John Amos On 'Good Times': I Didn't Leave With any Animosity

We here over at VladTV recently had the pleasure of speaking with Emmynominated actor John Amos. During our talk with the "Good Times" patriarch, we covered his dislike for the character portrayals on the 1970's television series, as well as the importance of "Roots" in Black culture.

After an unsuccessful football career, Amos found his "life's calling" as an actor. His claim to fame was the role as James Evans. Sr, the father-figure a lot of people (including Lord Jamar) looked up to while growing up in the hood. On the popular series, John played the father to three kids: Michael, Thelma and JJ Evans. "The writers chose to put the emphasis on JJ in the chicken hat and him saying 'Dy-no-mite' every two or three pages," recalls Amos. John felt that children growing up watching the show would have better benefited from it if the writers would have put as much focus on "militant midget" Michael and Thelma as they did JJ. Unfortunately, John Amos openly didn't agree with the fact that they chose to downplay Michael and Thelma's Supreme Court Justice and surgeon aspirations, respectively, which resulted in him being killed off from the show. "I didn't leave with any animosity or anything," he claims. "My own intent was to try to improve the quality of the show."

Luckily enough, John Amos' role in "Good Times" ended just in time for him to be cast as the adult Kunta Kinte in the Emmy Award-winning miniseries "Roots." The show had such an effect on Black culture even Kendrick Lamar payed homage to it on his album "To Pimp a Butterfly," with his powerful single entitled "King Kunta." "I'm honored that he would flatter me as such," says a gleeful Amos.

Watch on as John Amos sits alongside Easy Mo Bee and drops some knowledge about Black culture and expresses the importance of Alex Haley's book in this insightful exclusive.