Photo: Matt Sayles
Styling: Enrique Melendez
Grooming: Tasha Reiko Brown
Origins
Born in Georgia and raised in Los Angeles, 15-year-old Joshua Caleb Johnson was just a toddler when he started getting modeling gigs. The acting bug bit early too. “When I was in first or second grade, I remember dancing next to my crush [in a play], and I was the happiest kid in the world,” he says. Last year, Johnson had his highest-profile role to date, as the boyfriend of Marsai Martin’s Diane on Black-ish—a show with an inclusive cast and crew that taught him “to be yourself and never care what anybody else thinks about you.”
Star Turn
This month, Johnson takes on his first leading role, in the Showtime limited series The Good Lord Bird, a rollicking account of revolutionary abolitionist John Brown (Ethan Hawke) based on James McBride’s National Book Award–winning novel of the same name. Johnson plays Onion, a fictional enslaved boy who becomes part of Brown’s ragtag army. (He also narrates the series.) Johnson had been learning about Brown in his eighth-grade history class when auditions started, but McBride’s novel offered a new perspective. “When I’m in school, I’m learning about history through the eyes of the white man,” Johnson says. “The book is written from the perspective and from the mind of a Black man.”
Learning from History
To prepare for the role, Johnson visited slavery related-sites in Virginia, where the series was filmed. “It hit home, because that’s my people,” he says. “To see the shackles hurt my heart.” Johnson’s own feelings about John Brown have shifted over the past few months; based on what he learned in school, Johnson had approved of Brown’s mission but doubted his methods. “What really changed my opinion is what’s happening nowadays—all the marching and the protesting,” Johnson says. “Sometimes certain actions need to be taken to prove a point. I think John Brown should be deemed a hero in history books.”
A Super Future
Next up, Johnson will appear in the fourth season of FX’s Snowfall, the late John Singleton’s series about the 1980s crack epidemic in South LA. “It’s kind of funny, because it’s like a different kind of period piece,” Johnson says. While he’d love to portray other historic figures, from Malcolm X to Nelson Mandela to W.E.B. Du Bois, his current dream role can be found in the Marvel Universe: Miles Morales, from the Oscar-winning animated film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. There are no set plans for a live-action remake as of yet, but Johnson is brushing up on his parkour and cinematic martial arts just in case. “I’m working super-hard and getting in shape, making sure I have the moves,” he says. “When the role comes, I’m ready.”
