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Other people to enter into the Emerson family
included Joey's musician friends, Miles Taylor,
a pianist; and Curtis Vincent, a bass player;
Crazy George Stevens, a regular at Charlaine's
Bar who gets a job with Roc at the Department of
Sanitation; Eleanor's social climbing mother,
Margaret Carter who is ashamed of Roc's
profession and tells her family that he is a
doctor; Eleanor's brother, David. and Ruben
Stiles, a popular actor who uses Roc as the
model for film role. He mimicked Roc's
mannerisms and voice and showcased them in a
movie that aired six months later.
The tribulations of love often interfered into
the life of the Emerson's. Here is a list of
some of their more interesting bouts with it:
- To help her win a promotion at the hospital,
Eleanor asks Andrew to romance the head nurse,
Matty. Andrew also dated a women that was dead
ringer for his deceased wife.
- Roc is distracted at work by a beautiful new
worker named Angela Kimbro who admits she is
attracted to Roc, despite his married status.
- Andrew Emerson wakes up one morning and finds
the woman he was dating dead in his bed.
Shocked, he interprets this as an omen from his
long-departed wife, Loretta (a waitress) warning
him to stay away from other women.
- Janet, Roc's former girlfriend reveals that she
rejected Roc's marriage proposal only three
months before he married Eleanor.
- Against Andrew's objections, his goddaughter
Nina seduces Joey.
TRIVIA NOTE: The second season of the series was
done live! (a.k.a. ROC LIVE). A contest was held
to choose the name of the Emerson's baby boy.
The viewers voted by a 900 phone number and
chose the name Marcus (in honor of Jamaican-born
Dr. Marcus Mosiah Garvey, a black nationalist
who founded the United Negro Improvement
Association in 1914, a group similar to the
NAACP).
Charles Dutton: Born January 30, 1951 in
Maryland, Dutton grew up in the Latrobe Housing
Project on Greenmount Avenue in Baltimore where
he dropped out of school, and adopted a life of
crime. His only sister was a recovering cocaine
addict. His only brother, who died of AIDS in
1993 at age 44, had been a heroin addict for
nearly 25 years. Allegedly, Dutton earned his
street name "Roc" because he liked to put
"rocks" inside snow balls before he tossed them.
In 1967, Roc was jailed for manslaughter for
stabbing a man to death in a street fight at 17.
Consequently, he spent 7.5 years in jail.
Initially, he served two years but, then he was
sent back for weapons possession and fighting
with a white guard which extended his sentence.
During a stint in solitary confinement, Roc read
an anthology of plays by black writers which
inspired him to turned his energy from
delinquency to drama. Consequently, he started a
prison theater club and earned a high school
equivalency.
Upon his release in 1976, he
enrolled at Baltimore's Towson State University
and then pursued his passion for theatre by
enrolling in Yale School of Drama at Yale
University (going from "jail to Yale."). There
he studied under playwright August Wilson and
director Lloyd Richards.
After graduation, he
appeared off-Broadway in the play "Richard III"
and then earned a Tony nomination for his role
as progressive trumpeter Levee in August
Wilson's Broadway production "Ma Rainey's Black
Bottom" as well as an Emmy nomination for the
1995 television movie The Piano Lesson. Dutton's
screen credits include No Mercy, Crocodile
Dundee 2; Rudy, Alien 3 and Nick of Time.
As of
1997, Dutton has turned his interest to
directing. In 2000, he received an Emmy Award
for Outstanding Directing of The Corner, a
six-part HBO miniseries. And he has completed
the upcoming biopic Against the Ropes about
Jackie Kallen, a female boxing manager played by
Meg Ryan.
Dutton, who won an NAACP Image Award for Best
Actor in 1993 has become an outspoken critic of
racism in Hollywood.
Ella Joyce: Born 1954 as Cherron Hoye in
Chicago and raised in Detroit, Ella Joyce
attended Eastern Michigan University after
graduating from Detroit's Cass Technical High
School (Class of 1972) where she was
cheerleader).
Her stage name (Ella Joyce) is a composite of
the first names of her grandmother (Ella) and
her mother (Joyce).
Her other credits include the movies
Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot (1992); Set It Off
(1996), The Old Settler (2001), Bubba Ho-Tep
(2002) and Salvation (2003). She also had
a recurring role as Vanessa's mother, Jasmine
Scott on the ABC sitcom MY WIFE & KIDS.
Joyce has also been the recipient of the
prestigious NAACP Image Award.
ROC/FOX/1991-94
|
Charles Dutton |
as |
Roc Emerson
|
|
Ella Joyce |
as |
Eleanor
Emerson |
|
Rocky Carroll |
as |
Joey Emerson
|
|
Carl Gordon |
as |
Andrew Emerson
|
|
Alexis Fields |
as |
Sheila
Hendricks |
|
Garrett Morris |
as |
Wiz |
| Oscar
Brown, Jr. |
as
|
Miles Taylor |
|
Wally Taylor |
as |
Curtis Vincent |
|
Heidi Swedberg |
as |
Helen |
|
Jenise |
as |
Natalie Belcon |
|
Charlaine |
as |
Anne
Weldon/Jenifer Lewis |
|
'Crazy' George
Stevens |
as |
Jamie Foxx |
|
André Thompson |
as |
Clifton Powell |
|
Richard
Roundtree |
as |
Russell
Emerson |
| |
|
|
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