieutenant Commander Geordi LaForge, the dry-witted chief engineer of the Starship Enterprise. I lived in Japan after college, and I taught English in this really small town. The woman who had the job before me left a huge pile of VHS tapes behind, with hours and hours of episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
I taught at the local middle school, and every day when I came home totally wiped out, I put in a tape, and I watched Captain Picard and Data and Geordi save humanity. Geordi was the heart of that show, which had everything to do with LeVar Burton.
But if you ask people in their 30s and early 40s who LeVar Burton is, odds are they're gonna smile and talk about what a big deal Reading Rainbow was to them growing up. As the host, LeVar Burton didn't just teach kids to love reading, he taught them to love themselves – to believe that they had their own voice in this beautiful but complicated world.
LeVar Burton can be seen in a recent documentary about the impact of Reading Rainbow, called Butterfly in the Sky.
This Wild Card interview has been edited for length and clarity. Host Rachel Martin asks guests randomly-selected questions from a deck of cards. Tap play above to listen to the full podcast, or read an excerpt below.
Question 1: What do you admire about your teenage self?
LeVar Burton: My teenage self had this unshakable belief that everything was going to work out okay. Everything was just going to be fine. I was going to move to Los Angeles, study theater, graduate with a degree, move to New York, hustle my way onto the Broadway stage and have a career inspired by Ben Vereen.
Rachel Martin: I mean, you sort of did that, so it wasn't like false confidence.
Burton: No, but that's what I admire about that kid! The odds were so stacked against him, and had he really understood what his expectations were – I mean really understood them in terms of the real world and how things generally work out ... you know what I mean? But he was focused and he trusted and boy, did he manifest.
Question 2: Has your idea of success changed over time?
Burton: Yes. I used to think about success, unconsciously, by how busy I felt and how busy I was. Now, I feel that success is spending my time well – and what that looks like is a balance of work and leisure, work and rest, because I recognize that at this stage in my life, although I have a lot of energy, there's a limit to it. And the older I get, the more important it is for me to create that balance of activity and recuperation.
I've come to the conclusion that my job is to be LeVar Burton. And I love my job. And, as it happens, my job requires a lot of energy going out. It's energy output. And unless I recharge this battery, it's not good.
Martin: It's interesting though you got so high so fast, right? Like after Roots, you were 19. You were still, like, a kid. And so I wonder if your definition of success – that epiphany of realizing you need balance, you've got to conserve, you can't just soar or you'll burn out – I wonder if that had to evolve.
Burton: That was experiential, yeah. I had to learn that. And I think one of the gifts of Roots was that I had to come to terms with, "You know what? I may never do anything as big or as important or as impactful as this." And I'm 19. You just need to manage your expectations about what's going to happen next, because clearly A) you don't know. And B) chances are this may be the pinnacle.
Martin: But it wasn't. There were many other mountains...
Burton: No. It turned out not to be. And that's the miracle of my life that it wasn't the only leg on my stool. I have these three jewels, I call them, in my career crown in Roots, in Reading Rainbow and in Star Trek.
And I think the part of the beauty of that journey for me is that, as a storyteller, I've been able to portray the Black experience in America from our enslavement to the stars. And LeVar, the Reading Rainbow guy, is absolutely in the middle of that continuum. And so – to really plot the trajectory of Black people through time and space in this, roughly 20th, 21st century timeframe – who gets to do that? I do.
Question 3: Have your feelings about God or a divine power changed over time?
Burton: They have. I was raised a Catholic. And so I was raised with the idea of God as a vehicle for punishment. And that has definitely changed over time. I'm much more in the camp of: We are a part of God. God is a part of us. We are spiritual beings looking for an experience of God. We are actually God-beings having human experience.
And that just makes sense to me – that we are a part of the all-there-is. This cosmos is about mystery and infinity. And those concepts are as vast as God is. And I guess for me it makes more sense. It's comforting to me to feel like I am a part of that – not apart from it, not separated from it.
Martin: And the ambiguity is okay. It is not unsettling to you?
Burton: Yeah, not at all. Not at all. Faith is about reconciling the ambiguity. Belief in the absence of proof is faith.
Martin: We should just point out for those who don't know, this was going to be your thing – you were going to go into the priesthood. Was it that punitive God that at that time – you didn't have this bigger definition?
Burton: No, I did not. No. My concept of God was formed by the catechism of Catholicism, and those precepts. And then as my world expanded and as my thirst for a deeper understanding of the world expanded, so did my idea of God expand.
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