An inter­view with Cop and a Half’s Nor­man D Gold­en II

It began, as so many things seem to these days, on Twit­ter. Late one evening, I noticed that Lit­tle White Lies edi­tor David Jenk­ins had tweet­ed a some­what mis­chie­vous con­tri­bu­tion to the Twit­ter trend #oneper­fect­shot: a still from 1993’s odd­ball bud­dy cop movie Cop and a Half, which starred a pre-Spec­savers Burt Reynolds as the epony­mous, per­ma­nent­ly-enraged offi­cer who ends up sad­dled with a plucky, pre-pubes­cent appren­tice (Nor­man D Gold­en II).

Read­ers of a cer­tain age will remem­ber Cop and a Half as belong­ing to that pecu­liar sub­set of high-con­cept, soft-cen­tred, fam­i­ly-friend­ly films that would screen, with­out fail, on Bank Hol­i­day after­noon ter­res­tri­al TV. See: Ghost Dad, K‑9, Three Fugi­tives, Vice Ver­sa, Three Men and a Lit­tle Lady, and so on…

I have pleas­ant mem­o­ries of watch­ing Cop and a Half as a child. I don’t remem­ber it being a clas­sic, but it was sweet, had least one fair­ly excit­ing chase sequence, and was good for a chuck­le. So when I gave it a cur­so­ry search on a cou­ple of colla­tive film crit­ic web­sites, I was alarmed to dis­cov­er the oppro­bri­um with which it was treat­ed: ​“A hem­or­rhoid-and-a-half to who­ev­er sits through this abject­ly painful com­e­dy, which does for Burt Reynolds’ career what Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot did for Sylvester Stallone’s,” said Leonard Maltin.

I’ll stand my assess­ment of the film (and not just for nostalgia’s sake). And there’s at least one oth­er per­son keep­ing the film’s lega­cy alive. When Jenk­ins’ tweet went out, it was soon spot­ted by the eagle-eyed Gold­en II (aka ​‘a Half’), who iden­ti­fied him­self and asked, quite rea­son­ably, if he might be inter­viewed. Up to this point I’d been a mere observ­er, list­less­ly nurs­ing a cup of cocoa from the com­fort of my bed. I could have put the cup down, rolled over, and gone to sleep. But I knew it was time for action.

A cou­ple of pri­vate mes­sages lat­er, and Gold­en II and I were cor­re­spond­ing like there was no tomor­row. Here are some high­lights from our online pow-wow.

LWLies: How did you get into acting?

Gold­en II: I was inspired by watch­ing The Cos­by Show with my fam­i­ly. I would see the kids on the show and thought it looked like they were hav­ing so much fun. I expressed an inter­est in act­ing, and around the same time one of my par­ents’ friends sug­gest­ed that they enrol me in a com­mer­cial work­shop, which they did. The work­shop last­ed for six weeks and at the last class there were agents there scout­ing and three of them want­ed to sign me. So as they say, the rest was history!

What are your major mem­o­ries of mak­ing Cop and a Half?

The prepa­ra­tion — learn­ing things about law enforce­ment and how to skate­board, etc… I remem­ber the over­all shoot, but inter­act­ing with fans was most mem­o­rable. Burt Reynolds gets a bad rap some­times in the media but he’s such a won­der­ful man and work­ing with him was a great expe­ri­ence. I enjoyed every minute of it… even the very humid Flori­da weather.

Hen­ry Win­kler direct­ed it. What was he like?

He was an incred­i­ble guy, very focused. I pre­sume because he want­ed to make a good impres­sion on one of his first direc­to­r­i­al projects, but he was also great to work with.

If you watch the film today, Burt Reynolds seems legit­i­mate­ly pissed off at times – like he’s not even act­ing. What was he like to work with? Did you keep in touch?

Lol – Yes those scenes were pret­ty authen­tic. There were often times when he would dis­agree with a direc­tion that Hen­ry was giv­ing, but he always kept his cool with me. I learned a lot from him on and off screen. I remem­ber how gra­cious he was with his fans and him telling me that no mat­ter what, remain true to who you are and treat your fans right because at the end of the day, if there are no more roles com­ing in, those are the ones who will remem­ber you. I know it might sound like hefty advice to give to a kid but he’d always say that I wasn’t your aver­age kid. I haven’t been in touch with Burt for a while but my goal is to recon­nect with him soon. I heard his health was fail­ing and I’d like to reach out to him and actu­al­ly thank him for being the dri­ving force behind my hav­ing such an incred­i­ble oppor­tu­ni­ty and mak­ing my dreams come true.

One of your Cop and a Half co-stars was the great Ruby Dee, who sad­ly passed away recent­ly. What was it like work­ing with her?

