From being fired as a stand-in on The Cosby Show to landing the role of Dennis "Cutty" Wise on The Wire, it's been an interesting road for Chad Coleman. In a very candid interview, we recently talked to Coleman about the struggles of being a working actor while trying to support a family.

Where are you originally from and where do you call home now?
I'm originally from Richmond, VA and home now is Brooklyn, NY.

How did you get into acting? When did you decide this is what you wanted to do for a living?
I was a sophomore in high school. I did a scene from A Raisin in the Sun and it was a very emotional scene and I kind of had an out of body experience doing it. And everybody else was transfixed. And it was a means, I could channel a lot of emotions into it. I wasn't conscious of that at the time, really, but in a way I was.

I did the scene and the teacher was saying, "You're acting that really well, but it's got to go further than that." And he came and he took his hand and jabbed it into my abdomen and was like, "It's got to come from here." And so I thought about something that really moved me and then I did the scene again and that's when the whole experience happened. I kind of clicked in to a very important aspect of the craft.

So was acting pretty natural for you from that point on?
Yeah, I could interpret words on a page. I understood the meaning without a lot of explanation.

What was it like starting out? Did you have a tough time getting roles?
Well, that's a big jump because initially – I was supposed to go to New York University and I went up and auditioned and got accepted. And it was Ronald Reagan era, so a lot of education money got cut, so I didn't get the scholarship that I was supposed to have, which was actually a free ride from the state of Virginia because I didn't have legal parents.

I was what you call a ward of the court of the state of Virginia because I was in foster care, but I wasn't adopted legally. I was at a point where I was eligible, even though I lived with my grandmother. She didn't adopt me, so I was eligible for a full scholarship ride. They would pay for whatever college you got accepted in.

Ronald Reagan changed that, so I went to school at Virginia Commonwealth University in my hometown. I went there for a year, then I wanted to get to New York. So I went into the military for four years and was a video camera operator, video technician, things of that nature. Then I came to New York.

And, you know, when you come to New York that way, it's going to be tough. It was definitely tough because most kids come out of grad school or at least undergrad school and plug right into the business. I call it the blue collar route. Most kids, when they come out of grad school, have an opportunity to audition for all of the casting directors and all of the agents in New York City on one given night or a couple of nights. They come and see their work, so they're aware of who all these people are, which gives you a huge jump for casting directors; if an agent calls, they already have a reference point of that person's work. But how are they going to know who I am?

Which, I didn't understand that. All I thought was that you had to be talented. The agent has a relationship with the casting director and you go and it's all one, two, three and its easy. But it's a little more complicated than that.

I came out of the Army and I started auditioning. There's a publication called the Back Stage – if you don't have an agent, you grab that magazine and you see what appointments there are and you just submit yourself. So, I did that and I almost became a member of this acting troupe called the Jean Cocteau Repertory down on the lower East Side. From 250 people, they narrowed it down to 15. I made it to 25. And this was classical theatre, man. You know, I hadn't done classical theatre in four years. That's just to give you an example – the talent was there.

But what I ended up doing first really was becoming a stand-in on The Cosby Show. I auditioned for that out of the Back Stage and I ended up getting that. Just step by step from there. It was definitely not easy. I got here in ‘89 it took about two or three years to get my first real legitimate gig.

What was it like being a stand-in for The Cosby Show and how long did you do that?
That was pretty amazing, but that was crazy, man. When I initially got it, the guy had called me back the same day and I didn't think they called people back the same day. I didn't get the call until late because I had an answering machine. You know, cell phones weren't really clicking at that time and I didn't have one.

So he had to choose somebody else. But he called and said, "Hey, I had to offer it to somebody else because I needed you to call me back really quick. But I'm going to bring you in." So they brought me in and it was nice to watch Bill Cosby and Malcolm-Jamal Warner and all of them do the work. But I was always like, "I could do that." It may have been arrogant at the time, but I thought "I'm really good at that, I'm just as good as they are."

It was interesting to watch Mr. Cosby do his thing with the script. That was amazing to see. I saw how brilliant this man was. But, I was so close to it, so it was really frustrating for me.

And the whole process was kind of belittling. They put a piece of tape on you with the name of the character and you're walking around with a piece of tape with "Theo" on it. (Laughs.) And you're two feet from the assistant stage manager and she's screaming, "Stand-ins, where are the stand-ins?" just to embarrass or humiliate you. It was tough. And I would always get on the train and I'd be crying, just like, "I could do that."

They ended up firing me. Some of the moves – you had to move wherever the character moved – I was just like, "That's a stupid move, I'm not going to do it."

They would chime in over the intercom, "Aren't you supposed to be over there?"

Then they pulled us all together and said, "The people upstairs are very upset with someone. I'm not going to say who it is, but they're not happy with what's going on." And everybody's groveling, but I'm just standing there. I know they're talking about me. And everybody else is going, "Is it me? What did I do, man? Did I do something I wrong?" And I was just like, "I know she's talking about me."

So they eventually fired me. But I had somewhat of a relationship with Malcolm-Jamal Warner. He was cool. He saw me in a video and called me up to his room one time and we talked and everything. He didn't even know I was an actor. I thought, "Okay, what'd you think I do?"

Like maybe a year later, once The Cosby Show ended, Malcolm-Jamal Warner had his own show for a minute called Here and Now. It didn't last but five episodes, but I ended up getting cast as one of his college buddies. It was interesting to come back around and be seated at that table as an actor.

It was a tough episode. They were trying to see whether NBC was going to pick them up or not, so there was a lot of tension on the set. It was a tough time. But I validated myself because I came back as the actor I told him I was.

Was there ever a point where you thought about giving up acting?
There was always those times. It's weird. Initially I was just a machine. I was convinced of what it is I was supposed to be doing. So it was just a lot of frustration, but I never thought about giving it up. But later, the more I got into it, there used to be those times that were so slow that I used to contemplate going back into the military.