Last night I attended David Mamet’s fantastic play Race, staring David Alan Grier, James Spader, Richard Thomas and Kerry Washington. The show brought together four great actors in fiery production about race relations. The play is getting mixed reviews by critics but the "mainstream media" continues to leave out one astonishing detail: Race features the voices of two leading (and competing!) automobile manufacturers together on stage.
Let’s begin with Boston’s own James Spader. To me Mr. Spader will be best remembered as Rip, the money-hungry pimp and cocaine dealer who was ultimately responsible for Robert Downey Jr.’s ruinous cycle of drug addiction. These days though, Mr. Spader is known to most as colorful attorney Alan Shore on ABC’s Boston Legal. However, he is also the distinguished voice of Acura:
According to the commercial, strength is power and the TL is the most powerful Acura ever built so it must be the strongest too. I’m not sure exactly what this means but I like James’ tempo and the way he enunciates so I choose to believe him.
Now, it’s fairly well-known that James Spader is the voice of Acura commercials but what about our other actor?
Emmy-award winner Richard Thomas is perhaps best known as “John-Boy” from the 1970s television show The Waltons . Mr. Thomas is a superb actor and, according to his Playbill bio, has been on Broadway for 51 years. His extensive theatre credits include Twelve Angry Men, A Distant Country Called Youth and Blanche and Beyond from the Letters of Tenesse Williams, as well as more than 50 television films. But Playbill does not include (and what interests us on this humble blog) his uncredited role as the voice of Mercedes-Benz:
Listen again for that idea of “strength” -- apparently it’s quite the attribute to have in cars these days.
I searched but couldn’t find many voiceover credits for Mr. Grier or Ms. Washington, but I think what we’ve discovered might jut be groundbreaking enough.
The incredible conclusion: Acura and Mercedes-Benz appear nightly together in a Broadway production called RACE. Let's not dare get into the fact that the plot focuses around Mercedes' character being accused of rape while Acura's is faced with the task of building the defense. We've called reps from both companies for comment; more details will be posted if/when we receive.