The pass­ing of Ruby Dee was like los­ing my real-life grand­ma. When I heard the news of her death I was brought to tears. I remem­ber her jokes and laugh­ter, she had such a warm and nur­tur­ing spir­it with me that, dur­ing film­ing, her role of grand­ma tran­scend­ed the screen. Dur­ing down­times, she would come and hang out in my dress­ing room and prac­tice braid­ing my two sis­ters’ hair while we were on set and tell sto­ries of how it was when she was grow­ing up. She also made me aware of my new­ly acquired ​‘celebri­ty’ sta­tus and, like Burt, remind­ed me to stay ground­ed in the artistry and not get lost in being ​‘famous’.

Gen­er­al­ly, the crit­ics weren’t too keen on the film. Aside from Roger Ebert [“I can say that Nor­man D Gold­en II does a splen­did job of play­ing the pint-sized cop”], the reviews were pret­ty neg­a­tive. Were you hurt by any of the more per­son­al criticism?

Aww, it’s okay man. Crit­ics can be cru­el but that’s what they get paid to do! I hon­est­ly wasn’t real­ly exposed to much of what the crit­ics were say­ing most­ly because my par­ents did not want that to affect my cre­ativ­i­ty. But being the type of per­son I am, I nev­er got offend­ed by those ​“more per­son­al” remarks. I actu­al­ly thought the more per­son­al jabs stemmed from sheer cru­el­ty and were not wor­thy of my attention.

You didn’t act for too long after Cop and a Half. Were you put off by the expe­ri­ence? Or was it that oth­er inter­ests took over?

I absolute­ly loved the expe­ri­ence but there just wasn’t a lot of decent work that was being created/​offered/​available for my type. After Cop and a Half, I was signed with one of the major tal­ent agen­cies which was awe­some, but many times they were unsuc­cess­ful in pitch­ing my tal­ents because of the afore­men­tioned. Of course this is not the sole rea­son for me not doing a lot of projects there­after, how­ev­er, it played a major part. Diver­si­ty, or lack there­of, in the indus­try has recent­ly been a devel­op­ing dis­cus­sion and many actors and actress­es, oth­er indus­try types and media con­sumers have been join­ing the dis­course. Last year was a great year for expan­sion of more diverse films (such as 12 Years a Slave) and role offer­ings, so I hope that Hol­ly­wood can expand on this trend so many more tal­ent­ed indi­vid­u­als of all types – like myself – will have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to cre­ative­ly express. I also had oth­er inter­ests such as music that I took an oppor­tu­ni­ty to develop.

You’ve also per­formed as a rap­per called Enor­mus. Do you still rap? Who were/​are your inspirations?

Enor­mus is my oth­er self lol. I love music (all types) and will for­ev­er express in that area, be it pro­fes­sion­al­ly or not. I am a rap­per although jazz (Miles Davis, Thelo­nious Monk, Char­lie Park­er, etc…) has been a great inspi­ra­tion music-wise. I also come from a very musi­cal fam­i­ly with singers, musi­cians etc. As far as hip hop artists goes, I respect a lot of old school artists and those that usu­al­ly don’t get their props but are awe­some­ly tal­ent­ed: Lit­tle Broth­er, Big Krit, A Tribe Called Quest. Here is aper­for­mance that I did with a musi­cal men­tor of mine, Mr Beanie Maupin, who com­posed on Miles Davis’ ​‘Bitch­es Brew’.

Accord­ing to your Twit­ter bio you’re pro­duc­ing and writ­ing for TV now. What have you been up to in that field?

I have been writ­ing screen­plays and TV scripts (along with music lyrics) since I was about 14 years old. Grow­ing up hav­ing read so many, you just kin­da get the gist of it, ya know? I have col­lab­o­rat­ed on a few projects that didn’t fly unfor­tu­nate­ly but those expe­ri­ences allowed me to pol­ish my chops. I have three tele­vi­sion pilots of my own com­plet­ed and a web series (loose­ly based on some of my expe­ri­ences being a ​“for­mer child actor”) that I am actu­al­ly plan­ning to pro­duce soon.

Any­thing else you want to add?

I just want to thank you for extend­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ty for me to inter­view, I want to give a spe­cial shout out and thanks to all of my fans that have been there from day one till now and say keep an eye out for new projects that I may have out such as the web­series men­tioned before. I extend an invi­ta­tion for those read­ing to fol­low me on twit­ter: @NormanGoldenll and add me on Face­book: Nor­man D. Gold­en II for updates on new projects and devel­op­ments and just for conversation.

Norman’s album ​‘Seeds vol. 1 Pick of the Lit­ter’ is avail­able via iTunes.