The P-Valley actor steps into the Nikes of the NBA star this month
How did J. Alphonse Nicholson get his start?
As a kid growing up in Greensboro, North Carolina, J. Alphonse Nicholson was set on being a drummer. “I spent most of my time playing the drums in church and with the marching band in high school and the step team,” he says. Nicholson discovered street drumming around the same time he developed an interest in acting, and he realized that to succeed at either he needed to pack up his buckets and make a move. “So I took my talents to New York, as LeBron would say,” he explains. “In New York, you can make a pretty decent living drumming, plus I was able to audition for [theater] and get a better agent.”
What role did he play on P-Valley?
After about seven years of street drumming and auditioning, Nicholson booked his first regular role on a series, Starz’s P-Valley, set at a strip club in the Mississippi Delta. As the queer aspiring rapper Lil Murda, Nicholson brought a rarely told story to television screens, and he’s excited to continue playing the character in season three, which is in the works. “The response from the audience is pretty surreal,” he says. “People coming up and saying, ‘You allow people to see me,’ or, ‘You helped me understand who this person is,’ is a true reward. The reward is being a storyteller and someone being moved by your story.”
How did he train for the role of Chris Paul?
This month, Nicholson steps into the Nikes of NBA star Chris Paul in FX’s Clipped, which chronicles the 2014 scandal that took down infamous Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling. “The show allows you to look at [the scandal] from the perspective of people who were involved in it,” Nicholson says, “and getting their insight rubs you a different way.” Speaking of insights, the actor got a taste of what it takes to be pro hooper. “It was pretty intense,” he says. “We went to a basketball camp three weeks before we shot, doing drills and running plays that were the actual plays the Clippers ran at that time.”
What’s next?
In addition to his work on the screen, Nicholson has been a regular presence on the theater scene, appearing in Off-Broadway and Broadway productions such as A Soldier’s Play, Paradise Blue, and Days of Rage. One of his most ambitious stage projects, the one-man show FREIGHT: The Five Incarnations of Abel Green, was recently captured on film, and Nicholson is looking forward to releasing it. “It was 90 minutes on stage by myself, playing about 20 characters,” he says. “It changed my life as a thespian, as a stage artist, and it really sharpened my tools as an actor. I’m excited to push it out into the world.”
