Silver-throated thespian Keith David has been acting professionally since 1979. Yet with more than 450 credits across stage, film and television, he still has dream roles he wants to cross off his wish list. Joining the cast of FX’s neo-noir comedy, The Lowdown, as private investigator Marty Brunner in 2025 allowed him to check one of them off.

“One of the things as an actor that I’ve wanted to do my whole life, or at least in my adult consciousness, is play a TV detective,” says David. “I’m like, ‘Wow, here I am. This is it.’ ” 

Sterlin Harjo’s screenwriting credits, which include the five-time Emmy-nominated comedy drama Reservation Dogs, are a collection of love letters to his home state of Oklahoma. His latest series, led by Ethan Hawke as Lee Raybon, a “truthstorian” and book dealer inspired by real-life Oklahoman citizen journalist Lee Roy Chapman, is another affectionate dispatch that honors Tulsa through absurdity and historicity. 

According to David, his character, Marty, is a loose amalgamation of men in “Harjo’s purview.” The stoic detective with novelist aspirations is the Sherlock-esque straight man to Lee’s quirky, ruffian gumshoe. Season one of the series, which is part mystery, part crime thriller, follows the pair’s investigation of a land conspiracy involving the Washbergs, one of the city’s most powerful — and corrupt — families. 

When it came time to finally make his mark on the classic detective archetype, David placed the biggest focus on grounding Marty in his intelligence, adaptability and sense of justice.

“I’m still wonderfully challenged by finding [Marty’s] uniqueness, what makes him tick, what makes him special,” says David. “There’s that element of being a PI [that’s] attractive to me, the fact that you can mix and mingle with all kinds of people. Obviously, I’m not in an Eddie Murphy movie, so I’m not going to disguise myself as an old white man in a barbershop, but he’s got to be able to go into different crowds and blend in. I love the versatility of it.”

The Lowdown is Hawke and David’s third project together, having co-starred in the 1994 romantic comedy Reality Bites and Showtime’s historical drama The Good Lord Bird in 2020. 

“I’ve been a fan of Ethan’s for a long time,” David says. “He really is a wonderful actor. As my good friend Johnny C. McGinley would say, ‘You love somebody who throws the ball back at you!’ We just had a ball. I don’t know if we ever said the same thing twice. Sterlin is always throwing us a few alternative [lines] that wind up making wonderful sense.”

A standout moment in the season comes in the finale, when Marty is grazed by a bullet after Lee attempts a citizen’s arrest at a gathering of the white supremacist cult One Well. He and Lee ransack a local feed and supply shop for medical aid, which leads to Lee doping Marty up with bovine vaginal muscle relaxers as an off-the-cuff pain reliever. “Animals take medicine, too,” Lee calmly tells Marty, who retorts, “You don’t know shit about shit.” And as Harjo previously told THR, “There’s just something about Keith David frustrated and cursing.” The hilarity of the scene, which was largely improvised, is a testament to David’s self-professed dedication to not take himself “too seriously.” 

The Lowdown, on the other hand, which landed on the American Film Institute’s list of the top 10 shows of 2025, is in serious Emmy contention in the comedy categories, including best supporting actor for David, who has won three Emmys for his voiceover and narration work in 2005, 2008 and 2016. The prospect of earning his first acting Emmy nomination on the heels of his 70th birthday, June 4, doesn’t faze the veteran performer.

“It’s always right on time. There’s your time, my time, and there’s God’s time,” he says. “And when you think about timing and ‘how long [it’s taken]’ and all that … time is a magazine. It happens when it’s supposed to happen.”

If anything, the Emmy chatter is fuel in the tank for David, who says, “I ain’t done yet,” referring back to his wish list of roles, another one of which he may manifest for himself, revealing that he’s developing a story about formerly enslaved abolitionist Frederick Douglass. He also would like to get in on Denzel Washington’s adaptations of August Wilson’s Century Cycle plays, citing his love of “language work,” and he says he would join his “dearest friend” and “hero” McGinley in season two of HBO’s Rooster “in a New York heartbeat.” 

As for projects already on the docket, David will soon be seen in his second PI role in the NBC half-hour workplace comedy Sunset P.I. alongside Jake Johnson and Langston Kerman, as well as Adult Swim’s animated Rick and Morty spinoff, President Curtis, in which he’ll voice the titular character, and the dark comedy feature My New Friend Jim, co-starring Rob Lowe. Plus, there’s the second season of The Lowdown, which is filming in Tulsa.

“I used to want to be a preacher,” David muses while reflecting on his career. “But acting is my ministry.”

This story first appeared in a June stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.