Currently airing on Fox is the new series ‘Almost Family’ starring Brittany Snow, Megalyn Echikunwoke, Emily Osment and Academy Award winner Timothy Hutton.
Almost Family is the story of an unusual family formed through extreme odds, exploring such hot-button issues as identity, human connection and what it truly means to be a family. An only child (Brittany Snow, the “Pitch Perfect” franchise, “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend”) finds her life turned upside down when her father (Academy Award winner Timothy Hutton, “American Crime,” “Ordinary People”) reveals that, over the course of his prize-winning career as a pioneering fertility doctor, he used his own sperm to conceive upwards of a hundred children, including two new sisters (Megalyn Echikunwoke, “The Following,” “90210,” and Emily Osment, “The Kominsky Method,” “Young & Hungry”).
As these three young women slowly embrace their new reality, they will attempt to form an untraditional bond as sisters, even as they must welcome a tidal wave of new siblings into their rapidly expanding family. Based on the original Endemol Shine Australia series, “Sisters,” from Jonathan Gavin and Imogen Banks, the series also stars Mustafa Elzein (“Sequestered”), Mo McRae (“Big Little Lies,” “Pitch”) and Victoria Cartagena (“Manifest”).
For McRae, this is his return to the Fox network since he co-starred in the 2016 short-lived baseball series Pitch. His previous TV credits included recurring roles on HBO’s Big Little Lies, Fox’s Empire, NBC’s This Is Us, TNT’s Murder In The First, and FX’s Sons of Anarchy. Film credits include The First Purge, Den of Thieves, Destined, Wild, and Lee Daniels’ The Butler.
Blackfilm.com caught up with McRae as he talked about his character.
Can you talk about the character you play?
Mo McRae: I play a character named Tim on the show Almost Family on Fox, and what attracted me to playing Tim is I love the idea of being in this very complex situation. Whereas my wife and I are having a bit of a rough patch in our relationship, and having issues with intimacy. My ex-girlfriend now has this crisis and comes to me and my wife and needing help upon discovering their now sisters, because my ex girlfriend’s father was a fertility doctor and used his semen to a pregnant women without their knowledge. So that came across my desk, and it was the most unique opportunity that’s ever been presented to me.
Being that Tim’s ex-girlfriend is played by Brittany Snow, will the issue of race be a factor in the show?
Mo McRae: I don’t know if that will become a factor but as of right now, everything that I’m aware of, it’s not a factor. We’re just people, which I think is really incredible. To be a young African American actor and being able to play an attorney, and be married and just really going against all the things we have stereotypically seen for people or color and way we were represented, I think is really a beautiful opportunity for me.
How do you relate to Tim?
Mo McRae: In real life, I just intrinsically have a desire to be of service and to help people. I really feel that’s the core of Tim, that he really wants to be of service and wants to help people. It’s starting with his wife at home eventually, and then moving out further from there.
How was working the cast?
Mo McRae: Working with the cast is incredible.Timothy Hutton as the elder statesman is a phenomenal talent. Brittany’s been around for a long time. She’s lovely, she’s talented and Megalyn, who I get to share a lot of my scenes with, just makes me better. Mustafa Elzein is a young up and coming actor and so is Victoria Cartagena. So it’s like a really well rounded mix that people, which is what the world is like. All of us are at different stages in our journey and coming together. That’s in our real lives and that’s in the story and I think it works well.
There was some talk that your previous series Pitch might make a comeback, but it’s doesn’t seem to be that case at this point. What keeps you humble and as you continue to stay working?
Mo McRae: First of all, I stay humble because I understand it’s all a blessing from God. I’m not really responsible for any of the good fortune. It’s a blessing. But there’s a desire to keep working because I have a family to feed. I got mouths to feed. I gotta like, take care of my people.
We saw you on Den of Thieves. It did well with folks. We know there’s a sequel coming up. Can you anything more on it?
Mo McRae: As far as I know in our early discussions, I am coming back. I hear we’re going to be going to London. It’s going to be even more action packed, more high octane. That was an incredible film. People says it was a modern day ‘Heat’ or a reimagining of ‘Heat.’ We’re definitely were inspired by that with our own twist. The fact that it was very specific to LA, and then the next one will become like an international thriller. I think it’s really cool and exciting.
What do you like to do more, film or television?
Mo McRae: People ask me that all the time. I liked movies more because there was more time to develop in the work. You shoot less pages in the day on a film. But now the budgets on films are getting smaller and smaller, which means they have to shoot faster. So it was really the same and equally as fulfilling on both sides for me.
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