NEW YORK
National Catholic Reporter
Retta Blaney | Nov. 4, 2015
NEW YORK
Like many people, actor Brian d’Arcy James was aware of news coverage of sexual abuse by clergy in the Boston archdiocese 15 years ago, but he didn’t follow it closely. He had no way of knowing those events would one day be part of his life.
“It was on my radar,” he said. “I received information wholesale and processed it as best could.”
It wasn’t until he read the script for “Spotlight,” the new film based on The Boston Globe’s four-member investigative team that pursued and broke the story, that he understood its magnitude. “For me, it was an education in terms of the size and scope, and the ramifications of the reporting,” he said.
He saw the coverage as “a beacon of sorts” coming as it did from a reputable news source. “People who perhaps had not been heard or believed prior to that could say, ‘This is my story.’ ”
James, 47, discussed the film in his dressing room at Broadway’s St. James Theatre, where he is starring in the zany hit musical “Something Rotten!” A practicing Catholic, James said portraying Matt Carroll, one of the Globe reporters, helped him see the cover-up as “an institutional problem with significant and widespread consequences,” but said he still finds spiritual comfort in Catholicism.
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