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April 19, 2025 15 mins
ICYMI: ‘Later, with Mo’Kelly’ Presents – An in-depth conversation with prolific actor Carl Lumbly who joins the program to celebrate the digital release of ‘Captain America: Brave New World’ where-in Lumbly co-stars as Isaiah Bradley, "the forgotten super-solider, and arguably, the original Captain America, whose story finally comes to the light" - on KFI AM 640…Live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app
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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to Later with Moe Kelly on demand from
KFI AM six forty.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
It's Later with Moe Kelly. Isaiah Bradley, the Forgotten Captain
America has finally brought into the light, only to be
in prisoned once again after what seemed to be an
attempt on the President's life perpetrated by Bradley.

Speaker 3 (00:18):
That's Isaiah Bradley, the Isaiah Bradley. You brought me to
the forgotten cav Why don't you say something? It is
a pleasure to meet you. Your missions in career are
a legendary and after that, no action, I mean a
lot's change in the world. We could have used another
super soldier.

Speaker 4 (00:35):
The United States government threw me in prison for thirty years.
They experimented on me for decades.

Speaker 5 (00:42):
Makes sense. That sucks. Can we start? Let's do it?

Speaker 2 (00:47):
So sets the stage for Captain America Brave New World,
now available on digital and four KUHD blu Ray. Isaiah
Bradley is played by the iconic Carl Lumley, who joins
me now on the show. Carl Lumley and honored privilege
to have you on, Sarah. How are you?

Speaker 5 (01:02):
I'm well?

Speaker 2 (01:02):
Thank you Okelly, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Long way from Hollywood, minor
for the Associated Press, long way from Hollywood. Connect the
dots from me from there in that job to Hollywood.

Speaker 6 (01:15):
I followed my heart to San Francisco to get to Hollywood.
I was in a relationship with someone who moved to
San Francisco shortly after I had had a dabbling bit
of work on an improvisational company theater, but I knew
that wasn't it. So I was heading to San Francisco to.

Speaker 5 (01:36):
Be with her.

Speaker 6 (01:36):
And as it happened, my boss at AP had recently
been transferred to San Francisco and told me that there
would be an opportunity coming up in a couple of
weeks if I could give him some time. And so
I had love in my heart potential work, and so
I had to get a couch. And there was an

(01:57):
ad in newspaper.

Speaker 5 (01:59):
It was called performing.

Speaker 6 (02:00):
Arts column that didn't exist in Minneapolis. And in that
column there was an ad that said two black actors
needed for South African political plays. I read the play,
thought it was amazing, went to this theater auditioned and
it was two people a two hander and the other
person was Danny Glover, and we began performing together and

(02:25):
we toured it in California, and we ended up in
Los Angeles at one point and did it and we
got agents, and so I was at Los Angelino for
about a year and then went to New York, where
I thought, this is it stage mecca workshops, plays constantly,

(02:46):
lots to be read, lots to learn, and that was
what I thought of as my academy until I got
cast in something that brought me to Los Angeles, and
it was a series called and Lacy. It was on
for six episodes and then it was taken off the air.
I went back to New York with rent money, prepared

(03:08):
to have a take on New York again, and there
was a campaign that went on, so the Cagney and
Lacy was put back on the air for a couple
of shows, and it went on for six years. I
actually met my wife on that show, and she did
not want to move to New York. So I was

(03:29):
back in Los Angeles and that was that.

Speaker 2 (03:32):
I go way back with you and your career. You're
not new to the superhero's genre. I'm talking about your
time as doctor Miles Hawkins as Mantis some thirty years ago.
We saw you as part of the Supergirl TV show.
We heard you as part of the DC Animated Universe.
Did you take anything specifically from your role as doctor

(03:52):
Miles Hawkins and put it into Isaiah Bradley.

Speaker 6 (03:56):
Some of the life experience that I had while working
on not only what was in the scripts, just the
actual idea of playing a character where certain people felt
it was perhaps not appropriate or not believable. This character

(04:16):
was wildly accomplished. He was brilliant. He had become injured
and he was living in a wheelchair, and he decided
he wanted to do something about the crime and the
area of violence in which he found himself. So he
perfected this suit which would allow him to get up

(04:40):
and take part in stopping crime without taking life.

Speaker 2 (04:45):
He's a brilliant scientist with a dream.

