American Fiction is primarily about a writer and professor named Thelonious “Monk” Ellison (played by Jeffrey Wright), whose attempt to write a book satirizing the publishing industry brings him unexpected, mortifying success. But Cord Jefferson’s critically acclaimed directorial debut doesn’t just focus on Monk’s professional world—we also get to see how Monk’s ambitious, highly educated family affects his life and outlook. Struggling to care for his ailing mother, Monk also suffers an unexpected loss that brings his family together at their beach house. It’s then that we meet Cliff Ellison, Monk’s surgeon brother, played by Sterling K. Brown.

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Brown, best known for his Emmy-winning turns on the TV series This Is Us and The People v. O.J. Simpson, delivers a wide range of layers with Cliff, a man at his own pivotal turning point. Divorced after his wife found him in bed with another man, Cliff is now embarking on his new chapter as an out gay man. “We’re finding him at a point in time in his life where things are in a bit of upheaval,” Brown tells Vanity Fair. “He’s sort of coloring outside the lines, but he is coloring with colors that feel authentic to him for the first time.”

Brown was first drawn to American Fiction because of Jefferson’s script, which is based on the 2001 novel Erasure by Percival Everett. “I laughed, I cried, I got a chance to see a world populated with people that looked like me in a story that we don’t typically get to occupy.”

Brown focused on the script for his inspiration for Cliff, while also pulling experiences from his own life. He thought about family and friends he’s known who had come out as gay or who had struggled with coming out, especially with “the societal pressures to try to fit in and how those can be internalized until ultimately they don’t work or they’re still being internalized.”

He also related to Cliff’s experience of being an outsider, even within his own family. “I’m sure most of us feel this from time to time, like you are on the outside looking in—that everybody sort of understands each other, but they don’t quite understand you,” he says. Raised in Missouri with two brothers and two sisters, Brown raised eyebrows within his community when he decided to pursue acting. He even resisted it in the beginning, enrolling at Stanford to study economics before eventually switching to focus on acting.

He remembers doing a play at church at a young age, when one of the deacons said a prayer: “Lord, even though they’re trying to deceive us, hopefully they can find a way to sort of elevate you in the process with the show.” Brown says he was struck by the “fundamental misunderstanding of what actors do. Because I think a lot of people think that we’re untrustworthy because we’re so good at pretending we’re something that we’re not. But I think when you’re really doing it right, you are living so much within the given circumstances of the character that you were simply acting as if this was your truth.”

In the case of Cliff, he’s all about finding his truth. And he’s hard to miss in any scene—he’s got a bit of an Afro, some flashier clothing than his professor brother, and he’s often walking around without a shirt, his chiseled physique on full display. Brown says there was no mention of how fit Cliff was in the script, but it made sense for where he was at that point in his life. “Listen, anybody who’s been divorced for a while, whatever community, if you’re trying to get back out in these streets, you try to keep it tight,” he says with a laugh.

His overall look is consistent with his newfound freedom, including his choice to go shirtless whenever he damn well pleases. “I think even in terms of how uncovered he is, it is also sort of a cinematic expression of freedom,” Brown says. “You’re probably supposed to have clothes on right now, but Cliff is like the honeybadger—he don’t give a fuck.”

American Fiction gave Brown an opportunity to show off his comedy chops in scenes between himself and Wright—scenes that reveal the complicated and often funny dynamic between brothers. (At one point, Monk points out that he, too, is a doctor, and Cliff shoots back, “Maybe if we need to revive a sentence.”) They throw insults back and forth, but also know each other’s real weaknesses and vulnerabilities. “He and his brother have historically been at odds with one another,” says Brown. “I think being gay sort of made him a bit of a black sheep.”

For most of his life, Cliff tried to conform to what was expected of him. Brown, who shot most of his scenes in the film over nine days, found freedom in playing a man who has blown up his life for a fresh start. “He is delighting in the messiness of his life,” he says. “It’s not always comfortable. It doesn’t always feel good, but I think he knows that only through using his colors can he find his way into real happiness.”