J. August Richards

Jaime Augusto Richards III[1][2] (born August 28, 1973),[1] commonly known as J. August Richards, is an American actor. He is best known for his portrayal of vampire hunter Charles Gunn on the WB television series Angel and Mike Peterson/Deathlok on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

J. August Richards
J. August Richards at the August 31, 2012 DragonCon
Born
Jaime Augusto Richards III

(1973-08-28) August 28, 1973
Washington, D.C., USA
OccupationActor
Years active1988–present

Early life

Richards is of Afro-Panamanian descent.[2][3] He grew up in Bladensburg, Maryland.[3] Richards attended the Visual and Performing Arts program at Suitland High School in Suitland, Maryland and graduated in 1991. He attended the USC School of Dramatic Arts on a scholarship.[3]

Career

Richards's acting career began when he was spotted by a casting director. This resulted in him getting a guest star role on The Cosby Show as Vanessa's boyfriend Roy in the season 5 episode "Out of Brooklyn". Other guest appearances would come later on shows such as The Practice, Chicago Hope, Any Day Now, and Nash Bridges. Playing a rapping bike messenger who believes he is an alien abductee, it was the role of Taj Mahal in the Mark Taper Forum production of Tina Landau's play Space that first brought recognition.

Richards with Amy Acker at a 2004 John Kerry fund raiser.

Richards has appeared in feature films Why Do Fools Fall in Love and Good Burger. He starred in the television movies Critical Assembly and Mutiny, and appeared as singer Richard Street in the NBC miniseries The Temptations. Richards has also guest-starred on The West Wing and The 4400.

Richards gained a recurring role beginning in the first season of Angel as Charles Gunn, a street-wise vampire hunter. He was promoted to a regular at the start of the second season, and remained a member of the cast throughout the rest of the show's run.[4]

Richards has so far been featured in four series as an attorney: Beginning in the first episode of season five of Angel, "Conviction," Gunn becomes a lawyer after having his brain upgraded with a comprehensive knowledge of the law (both human and dæmonic) by the international and interdimensional law firm Wolfram & Hart. In 2006, Richards joined the cast of NBC's Law & Order spin-off Conviction as Billy Desmond, an undefeated New York City Assistant District Attorney with political aspirations.[5] He has also been featured in CBS's CSI: Miami as the Floridian attorney Bob Villa, and portrayed attorney Marcus McGrath in the TNT series Raising the Bar until its cancellation.[5]

Richards portrayed a young Richard Webber in two Grey's Anatomy episodes: "The Time Warp" in season six, and "Only Mama Knows" in season eleven.[6] He also appeared in an episode of The Mentalist. Richards had played the part of Damon in "Just Say Yes", a 1998 episode of the science fiction television series Sliders. Richards also guest-starred in an episode of Syfy's Warehouse 13.[7]

On April 5, 2013, TVLine confirmed that Richards had been given an unspecified role in ABC's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.[8]  The character was later revealed to be a character named Mike Peterson, a human being with implants for injections of super-serum (similar to those of Captain America) known as Deathlok.[9]

Also in 2013, Richards created his own sci-fi web series called The Hypnotist.[10]

Personal life

Richards publicly came out as gay in April 2020.[11]

Filmography
Richards in 2014

Film
Year Film Role Notes
1997 Good Burger Griffen
1998 Why Do Fools Fall in Love Sherman
2006 Paved with Good Intentions Travis Balden

