Kendrick Sampson Is Building Community from the Ground Up

By the time Kendrick Sampson joins our video call early on a sunny Los Angeles afternoon, he’s already accomplished a full day’s work. To the broader public, Sampson is primarily recognized as a compelling, highly charismatic screen presence who has spent years anchoring major television projects. Audiences know him well for navigating the supernatural landscapes of The Vampire Diaries, stepping into the high-stakes legal machinations of How To Get Away With Murder, and portraying the nuanced fan favorite Nathan on HBO’s critically acclaimed dramedy Insecure. Yet, when the actor isn’t slammed with exhausting call times, intense role preparation, and demanding press runs, he is actively kneeling in the weeds of nonprofit management as the founder of his own organization, Build Power (stylized as BLD PWR), founded in 2018. Rather than treating the entertainment industry only as a traditional career path, Sampson uses his platform as a megaphone for a much deeper, more urgent mission centered on systemic equity and community empowerment.

He’s keen to discuss what has him so busy—and his enthusiasm for the day-to-day labor of organizing is palpable even through the screen. “[Build Power] is grounded in Black liberation and solidarity with all of our folks fighting for liberation: people of color and indigenous folks,” Sampson explains with energy. “We’re talking about culture and storytelling 24/7 and how that intersects with community building.” Rather than viewing art and activism as two separate entities, Sampson sees them as fundamentally codependent forces. For him, the narratives a society consumes directly shape how that society treats its most vulnerable populations, making the preservation of authentic storytelling a vital component of real-world organizing. This philosophical approach translates into remarkably hands-on, year-round efforts that go far beyond standard Hollywood philanthropy. Just a few months ago, he, through BLD PWR, moderated a discussion surrounding reproductive justice between Black men and women in collaboration with fellow nonprofit SisterSong. In March, he hosted a two-night birthday fundraiser in Houston and Los Angeles rallying for Black-owned businesses and local activists. During election season, BLD PWR organizes a WAGBT-branded Roll to the Polls event packed with entertainment and civic resources: a cookout and games collide with voters’ guides and bus rides to the polls at Texas Southern University. 2024’s iteration in Houston was located in the Third Ward, the historic hub for Black culture in a county disproportionately impacted by voter suppression tactics utilized by state Republicans.

Remarkably, managing the sprawling, daily responsibilities of BLD PWR represents only a sliver of Sampson’s intense professional workload. On the cinematic front, he’s coming off the release of Michael, the Lionsgate blockbuster biopic which features him in the role of the trailblazing producer Quincy Jones. In an industry where major casting decisions can crawl through months of bureaucratic screen tests, corporate negotiations, and endless deliberation, Sampson is very quick to dismantle the notion that his casting was typical. Instead, it was an immediate byproduct of mutual trust and community connection. His friend Leigh Jonte, a casting associate on the film, FaceTimed him to present him to the production team, and forty-eight hours later, he was on set, fully immersed in the production.

Even with such a small window to prepare for the film, Sampson had the fortune of drawing upon personal experience. Years prior, long before the cameras rolled for the blockbuster, he experienced a serendipitous, real-life encounter with Jones that feels almost prophetic in hindsight. “I’m known to find my little corner and be my own party,” he states, reminiscing on an industry event before the pandemic. “All of a sudden, an icon came over to the corner and said, ‘This ain’t your corner, this is my corner!’ And that was Quincy Jones. He held me there the whole time and told me stories.” He reflects on their extensive and, from his recollection, at least three- to four-hour-long conversation with evident admiration, but also a significant sense of gratitude. For an actor, an unfiltered, intimate audience with a historical subject is rarer than winning the lottery. “I got something no actor could plan for or ask for,” he beams in reflection. “The icon they’ve dreamed of playing—that they’ve dreamed of meeting!—is going to sit there and trap them for a few hours and be some of the best storytelling ever!”

Before his role as Jones, Sampson’s path to Hollywood involved unlikely odds. First scouted as an imaginative child by an “agency” in Texas, which turned out to be an outright scam, he pushed through by finding an acting coach—and immediately fell in love with the craft. “I called around at eleven, ten years old, and was like, ‘Hey, can I have these appointments?’” he laughs, reflecting on the genesis of his professionalism. “I had a strong understanding that the work depended on me.”

Once he found a reputable agent in Houston, he was also learning to juggle a budding professional career with the everyday rigors of American high school life. “I missed so much of high school, to be honest!” he confides wittily. “I was driving to Austin, New Orleans, and Dallas, or wherever, for auditions. I had to drive places by myself, figure out where to sleep, and get gas. It taught me how to own a room and not feel like judgment defines me.” At the same time, he had his hands more than full with extracurriculars—he was in the competitive theater program all four years, participated in speech and debate with classmate Travis Scott, and helped found the first step team in his district. This formative period instilled an autonomy which served him well in Los Angeles, where he moved leading into the historic 2007 Writers Guild strikes. When the industry ground to a halt, he had to apply those exact same survival skills to a brand new, highly competitive environment. “I had to really learn how to hustle to pay my bills and live life with a low overhead,“ he recalls. “It taught me that I was going to survive no matter what.”

His youth was a crucial proving ground for another major facet of his adult life: community-building. Sampson’s mother, who studied counseling, engendered a sense of civic responsibility and open communication, particularly surrounding traditionally taboo topics including sexual health, drug abuse, and gender and sexual minorities. While he was young, his uncle died from AIDS, and Sampson recalls the stigma his mom fought to deconstruct through direct, no-frills discussion. Sampson’s work in advocacy stretches back to his time in the suburbs of Houston at Elkins High School, when the administration accused the newfound step team of being a gang, shutting down the club altogether. Refusing to be mischaracterized through a racist narrative, Sampson initiated a petition, gathering signatures from teachers denouncing the move. He remembers this era as a critical turning point where his artistic expression and his burgeoning political consciousness first began to merge, laying the structural groundwork for a lifetime of organizing.

In 2020, he petitioned once more, this time in an open letter directed at Hollywood heavyweights (in the letter, “our allies in Hollywood”) demanding divestiture from police and anti-Black content in favor of investment in not only Black creatives but the Black community at large. Sampson, through BLD PWR and alongside a handful of other activists—including Tessa Thompson—collected signatures from a slew of Black Hollywood’s best and brightest, including Cynthia Erivo, Janicza Bravo, Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Issa Rae, Viola Davis, Edward Enninful, Queen Latifah, and hundreds of others.

Today, those lifelong lessons in storytelling and systemic advocacy are converging into a new frontier. Recognizing that modern media representation is a powerful form of political currency, BLD PWR also houses a production arm, which Sampson is leveraging to combat the deterioration of authenticity in storytelling from technocratic, political forces within creative industries. For Sampson, the current battle over creative independence isn’t just about corporate contracts; it is an ideological war for the soul of culture itself. “AI and the government are attacking our stories and trying to control how we tell them. My goal is to work with people I love to build things that will replace the systems attacking us,“ he explains. “I want to tell stories about misfits. Misfit stories are the most powerful stories—how you don’t fit in but still get through. I love dark humor and visuals.” By refusing to separate his artistry from his activism, Kendrick Sampson is modeling a new paradigm for what it means to be a Hollywood multi-hyphenate. He remains a misfit at heart: an industry insider dedicated to building an independent pipeline where subversion, solidarity, and storytelling can thrive side-by-side.

Michael is now in theaters.