Andy McQueen is having a huge TV moment — something he was told would never happen

Contains spoilers for the first two episodes of Mrs. Davis.

An acting coach once told Andy McQueen that with a beard like his, he'd only ever play a taxi driver or "Iman." ("He obviously meant Imam," says McQueen, sounding amused as he clarifies the dismissive comment in a conversation with CBC Arts.)

It's not like the acting coach's comments were entirely off the mark. For the longest time, any actor who looked like McQueen — thick, wavy hair and a Lindt Excellence 90 per cent cacao dark chocolate complexion — would suffer the limitations of Hollywood's imagination. 

But just browse the list of new releases starring the Markham, Ont. actor from over the past couple months. McQueen has been stuntin' on those limitations with roles that range from dastardly to divine.

In March, he showed up as a jolly video store employee with a stoner vibe in Chandler Levack's delightful coming-of-age comedy I Like Movies and a villainous gangster on the third season of the Netflix treasure-hunting series Outer Banks. And today, he reveals himself to the world as Jay in Mrs. Davis, the twisty new sci-fi series about a nun going all Kill Bill on a world-dominating AI.

Playing Jay is sort of a big deal. If you don't know why, I recommend you stop reading and go watch the first two episodes of Mrs. Davis on Crave. We're talking about a show co-created by Tara Hernandez and Damon Lindelof (Lost, Watchmen), the latter being famous for pulling the rug from underneath his audience, and such twists occur in every episode of Mrs. Davis. If you hold surprises and revelations sacred, consider this your spoiler alert ...

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... because Andy McQueen's Jay is Jesus Christ. Like, literally. 

"This is the first time we're ever seeing Jesus portrayed in this way," says McQueen, grinning about the melanin he's injecting into the mischievously messianic role. Throughout our conversation, he dances around what we can reveal about the comically unhinged series, which echoes Terry Gilliam as it flaunts the gulf between faith and technology. 

"It's about what we put our trust and faith in," he explains, unpacking the show's classic sci-fi themes and its relevance at the moment. He points out that we're chatting over Zoom and putting our faith in the algorithms that run it.

McQueen is speaking to me from his very rustic-looking Los Angeles home. It's a Sunday afternoon. He's settled into his couch anticipating a visit from a couple other Canadians soon after our convo. Director Albert Shin, who cast McQueen as a comically charming one-night-stand in the Niagara-set mystery Disappearance At Clifton Hill, just happens to be in town on business. They'll later text me selfies while enjoying craft beers. Manifest star Parveen Kaur — a friend of McQueen's wife, actor Glenda MacInnis (Suits, Designated Survivor) — will also be passing through. (No texts from them.)

McQueen is enjoying this little CanCon gathering while he's sequestered in the U.S. waiting on his green card. He and MacInnis decided to make the leap down south from their Cabbagetown apartment just a little over a year ago, after McQueen wrapped on the final season of Coroner, where he had a regular role as Detective Malik Abed. 

The actor, who has also appeared on shows like Killjoys, Handmaid's Tale and Station Eleven — not playing a taxi driver or Imam in any of them, by the way — found himself with no professional attachments in the Toronto area. Not long after the move, he landed auditions for both Outer Banks and Mrs. Davis on the same day. 

At the time, he didn't know he was auditioning to play Jesus on Mrs. Davis, a show that gets downright carnivalesque with its difficult-to-sum-up sci-fi plot. His messiah is running a heavenly falafel shop and romancing the nun played by Betty Gilpin, while fighting for people to believe in him in a world that would rather worship AI. It's a role that demands an unusual level of philosophical curiosity; that was the exciting part of the job, according to McQueen.

"It was the best experience of my entire life as an actor," he says.

His role in Outer Banks was exciting for very different reasons. For starters, it gave him his first villain role. The actor, who grew up on movies like The Godfather and Goodfellas, likens his own personality to the "happy-go-lucky" goof he plays in I Like Movies. So having the opportunity to play Carlos Singh, the vengeful Caribbean Don, in Outer Banks was a surprise for him.

"I'm a short dude," he adds. "Nobody would have thought of me in that way." 

McQueen kills in the role, giving pure swagger and menace as the gangster searching for the treasures in El Dorado. He says he had to figure out how to hold power in scenes when he's the new guy joining the third season opposite the popular series' more established stars like Drew Starkey and Madison Bailey. It came down to his movements — how he would stalk the scene like a shark, improvising moments where he picks up a dagger to keep his co-stars on their toes.

"Jonas [Pate], the showrunner and director, he allows you to play and just go wherever you want," he says. "So I had free movement and free rein in that place."

The role is much more precious to McQueen because he got to fill in Carlos with his own Guyanese background. The actor takes pride in his culture. During our convo, he talks about growing up in his father's West Indian grocery store and his eagerness to visit home in August so he can soak up the Toronto Caribbean Carnival. We reminisce about the late-night festivities at events like Carnival In Yuh Backyard and J'ouvert, where everyone enjoys soca vibes with a side of rice and peas.

McQueen always assumed he would only get to play Indo-Caribbean when he scraped together a personal microbudget film with a coming-of-age or generational family narrative (you know, the way Canadians usually do). Instead, he got to do it on a much bigger platform, pouring the affection for his culture into his role in a popular Netflix series. The Outer Banks writers made Carlos Indo-Caribbean to cater to McQueen, allowing the actor to draw on cultural experience and mimic his own father's accent in the role. 

While it may give some pause that the rare moment their culture is on screen is through a villainous role, he explains that this is not one of those cringe cases. ("It's not Kali Ma," he says, referencing the savage Indian caricatures in Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom.)

Instead, Carlos is three-dimensional, a character with "a beginning, middle and end," as McQueen explains. Carlos is also well-spoken about the legacy that partly fuels his anger. He's giving monologues throughout the season about his ancestors who came from India as indentured servants, his pursuit of gold fuelled by a vendetta toward the colonialists who manipulated his people. 

"The history is in it," says McQueen, describing a character he plays with the kind of conviction that can win you over to his side.

"To have been the bad guy like that, I couldn't have asked for more."