Speaker 5 (04:47):
I want to walk again.

Speaker 7 (04:49):
But what he becomes you imagination, the reader of man, and.

Speaker 5 (05:05):
You won't win.

Speaker 7 (05:06):
Comes a new res superior.

Speaker 5 (05:09):
Only the monous.

Speaker 6 (05:12):
And that was something that I leaned on quite a bit,
because I think what happened with Isaiah was something was
introduced into his system that gave him a tremendous amount
of strength and capability. But the greatest control he had
to have was his own, his own mind and his
own heart. And I think with everything that Isaiah went through,

(05:37):
with the betrayal, with the experimentation, with being locked away,
with not being recognized, nothing could assail that sense of
himself and that sense of love that he had locked
away in his heart, and that was embodied in faith
his young wife who he left and never saw again.

(06:00):
So the idea of wanting to do something to help
and having some people believe you're the wrong messenger, there
were similarities there that I think I could draw on
in developing Isaiah.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
How or when did you learn that Isaiah Bradley first
introduced in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier would have
life on the big screen.

Speaker 6 (06:24):
Just shortly before we started shooting, And it was a
wonderful surprise.

Speaker 5 (06:30):
You know.

Speaker 6 (06:31):
I think there's always possibility, and you hope that some
of the things people tell you are true. If they
tell you that they enjoy what you did, they think
it was positive. But there's nothing that has to happen,
So whatever does happen, I hold that as something I

(06:55):
should be grateful for, and that's how I feel about Isaiah.

Speaker 5 (06:59):
Very grateful.

Speaker 8 (07:02):
Isaiah look at you. This is Sam, Sam, this is Isaiah.
He was a hero, one of the ones that hydropheed
the most. Like Steve. We met at fifty one.

Speaker 4 (07:18):
If I met you, I mean I whipped your ass.
Then yeah, we heard whisper as he was on the peninsula.
But everyone they sent her after him never came back.
So the US military dropped me behind the line to
go deal with him. I took half that metal arm

(07:40):
in that fighting goyang, but I see he's managed to
grow it back. I just wanted to see if he
got the arm back, or if he'd come to kill me.

Speaker 7 (07:51):
Not a killer anymore.

Speaker 4 (07:54):
You think you can wake up one day and decide
who you want to be. It doesn't work like that.
Well maybe it does for folks like you.

Speaker 2 (08:03):
We have to take a brief news break and then
on the other side, I'll continue my conversation with Carl Lumley,
who co starred as Isaiah Bradley in Captain America Brave
New World, which is now available on digital and four
k UHD Blu Ray more with Carl Lumley in Just
a Moment.

Speaker 1 (08:22):
You're listening to Later with Moe Kelly on demand from
KFI AM six forty.

Speaker 2 (08:27):
It's later with Mo Kelly live everywhere in the iHeartRadio
app and video simulcasting on YouTube. And if you're just
tuning in, I'm in the middle of a conversation right
now with Isaiah Bradley, the Forgotten Captain America. You know
him from Captain America Brave New World. Carl Lumley plays

(08:47):
Isaiah Bradley and Captain America. Brave New World is now
available on digital and four k UHD Blu Ray and
Carl let's pick up there. Anthony Mackie not only played
the role of Sam Wilson Captain Amyic Emerica, but was
very direct, I would say, almost breaking the fourth wall,
talking about the burden that he, as a black Captain America,

(09:07):
would have in juxtaposing against the storyline of Isaiah Bradley
and history's long refusal to acknowledge him. You kind of
touched upon it. But talk to me about some of
the conversations, if any, you had with Anthony about the
nature of Isaiah's and Sam's relationship on screen.

Speaker 5 (09:26):
In The Falcon and Winter Soldier.

Speaker 6 (09:29):
I think we covered a lot of ground in that
initial meeting, in that initial moment in the house where
both of us got a chance to be very.

Speaker 5 (09:41):
Honest with one another.

