Television
Vereen has also starred in numerous television programs, and is best known for the role of Chicken George in Alex Haley's landmark TV miniseries Roots, for which he received an Emmy nomination in 1977.
Vereen's four-week summer variety series, Ben Vereen ... Comin' At Ya, aired on NBC in August 1975 and featured regulars Lola Falana, Avery Schreiber and Liz Torres.
In 1978, on a Boston Pops TV special, Vereen performed a tribute to Bert Williams, complete with period makeup and attire, and reprising Williams' high-kick dance steps, to vaudeville standards such as "Waitin' for the Robert E. Lee".
He was cast opposite Jeff Goldblum in the short-lived detective series Tenspeed and Brownshoe (1980). During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Vereen worked steadily on television with projects ranging from the sitcom Webster to the drama Silk Stalkings.
In 1985, Vereen starred in the Faerie Tale Theatre series as Puss in Boots alongside Gregory Hines. He appeared on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air episode, “Papa’s Got a Brand New Excuse", in which he played Will Smith's biological father. He made several appearances on the 1980s sitcom Webster as the title character's biological uncle.
He also appeared as Mayor Ben (a leopard) on the children's program Zoobilee Zoo. In 1993 he appeared in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Interface", as the father of Roots co-star LeVar Burton's Geordi LaForge - fellow Roots star Madge Sinclair portrayed his wife (Geordi's mother) as well. In Roots, Vereen had played the grandson of another Burton character, Kunta Kinte. He also appeared on the television series The Nanny episode "Pishke Business". In 2010, he appeared on the television series How I Met Your Mother episodes "Cleaning House" and "False Positive".
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Famous quotes containing the word television:
“What is a television apparatus to man, who has only to shut his eyes to see the most inaccessible regions of the seen and the never seen, who has only to imagine in order to pierce through walls and cause all the planetary Baghdads of his dreams to rise from the dust.”
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“Television is an excellent system when one has nothing to lose, as is the case with a nomadic and rootless country like the United States, but in Europe the affect of television is that of a bulldozer which reduces culture to the lowest possible denominator.”
—Marc Fumaroli (b. 1932)