The Blacklist’s Harry Lennix On Meeting Streisand, Sardines and Harold Cooper

Harry Lennix shares the backstory of Harold CooperThe Blacklist Credit: Justin Stephens/NBC

Even off-camera, Chicago native Harry Lennix, who plays The Blacklist’s FBI chief honcho Harold Cooper, has his pulse and heart on what it means to wear a badge. Lennix is a spokesperson for a division of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, and his brother is a retired Illinois State Police commander, so you can understand why he’s excited for the Nov. 1 episode of The Blacklist on NBC. “I’m proud with what the writers have been able to do with this episode — we get to peek inside the mind of an FBI agent of color, in a fraught time,” Lennix says. Here we ask him our “5 Questions.”

1. If your TV had only three networks or shows, what would you be watching?
Turner Classic Movies, Discovery Channel, then NBC because they show The Blacklist.

2. What are three things you have to have in your fridge or pantry at all times?
Sardines, hot sauce and yogurt.

3. What’s a movie that you can watch over and over again?
The Sting. Paul Newman and Robert Redford. … I loved the movie. I think it deals with so many issues, you know? Race is a part of it and since Chicago is the setting of it, and that’s my home, just the music, the characters — they all work together in great harmony. I think I was 17 [when I first saw it]. I probably wouldn’t have been able to put it in those terms like that, but I recognized it as something that was delightful, ingeniously simple, and pleasing, which I think is the definition that Webster uses for elegant. It’s such an elegant movie. It looks good, it sounds good, it’s perfectly done.

4. Tell us about a time when you were completely starstruck.
I’m one of Bill Clinton’s billion friends, I think. We struck up a kind of fast friendship while I was campaigning for his wife in 2008. I went to a number of functions that he invited me to. One of them was an appreciation dinner in Beverly Hills [an outdoor event at someone’s house]. I get there with my wife, and we’re sitting talking to a very nice man who used to live in our neighborhood in L.A., and then, coming right to our table, there’s Barbra Streisand and James Brolin. I just think to myself, “That’s Barbra Streisand.” We proceed to carry on a conversation, and the entire time I could not get over the fact that this icon, this legend — beautiful woman, by the way — was sitting there and talking, just like she was a regular person. I was completely starstruck, but she was lovely, I have to tell you. I’ll forever cherish that. As an added bonus, when dinner was over, President Clinton came over and had his dessert portion at our table.

5. Have you ever had any fun or strange fan encounters?
I guess my favorite, well one of my favorite ones, was a 7- or 8-year-old girl. She saw Love & Basketball, one of those movies that I did a long time ago. … This movie meant a great deal to her, and she was so sweet. I found out that she was going to Washington to lobby Congress on behalf of a children’s initiative, I think it was children’s homelessness. She didn’t have a way to get there, but she had an audience with a certain group of congressmen, or senators, what have you, and I was able to provide her with means to get there. … I think that that’s when it means the most to me. … That the work that I’ve been in speaks to them, and it could mean the difference between a great day and a not-so-good day, or if they’re feeling in a certain mood, they can go and turn on the movie or television show. For me to be able to give back like that, I think is the whole purpose of why I got into it in the first place.