New Yorker and Kenya-born Edi Gathegi plays Ronald Dacey in
Crackle’s hit show StartUp. He admits that he “misses New York” the
city that he “loves” the most. It’s been six long years of Los Angeles
living a sacrifice that he’s made to get his career up and running.
In retrospect, it was a sound career move because Gathegi's career is
soaring. Some of his credits include The Blacklist, The Blacklist:
Redemption, AMC kung fu series Into the Badlands and on the film
side he can be seen in “Twilight,” “New Moon” and “X-MEN: First
Class” to name a few. This fall he will appear in the horror/thriller
“Raven’s Watch” and “Pimp.”
In Startup, he plays a Miami based Haitian gangster-turned- tech
entrepreneur whose bid to “clean his money” turns out to be much
more dangerous venture than any street game he’s engaged in the
past.
In Startup, the name of the game is introducing a new monetary
currency—GenCoin.
In season two the fight continues over GenCoin and the story returns
to the streets of Miami following the takeover of the unregulated global
cryptocurrency. Now GenCoin is now in the ruthless hands of the
Russian Mob. The trio left standing is
Izzy Morales, Ronald Dacey (Edi Gathegi), and Nick Talman. In a
surprising move, they reinvest in their partnership and launch an
exciting new endeavor, a darknet prototype called ArakNet.
But as their decentralized network begins to grow, so too does the
peril, the corruption, and the moral turpitude.
Here is a very brief excerpt from a conversation with Mr. Gethegi
LS:
You were trained in acting at NYU (New York University). Where do
you live now?
Edi Gathegi:
My heart will always belong to New York but now I call L.A. home. It
took me about six years to learn to love California.
LS:
Where were you born?
EG:
I was born in Nairobi, Kenya. I came to the San Francisco Bay area
when I was a baby.
LS:
What tribe do you belong too and what languages do you speak
besides English?
EG:
I come from the Kalenjin tribe and our mother tongue is Kikuyu but
Swahili is the national language. Swahili was the first language that I
learned but I forgot it as soon as we came to the States. I had a
culture shock. I was in pre-school and I came home crying. I told my
parents that the [African-American] kids look like me but they don’t
sound like me. I did not speak for two-weeks. The teachers thought
that I had a learning disability. My parents assured them that I was a-
ok but they [teachers] were confused. When I spoke for the first time I
spoke English without [a Kenyan] an accent. I had been studying.
That was the greatest acting performance of my life.
LS:
O.M.G. You are a great storyteller. I could see you— the little
boy—confused, watching everything and everyone around him. Hey,
you should make this into a short film. Do you like short film content?
EG:
Actually, I just did my first short film, last winter and I caught the bug. I
am never going to give up acting because that’s my first love and it’s
what I was trained to do. All of this expands my abilities to share
stories. I just produced a film that just wrapped [principal photography
has been completed] it’s called “Princess of the Row” and it’s about a
12 year-old- girl who runs away from her foster family to live with her
father, who is homeless and mentally ill and living on skid row. It’s a
love story between father and daughter. I play the father.
I love storytelling. I love directing and I will pursue that. I enjoy
producing. Moving forward I want to incorporate all the ways in which
a film is made: acting, writing, directing, producing the whole 9 [yards].
It’s very exciting to me. It never gets boring. It’s a constant challenge
for me and hopefully, I will bring something good into the world.
Crackle’s hit show, StartUp, now in season two