The “Them: The Scare” series is back with another season and some different faces, as well. Deborah Ayorinde will be back but in a different role as a detective and will be the mom of Joshua J. Williams, who plays Kelvin.
Kelvin seems like your typical innocent child who likes to play the drums, but he’s hiding something from his family that he feels is hard to express. Williams spoke with rolling out about his character, Black males’ mental health, and a message he’d like parents to take away from the show.
What makes your character special?
I play Kelvin, the son of Dawn Reeve. He’s just a sweet, innocent kid that’s been dealing with a lot. He’s dealing with anxiety and stress. He’s dealing with the divorce of his parents and dealing with OCD without even knowing it. He’s dealing with a lot, and within doing so, he’s dealing with harboring this secret from his grandmother and mother about a little secret that’s going on in his life that he can’t really spill out, but he feels like he has no one really to come to, and now that I think about it, he might feel as if this sort of situation is only happening to him when in reality, a lot of Black males have gone through that thing of feeling alone. They’re feeling like there’s no one that they can come to, especially in a time like the ’90s. They didn’t have social media; you [couldn’t] see what people were doing.
What is a message you’d like to send to young Black men who may be afraid to open up or express themselves?
I think that should be for the parents and guardians of whoever that is. I feel like they should be more aware of what’s going on with the kids or whatever life that they’re dealing with. I think they should be more aware because anything could be going on, but maybe that kid is just too afraid to say it. Maybe that kid is shy or whatever, but you just have to be there for your kids. What I really want people to get from the show, in general, is to be there for your kids because you never know what’s going on.
Was that your first time playing the drums?
That was my first time. I had a drum teacher by the name of Pop and he actually taught Nick Cannon for Drumline. He taught [me] in about two weeks to play the snare drums, and I loved it every second.