Speaker 6 (09:43):
Sam could say, you've got to understand how important your
story is, and you've got to come out of hiding.
And Isaiah could say, I don't know what you're doing
wanting to be Captain America. Why would you want to
do that? Not simply because I know my lived experiences

(10:05):
that was not America's desire, but also because there's the
world that Isaiah knew, well, it's a very very different
world from the world that Sam now lives in. And
Sam has a kind of an agency, and Sam makes
assumptions that Isaiah can barely conceive that people can be trusted,

(10:30):
that there are allies, that there are more people who
are looking for connection than disconnection. He's had some bad experiences,
and he also can't trust that what was done to
him is not continuing an experiment that locks you away,
that fills you full of toxins and substances in an

(10:55):
attempt to figure out why you haven't died yet. There's
a lot too, So whatever residual bits of that are
left inside his system, his physical system, in his psychological system,
that's what he's dealing with. And Sam helps him be
willing to step back into the world. That's a lot.

(11:17):
I'm not gonna talk about it anymore. You know what
they did to me for being a hero.

Speaker 5 (11:27):
They put my.

Speaker 9 (11:28):
Ass in jail for thirty years, people who run in tests,
taking my blood, coming into my cell.

Speaker 5 (11:40):
Even your people weren't done with me.

Speaker 10 (11:43):
I say him, get out of my house, let's go,
let's go.

Speaker 8 (11:55):
Sam.

Speaker 10 (11:55):
Why didn't you tell me about Isai? How could nobody
bring him up? I ask you a question, Bucky. I
know Steve didn't know about him.

Speaker 2 (12:05):
He didn't.

Speaker 5 (12:05):
I didn't tell him.

Speaker 10 (12:06):
So you're telling me that there was a black Supersojea
decades ago and.

Speaker 2 (12:10):
Nobody knew about him. I look at the character of
Isaiah Bradley, and I look at the man Carl Lumley.
You had this habit of playing strong, confident African American characters,
and I assume that's by choice, not by chance. But
was finding those types of roles a difficult search for
you over the.

Speaker 6 (12:29):
Years, To be honest, Moll Kelly, I think it's by
choice chance chat Voice. Many of the things that I'm
most happy about just came to me, either by way
of opportunity to audition or by an offer, and if
they share certain similarities. Maybe sometimes it's because if someone

(12:53):
has seen you do something, they think of you doing
that thing in their project, whatever it is. I consider
myself strong enough. I think my strength lies in areas
that when I was younger, I didn't think were particularly strong.
You know, I've spoken with a number of nerds of color,

(13:14):
and when I was growing up, yes I was, but
there weren't a whole we didn't have a group. In fact,
it seemed like part of your nerdhood was being on
it by yourself, and it wasn't like people were, oh, gosh,
there's a nerd, let's go hang out with him. So

(13:35):
I spent a lot of time with books. I spent
a lot of time by myself. I spent a lot
of time developing my own sense of what I thought
was important and my own notions about strength. Some had
to do with being resilient. Some had to do with
not letting people know how much something hurt or how

(13:59):
much something mattered. So those kinds of techniques I think
were survival techniques. I'm saying that looking back on them now,
because I think that's.

Speaker 5 (14:11):
Where my strength comes from.

Speaker 6 (14:13):
I feel like the characters that I'm drawn to don't
necessarily have an easy go or they feel a need
to be exemplary, they feel a need to show away,
and I'm happy walking that journey with them.

Speaker 2 (14:31):
Carl Lomly, my time is with you has just about
run out. Just one last question, and it's a simple question,
but maybe an impossible question. If Isaiah Bradley were to
meet up with Steve Rogers Captain America one, what would
he say? What would Isaiah say? In two? Would he
beat him in a fight?

Speaker 6 (14:49):
He would say? I wish you hadn't been stuck in
the Pacific. I wish you had been able to conduct
the suicide mission that I did, which turned out not
to be a suicide mission. And I have no desire
to fight you. You and I both represent what should
be the highest ideals for humankind and mankind, whether they

(15:13):
live up to themselves or not, and so we have
much more in common.

Speaker 5 (15:18):
Let's go have an espresso and talk about it.

Speaker 2 (15:23):
Captain America Brave New World now available on digital and
four k UHD blu Ray. Carl Lumley, Sir, once again
a pleasure to have you on. Thank you so much
for your time this evening.

Speaker 5 (15:32):
Oh my pleasure. Okay, take care of them.

Speaker 2 (15:34):
It's Later with mo Kelly. We're live everywhere in the
iHeartRadio app and YouTube.

Speaker 1 (15:39):
You're listening to Later with mo Kelly on demand from
KFI AM six forty
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