In his first lead role, Parker Sawyers plays the most powerful man in the free world.
”SINCE I WAS EIGHT YEARS OLD, I always wanted to act; I just never did,” says Parker Sawyers ’05, thinking back on his school days. For the first five years after Wabash he modeled, renovated a house, managed a Broad Ripple restaurant, worked in state and local politics, and rubbed elbows with members of the British Parliament.
He did practically everything but act.
Then after leaving his lobbyist job in London, Sawyers took his daughter to a park close to home and happened upon another father-daughter combination. When their conversation turned to jobs, Sawyers mentioned he’d like to be an actor. As fate would have it, the man was an actor and helped Sawyers get hooked up with his agent.
Within a month Sawyers was on location in Oslo, Norway, shooting Lilyhammer, the first exclusive content produced by Netflix.
He hasn’t looked back since, landing roles in such films as Hyde Park on Hudson (“I was able to make Bill Murray laugh,” he says), Zero Dark Thirty, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, Monsters: Dark Continent, Survivor, and Snowden.
“It’s still quite surreal,” says Sawyers. “I’ve only been acting four years. I had never done a school play or anything. I’ve been really lucky just bouncing.”
The good fortune continued for Sawyers last summer as he filmed his first leading role, playing Barack Obama in Southside with You, a story about the first date of the future President and First Lady. He is the first actor to play Obama in a dramatic role.
Because the film is set in 1989, Sawyers has the latitude to play the president almost like a fictional character.
“It requires lots of studying, because he’s a real person who the whole world knows,” says Sawyers. “Luckily, the script focuses on their first date—there was no Instagram, no Twitter or YouTube—so I just go on instinct and put it together.”
Friends say the success Sawyers has enjoyed is no accident.
“He’s really been preparing himself for this for a long time,” says classmate Andrew McCoy. “You’ll never know how gifted he is until you truly get to spend some time with him. His humility shines through.”
“Parker has the look, which is big and takes you a long way,” says childhood friend James Ross ’05. “But it’s his mind that sets him apart. He’s a brilliant guy. His creativity, his diverse skill set, and a wide range of experience really help in acting. You are always playing different characters and you have to empathize.”
That empathy is put to the test in his role as Obama.
“Since we don’t have much on record of his private life, I’m guessing at how he probably would have been as a 28-year-old trying to woo a 25-year-old.
“I really love this script. It’s just a movie about people. It’s such an interesting way to do a story about a public figure. If we pull it off and do it well, you might think, Oh my gosh, this is how he was.”