When you're an actor, your range is your on-screen strength. And nothing screams character chameleon quite like playing an objectified stripper one minute and a devoted father the next. But that's just the way the chips have fallen for 34-year-old actor Quentin Plair.
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Fresh off his role as Otis on the Hulu miniseries Welcome to Chippendales, Plair immediately threw himself into an entirely different character in the platform's adaption of Cheryl Strayed's best-selling novel Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar. In the Tiny Beautiful Things drama series, he stars opposite Kathryn Hanh, playing her husband, Danny, a talented musician who's "frustratingly in love" with his wife, Clare.
After finally reaching his limit with her self-destructive tendencies, he demands she leave the house they share with their teenage daughter and join him in couples therapy—and this is all happening right as Clare ironically accepts a job as an advice columnist under the pseudonym Sugar.
While Plair is by no means a stranger to the small screen, this is one of his first major roles in a series. So let's get to know the man behind Danny, shall we?
He Grew Up In Connecticut
According to his IMDb bio, Plair was born in Hartford, Connecticut. But despite it being very clear now that he has a talent, acting was not his first dream. He told The Cut in 2022 that while he loved sitting around with his family and watching Sister Act, he never thought of acting as a profession until much later. Instead, he went to college to major in business and play football.
While it's not clear what prompted his start in Hollywood, he began landing small roles and appearances—you may have seen him in The Good Doctor, The Good Lord Bird, or Dirty Grandpa—in 2013. After a few years, he finally got some recurring roles in shows like BET's collegiate drama The Quad and the CW's alien-influenced romance Roswell, New Mexico.
But it wasn't until Plair snagged the Welcome to Chippendales gig that it all became real.
He Recently Played A Stripper
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In Hulu's fictional interpretation of the rise (and eventual downfall) of Somen "Steve" Banerjee —founder of the world-famous Chippendales male dance revue—Plair plays Otis, the most popular and only Black dancer. Starring alongside big names like Kumail Nanjiani and Murray Bartlett of White Lotus fame, Welcome to Chippendales premiered in November 2022 and ran for eight episodes.
Plair told The Cut that even though he never thought he'd be a stripper, he related to Otis' deeper truth of what so many Black men experience.
"It was so clear and evident that [Otis] was being fetishized for his body," Plair said. "As a Black male, that's something that's been felt for a very long time, all the way back to slavery. Knowing that this was a big crux of what the character was going through, I really wanted to make sure I honored the truth of that experience.
"I've absolutely felt that just from being an athlete and someone who cares about my body. There was a point in time when I was very skinny and then quickly got muscular, and I felt the difference in how people treated me. I related to Otis's struggle."
He Loves To Workout
For his role on Welcome to Chippendales, Plair not only had to spend two months in "dance boot camp" (which some days required practicing for 11 hours straight with only a one-hour break), but he also had to lose quite a bit of muscle.
In December 2022, Nanjiani interviewed Plair and his other Chippendales co-stars as a guest host for The Kelly Clarkson Show. During the episode, he revealed that Plair was "so buff" when he got the role that he was actually asked to stop working out. "I had to drop about 20 pounds before we started filming," he said.
Now that the show is wrapped up, this former athlete will likely soon be back to his bodybuilding ways. On his Instagram, he has an entire highlight dedicated to showing off his huge lifts. And while both the physical and emotional aspects of filming the miniseries were challenging, Plair says that challenge is exactly what he looks for in a project.
"Usually I'm excited by a challenge, by something that scares me," He said in his interview with The Cut. "There were a lot of aspects of Welcome to Chippendales that scared me. Usually, when a project does those three things—challenges me, excites me, and scares me—that's usually why it's impactful, because it means something and someone can get something out of it. I just want to leave something positive."
If that's the case, then there's no doubt his new role in Tiny Beautiful Things will be just that—positively impactful.
Where To Watch Tiny Beautiful Things
Tiny Beautiful Things premieres on April 7th on Hulu, where you can binge the first season of the entire series.
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