Shock And Awe

Cress Williams’ Black Lightning Just May Be The Superhero We’ve All Been Waiting For

- Oliver Jones

CRESS WILLIAMS IS SITTING SLUMPED IN THE BACK seat of an SUV, heading to the airport and talking about second chances. It’s a subject on which Williams—an actor who has spent his 20-plus-year career on the periphery of our pop culture as a featured character on such streaming favorites as Hart of Dixie, Friday Night Lights, and Prison Break, as well as a couple dozen other shows—has recently become something of an expert.

“My wife and I are about to celebrate our fifth-year anniversary,” says Williams of his marriage to Kristen Torrianni, who is pregnant with their second child. (Williams has two children from a previous marriage.) “With that and the new kid on the way, everything feels like a second chance. Not to say I completely blew my first chance, but I made some mistakes both career-wise and personally. I feel like it’s almost a second act now. But I feel like the lessons that I’ve learned are the only things that I’m taking with me. There is no baggage that I have to drag along and dispel.”

Adds Williams, staring out the window at Los Angeles, bathed in midmorning light, “I feel extremely thankful that I got to have such a clean start at a second half. I don’t feel like that happens for everyone.”