For this week’s Ken Boxer Live episode we have as our guest a truly great American actor—Academy Award winner Louis Gossett, Jr. The breadth of his talent is wide, which includes film, television, and theatre. But many of us remember him best from his Academy Award-winning— and spectacularly convincing—role as Gunnery Sergeant Foley in the 1982 film An Officer and a Gentleman, and from his Emmy Award-winning roll in the ABC television miniseries Roots.

Although the year 1982, when An Officer and a Gentleman hit the screen, is relatively recent, and especially today after the normalcy of seven years of an African-American president, it’s somewhat amazing to consider that when Gossett won his Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, he was the first African-American to do so.

Gossett had his stage debut at 17 in a school play after a sports injury had spurred his decision to take his first acting class. Later while attending New York University, Gossett, standing at 6’4″, declined an athletic scholarship offered him to play varsity basketball so that he could concentrate fully on theatre.

This great actor will sit with us for a full 30-minute interview, and we cannot be more pleased. So join Ken and Tai for what will surely be an exciting and informative show.

To read more of Gossett’s biography, please visit his Wikipedia Page.

We have limited seating available for audience members. If you would like complimentary tickets to our in-studio broadcast at the TVSB studios in Santa Barbara, please click here. This show tapes on Monday, June 29th. Audience members generally arrive by 6:30 pm and take their seats at 6:45 pm.

(This episode first airs Thursday, 07/02/2015, 10:00 PM, on TVSB-17, and is replayed numerous times throughout the following 14 days. You will find a complete schedule of times here. Additionally, a YouTube link to this episode, available about 24 hours before original airtime, will display immediately below.)