Television
Year Show Role Notes
1988 The Cosby Show Roy Episode: "Out of Brooklyn"
1993 Family Matters Guy at mall #2 Episode: "Scenes From a Mall"
1995 Space: Above and Beyond Lt. Thomas Episode: "The River of Stars"
OP Center FBI van tech TV film
1996 Diagnosis Murder Troy Sommers Episode: "The Pressure to Murder"
1996 Kenan and Kel Pilot #2 (Uncredited) Episode: "The Cold War"
1997 JAG Seaman Bernard Episode: "Rendezvous"
Good News John Braxton Episode: "Try a Little Tenderness"
Players Sam Bodie Episode: "Contact Sport"
1998 Chicago Hope Eric Lane Episode: "Bridge over Troubled Waters"
Clueless Stewey Episode: "Friends"
Sliders Damon Episode: "Just Say Yes"
The Temptations Richard Street TV film
1999 The Practice Former boyfriend Episode: "Do Unto Others"
The West Wing Bill Episode: "Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc"
Nash Bridges Ernie Vesper Episode: "Rip Off"
Mutiny Reece Johnson TV film
2000 Moesha Sean Episode: "Family Affair"
Undressed Bryce 3 episodes
Any Day Now Billy Episode: "It's a Good Thing I'm Not Black"
Running Mates Randall's aide TV film
2000–04 Angel Charles Gunn Series regular, 91 episodes
2003 Critical Assembly Allan Marshall TV film
2004 CSI: Miami S.A. Bob Villa Episode: "Hell Night"
2006 Conviction A.D.A. Billy Desmond 13 episodes
The 4400 John Shaffner Episode: "The Starzl Mutation"
2008–09 Raising the Bar Marcus McGrath 25 episodes
2010, 2014 Grey's Anatomy Young Richard Webber 2 episodes
2010 The Defenders ADA Bracken 2 episodes
2011 The Mentalist Dr. Vernon Watson Episode: "Bloodstream"
Warehouse 13 Zach Adanto Episode: "Past Imperfect"
2013 Emily Owens, M.D. George Morgan Episode: "Emily... and the Leap"
Arrow Mr. Blank Episode: "Home Invasion"
2013–15, 2018 Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Michael Peterson / Deathlok 12 episodes
2014 The Lottery Deputy Secretary of State Nathan Mitchell 3 episodes
2014–16 Girlfriends' Guide to Divorce Ford 11 episodes
2016 Notorious Bradley Gregorian Series regular, 10 episodes
2017–18 Kevin (Probably) Saves the World Deputy Nathan Purcell Series regular, 13 episodes
2020 Council of Dads Dr. Oliver Post Series regular
gollark: AMD and Intel CPUs have for some time been JITing x86 into internal RISC microcode.
gollark: Wrong. The ISA is old, but the microarchitectures of high-performant x86 CPUs are absolutely not ancient. They internally do a ton of optimization tricks to pretend to execute code in order with flat undifferentiated memory as fast as possible, even though the CPU is executing things out of order and aggressively caching and prefetching.
gollark: However, you can just not use it and will probably save a lot of time and segfaults.
gollark: Performant because it contorted the design of all modern CPUs to fit its model, useful because all the low-level APIs use it.
gollark: You will spend too much time on annoying memory things.

References
  1. "J. August Richards Biography (1973-)". filmreference.com. Retrieved August 18, 2009.
  2. Bonin, Liane (2000-09-26). "Touched by an Angel". EW.com. Retrieved August 18, 2009.
  3. "Raising the Bar: J. August Richards". TNT. Archived from the original on February 19, 2009. Retrieved August 18, 2009.
  4. Dobbs, Sarah (March 5, 2014). "The cast of Angel: 10 Years Later". Den of Geek. Retrieved April 22, 2018.
  5. Smith, Stacy Jenel (October 4, 2016). "A More Confident, Relaxed J. August Richards in 'Notorious'". Creators. Retrieved April 23, 2018.
  6. Bucksbaum, Sydney (September 25, 2014). "Major Grey's Anatomy Role Recast! Find Out Who's In and Who's Out This Season". E Online. Retrieved April 23, 2018.
  7. Ngwije, Americ (August 18, 2011). "WAREHOUSE 13 "Past Imperfect" Season 3 Episode 7 Photos With J. August Richards". TV Equals. Retrieved April 22, 2018.
  8. Ausiello, Michael (April 5, 2013). "New S.H.I.E.L.D. mystery: Joss Whedon casts Angel alum in pilot — but as who?!". TVLine. Archived from the original on April 8, 2013. Retrieved April 5, 2013.
  9. Ratcliffe, Amy (April 4, 2014). "Interview: J. August Richards Talks Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Becoming Deathlok". Nerdist. Retrieved April 23, 2018.
  10. Obenson, Tambay A. (4 June 2013). "J. August Richards Launches New Sci-Fi Web Series 'The Hypnotist' Starring LisaGay Hamilton". Indiewire. Retrieved 8 April 2015.
  11. Henderson, Taylor (April 20, 2020). "Angel Star J. August Richards Just Came Out As Gay". Pride. Retrieved April 20, 2020.
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