Bartlet4America News Archive

Dule noted

by CLAIRE BICKLEY
Toronto Sun

Actor Hill is pleased by attention West Wing character is attracting

On the TV series The West Wing, Dule Hill's character was the catalyst for an assassination attempt.

The fact that black aide Charlie Young was dating the U.S. president's daughter Zoe so enraged a group of white supremacists, they opened fire on the president and his staff.

In real life, it was the initial absence of Hill or any other black cast members on the series that sparked anger.

The NAACP (National Association For The Advancement of Colored People) even threatened a viewer boycott of the networks after getting a look at the overwhelming pale complexion of the 1999-2000 fall schedule, West Wing included.

"I'm glad that the NAACP brought it to attention. It's kind of a shame when it happens," Hill, 25, said while in Toronto doing promotion for CTV, which simulcasts the NBC drama Wednesday nights at 9.

"I would hope that it'll just become second nature. You won't have to think so much about it: 'Oh, we've got to have a person of colour.' "

As for the interracial romance storyline, Hill's all for it.

"I think it's great to rattle some feathers," he said.

"You realize how backwards our society still is when you hear what people write ... Letters that say, you know, 'The brotherhood can't watch the show anymore because of whatever. We can't support this.' "

Hill — whose first name is pronounced 'due-lay' — grew up in New Jersey. Actually, his first name is Karim, but he dropped it because other kids kept calling him "Kareem Abdul-Jabaar." The middle name Dule had been chosen by an aunt, who invented it after a trip to France. He has never met anyone who shares it, but his Internet explorations have found Dule, Egypt, and a temple in China that bears the name.

Both of his parents are originally from Jamaica. His father moved first to Toronto in the 1960s and he has cousins living in Mississauga. Hill's mother is an education consultant, while his father became an investment banker.

By age three, Hill was tap-dancing. By nine, he was understudying Savion Glover on Broadway. By 10, after a year touring the U.S. as the star of The Tap Dance Kid, he'd had enough and quit the business. In his late teens, he eased back in, doing commercials, TV movies, then the Saturday morning show City Kids.

"Then I did a teen movie called She's All That, which did pretty well, and then this. They were all steps, but this is the greatest one so far in terms of helping my career."

Helping Hill prepare for his West Wing role called for a trip to Washington, where he visited the White House and met Charlie Young's real-life counterpart, Chris Aenskov, who was President Bill Clinton's personal aide at the time.

"He said the job is a lot of fun. A lot of hours but a lot of fun," Hill said. "He was telling me some of the people he knows on a first-name basis. I mean he's talking about heads of countries that he knows, that he would say, 'Hey, how you doing, so and so?' And they'd say, 'Hey Chris, how you doing?' For anyone in their twenties, that must be a thrilling thing.

"I realized how important the job is also," Hill continued. "In a sense, how powerful it is because he has the ear of the president. He's around the president all the time, pretty much. He's one of the few people who could just call the White House and say, 'I want to speak to the president,' and can."

Hill also met Clinton's daughter Chelsea.

"She was really nice," he said. "And no, she's not dating Chris."