It is the dream of every actor—to hone your skills on stage and through improv, to work your way up in bigger and bigger parts on television and film, and finally, to become a radioactive warthog. And it’s all coming true for Gary Anthony Williams, who Deadline reports will take on the role of Bebop in the upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2, joining the cast of the sequel that is already filming, yet continues to add cast members as its artistic vision becomes ever more clearer. Williams will play “a punk street thug member of a ragtag gang of misfits,” in a concrete jungle where dreams are made of, amid a city that never sleeps, in a world beyond your wildest imagination, populated by turtles far more ninja than any you have ever seen.
Williams’ Bebop, named after the style of music favored by mutant pigs, also “acts as if he’s intellectually superior, but isn’t,” similar to the role that Williams played as “Smart Brother” in Undercover Brother. Williams’ other credits include playing Uncle Ruckus on The Boondocks, movie roles in Harold And Kumar Go To White Castle and Soul Plane, appearances on Boston Legal, Blue Collar TV, Weeds, Malcolm In The Middle, In The Heat Of The Night, and a current gig on TV Land’s The Soul Man. He is also a seasoned improv performer, having long worked with Atlanta’s Laughing Matters and regularly appeared on Whose Line Is It Anyway? He also enjoyed a formative experience in the Georgia Shakespeare Festival. And now, as it recently did for Laura Linney, it’s all paying off.
TMNT 2 has yet to cast Bebop’s rhino partner Rocksteady, meaning there’s still hope for Daniel Day-Lewis.