Road to the Oscars: Brian Tyree Henry reveals what he’s scared will happen if he wins

Brian Tyree Henry is on the road to the Oscars for the first time.

The Causeway star is nominated for Best Supporting Actor for playing a disabled car mechanic dealing with serious emotional and physical trauma, opposite Jennifer Lawrence. The 40-year-old Yale School of Drama graduate tells ABC Audio he’s here now with an Oscar nomination after taking time to realize a few things about himself.

“To realize that me being, you know, considered unconventional actually worked in my favor. To really be true to myself. And to always surround myself with a community of people who believed in me,” Henry says.

“I find that the reason that I’m able to do what I do is that I had a lot of people standing behind me and beside me saying this is where you should be,” he continues. “And sometimes the monologue you have in your head is never really what you think you should be hearing. And so sometimes when you have people who are there advocating for you, it makes all your dreams possible. So that’s how I got here.”

Now that Henry’s “here”, there’s just a few things that he’s a little nervous about — for example, what might happen if he has to make his way to the Oscars stage.

“That if I win, that I will trip. One, because I’m a tripper, I will always trip. And then like literally getting up there and talking like Yoda,” he admits. ” It’s going to be terrible. But also, I don’t know, I’m just like, screaming like the wrong names at people. Like calling people by their character names rather than their government names, which I’ll probably do anyway.”

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