Sterling K. Brown got Kelly Clarkson choked up while sharing his reasons for dropping his middle name from his professional stage name.
“I went by Kelby until I was 16-year-old. My dad’s name is Sterling Brown Jr., my grandfather’s Sterling Brown Sr., I’m Sterling Kelby Brown … I wanted my own name,” Brown shared while appearing Monday on “The Kelly Clarkson Show.”
The two got on the conversation after Clarkson shared that her son, Remington “Remy” Alexander, suddenly swapped out his first name for his middle name one day during a red carpet event. That’s when Clarkson inquired into why Brown previously preferred to go by Kelby.
“It felt like Sterling was like an old man’s name,” Brown continued. “But because he passed away when I was 10, by the time I turned 16 and I hadn’t heard his name for five, five and a half years, I was, I kinda just wanted to hear that name again, so I asked people to call me Sterling.”
Moved by the heartwarming story, Clarkson took a beat to process Brown’s reasoning.
“OK,” Clarkson said as she regained composure. “That was so sweet and beautiful.”
“It’s all good,” Brown said as he appeared to be fighting back emotions as well.
After all the warm vibes, the actor moved on to his hit Hulu thriller series “Paradise,” in which he stars as a secret service agent who is on a mission to track down the culprit behind the murder of the president of the United States. While he does not mind playing highly-trained official, he says in real life, it would not be a job he would be excited about.
“I would get tired very fast; you’re constantly scanning everything for any possible threat, right? So when I look at people, I like to see Jesus. I don’t like to see, like, ‘Oh, that person might do something kind of crazy,’ and that’s what you’re constantly doing the whole time,” Brown explained. “And it’s not even for your benefit, you’re doing it, like, if I’m doing it for your benefit, I’m sitting here, I’m trying to be engaged with you, but I’m also checking how somebody’s carrying their hands. Like where are they keeping themselves, who would be the first person that I have to deal with and that sort of thing. I think I’m observant, and I’m fairly good at that, but I’d be real tired, real fast.”
He continued: “To be on set just playing the character … when I went home, I was like, I need to rest, in a way, that’s like— he doesn’t talk a lot. He’s a man of few words, but like the level of attentiveness that you had to have, I was ready to take a nice bath with epsom salt.”
“Paradise,” which was recently picked up for a second season, is currently streaming on Hulu.
You can watch the full “The Kelly Clarkson Show” clip in the video above.
'Paradise' Renewed for Season 2 at Hulu