Photo Credit: Getty Images

McKinley Belcher III just might be the new king of Netflix.

On Ozark, he played Agent Trevor Evans, investigating the criminal Byrde family in central Missouri. In One Piece, he was the fearsome, fish-faced Arlong, leading a gang of pirates on a race for hidden treasure. He even had a small role in the streamer’s Oscar nominated drama, Marriage Story!

But the actor gets his finest showcase yet in Netflix’s Eric, the 1985-set psychological thriller from veteran screenwriter Abi Morgan (Shame, The Hour). When the son of esteemed-yet-troubled puppeteer Vincent (Benedict Cumberbatch) goes missing in the middle of New York City, Belcher’s Michael Ledroit is on the case, a closeted detective doggedly pursuing answers in the face of corruption and bigotry within his own police force.

It’s a fascinatingly complex role, but the just the latest in an impressive career for the 40-year-old star of stage and screen. Born in Atlanta, Belcher went to Belmont University—where he was an award-winner on the Speech & Debate Team—then got his MFA in acting at USC before making his home in New York City, where he’s been a regular on and off-Broadway in the theater scene.

As Belcher tells Queerty, NYC has long been a “special place” for him, so it was an immense privilege for the actor to be able to step back in time to a different era of the city with Eric, and to be able to shed light on a story from our queer community’s not-too-distant past.

We got into all of that an more when Belcher joined us for another round of our rapid-fire Q&A series, Dishin’ It. In our conversation, he opens up about what made Eric an especially exciting prospect for him, the movie where he feels like he saw himself on-screen for the first time, and the many, many things he’s learned from his friend and mentor, theater legend André De Shields—who also officiated his wedding last year!

Is there a piece of media—whether a movie, TV series, book, album, theater, video game, etc…—that you consider a big part of your own coming-out journey, or that has played an important role in your understanding of queerness? Why does it stand out to you?

The first thing that comes to mind is Moonlight. Moonlight is the first time that, on camera, I saw young, Black men lit and shot beautifully, in a story in which their struggle, their beauty, and their heart was centered in the story. I’m a huge fan of Tarell Alvin McCraney, and the fullness of how all of that was captured and centered was really important, and is very much how I want to approach honoring queerness in media.

But the first time that I experienced something that was pinging sort of my queer ear was reading Go Tell It On The Mountain by James Baldwin. I was a freshman in high school, and it was the first time I was reading something that felt like it was the narrating my own experience and I was kind of confused, because I was like, “How is this person in my head?” And I think that’s the beautiful thing about representation: when someone puts their truth in a thing, someone else would inevitably read it or experience it and see and feel that they’re there in something else. They’re reflected in something else.

So, in Eric, your character, Detective Michael Ledroit, is sort of the audience’s flawed but empathetic eyes and ears into the world of the show. What’re some of Ledroit’s qualities that you first remember being drawn to?

The first thing that drew me was Abi [Morgan’s] writing, I find it wonderfully off-center. And it was really important to me that the next thing that I stepped into on-camera was something [where]—especially if I was gonna play a queer role in it—the show was interested in the man’s heart, and interested in what he’s experiencing, what’s driving him, and how his internal trauma, joy, and what he’s dealing with with love, effects how he approaches his job.

And it was really exciting to me to be in a story where Ledroit’s specific history, his specific relationships, and his specific journey with his own sexuality, make him the perfect person to be trying to solve this crime and to find these two young men. For me, it was very much a story about a man stepping into his power, and understanding that, for him to be the change that he wants to see in the world, he has to be all of himself.

Aside from depicting some very harsh realities about queer life at very specific point and time, what do you hope queer audiences might take away from Eric?

On one level, I think—because people are obviously born at different times—there are still people who don’t understand the devastation of the AIDS epidemic and how it ravaged cities and the queer community. So I’m actually really proud that, while we’re living in a world of a thriller, we also fully investigate what it feels like to walk alongside someone in love, and be mourning them before they’re gone, and be wrestling with and dealing with an epidemic that you don’t fully understand. And what it feels like for other people who are not queer to be afraid, to not understand, and in some ways try to weaponize your own sexuality.

And, that it’s a story that isn’t necessarily only about that, I think is great because it also means that people will watch it who might not watch [this type of story otherwise.] So it will be “edutainment” in a way.

The other [takeaway] I would say is—back to what I said about [Ledroit] stepping fully into himself—that you are at your most powerful when you fully accept who you are. You can sort of operate at full capacity when you love yourself.

Image Credit: ‘Eric,’ Netflix

In many ways, NYC has come a long way from what we see in the series, and it’s somewhere you currently call home. What does New York City mean to you now? Has working on this series shifted your view of it?

You’re right, I’m not from New York—I’m from Atlanta—but I’ve lived in New York for over a decade, and so the city is very special to me. And one of the things that strikes me about New York—and most cities, but New York specifically—is how different pockets of the city have evolved. So, the experience of being on what we call Broadway now, on the ’80s or the ’70s was very, very different. Being in Hell’s Kitchen in the ’80s and ’90s is different than in 2024. And I’m really excited for people who may not remember, or may not have been alive during that time, to see the show. Because I think some of that has been visually captured in a very beautiful way, and then the energy of it I think has also been captured in a really beautiful and honest way.

And one of the reasons why I first moved to New York was because the city doesn’t feel like any other city I’ve been to. There is an energy that is both exciting and can be exhausting. And I think it it demands that you have a firm sense of self, because it’s very easy to get lost. And part of this story is literally a child being lost, but also people losing themselves—and some of them are able to find themselves over the course of the story.

Since you mentioned Broadway: You have am impressive number of theater credits, including Death Of A Salesman, which you starred in with the legendary André De Shields, among others. And André, of course, also officiated your marriage to Blake Fox! What has André’s friendship and mentorship meant to you over the years?

I love André!

I first want to say that, doing Death Of A Salesman was something that I never anticipated would happen, and being the first man who looks like me playing that role, and having a family that looks like me on Broadway for the very first time is history-making and beautiful, and I’m still in awe of it in a way. I remember reading that story when I was in high school, and I never thought about it in terms of a young man that looked like me. And the fact that there were young men who came to see the show, and their first experience with the play is that it’s about them is so beautiful.

But back to André: I think it’s rare, at least in my experience, that you get to—not only work with people who inspire you and have sort of paved the way for you to live more fully in your work, and in yourself at the same time.

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There are so many things about André that I admire, and probably at the top of that list is that he is a fierce individual, and he loves himself. And that may sound strange to say, but there’s the thing that RuPaul says all the time: “If you can’t love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love somebody else?” I think it’s true. Because he is so comfortable with who he is, it means he can give love through his work, he can give love to the people he’s working with, he can give love to the world around him. And it’s something that I received very early on working with him.

And the fact that he was willing to step in and honor our day of coming together in love is something I will never forget. And I will be eternally grateful for that.

Who is a queer or trans artist/performer/creator that you think is doing really cool work right now? Why are they someone we should all be paying attention to?

Tarell Alvin McCraney! We’ve come very close to working together a couple times, and I’m hoping that we will get the chance to create and build something together in the future. But I am a fan, I am a fan, I am a fan of what he is putting out into the world, how beautifully he captures what it is to be Black and queer in the world. I’m so proud of how his journey has evolved, and I look forward to when we get to make something together.

Scroll down below for a few more of our favorite shots from Belcher’s Instagram…

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