Shock And Awe

Cress Williams’ Black Lightning Just May Be The Superhero We’ve All Been Waiting For

- Oliver Jones

CRESS WILLIAMS IS SITTING SLUMPED IN THE BACK seat of an SUV, heading to the airport and talking about second chances. It’s a subject on which Williams—an actor who has spent his 20-plus-year career on the periphery of our pop culture as a featured character on such streaming favorites as Hart of Dixie, Friday Night Lights, and Prison Break, as well as a couple dozen other shows—has recently become something of an expert.

“My wife and I are about to celebrate our fifth-year anniversary,” says Williams of his marriage to Kristen Torrianni, who is pregnant with their second child. (Williams has two children from a previous marriage.) “With that and the new kid on the way, everything feels like a second chance. Not to say I completely blew my first chance, but I made some mistakes both career-wise and personally. I feel like it’s almost a second act now. But I feel like the lessons that I’ve learned are the only things that I’m taking with me. There is no baggage that I have to drag along and dispel.”

Adds Williams, staring out the window at Los Angeles, bathed in midmorning light, “I feel extremely thankful that I got to have such a clean start at a second half. I don’t feel like that happens for everyone.”

The trip he is about to embark on—from L.A. to Atlanta—is symbolic of the many personal and professional second chances from which the 48-year-old is currently benefiting. The former is where he grew up, went to college, and built his life and career, mainly through featured roles on television. (Anyone remember D’Shawn Hardell, the basketball player Brandon tutored on the original 90210?) Atlanta, meanwhile, is where Williams has moved with his growing family and where the second half of this life is destined to take flight.