Norbert Leo Butz

“I remember really getting into 'The Wiz' and an old musical called 'Purlie,' which Melba Moore sang. I liked those roof-raising shows because I connected deeply with the gospel aspects of those musicals.”

“If you individualize an audience, it helps up the stakes of your responsibility to that audience.”

“I hate sitting around a table and talking about what a play might mean. I'm the person who's always like, 'Can we get up on our feet and just do it?'”

“I've always been drawn more to film. But 'Bloodline,' to me, feels like a 13-hour piece of cinema. And the great thing about Netflix is you get to be almost like an editor. You choose how much of the narrative you want to watch at a time, which makes you complicit in the story.”

“Something about being surrounded by water has a really calming effect on me.”

“I don't know if Jesus said it in the Bible, but someone said that 'the love of money is the root of all evil,' and I do think there's a correlation between the ambition that a lot of people have, in terms of financial remuneration, and the loss of core values.”

“I am the most successful unsuccessful actor in New York. And I guess with that, maybe apparent only to myself, there started to be a very subtle but unmistakable whiff of entitlement, bitterness, jealousy. I was not respecting the work.”