The Early Days of Sliders
When Cleavant Derricks first received the call about auditioning for a science fiction series called Sliders, he had the same reaction he’d had years earlier when offered Dreamgirls: he didn’t want to do it.
By the mid-1990s, Derricks was already a Tony Award-winning Broadway star with an impressive resume that included working with legends like Michael Bennett, Bob Fosse, and Joseph Papp. Television was a different world, and science fiction? That wasn’t exactly his forte. But his wife Portia, who had been his constant supporter and creative partner since they met backstage at Dreamgirls, saw something in the opportunity. She convinced him to at least take the meeting.
“It was the easiest audition I could have done,” Derricks would later recall, echoing the same words he’d used to describe his Dreamgirls audition years before. Sometimes the best opportunities in life are the ones you’re most reluctant to take.
Meeting Rembrandt Brown
The pilot episode of Sliders introduced audiences to an unlikely group of travelers: a brilliant physics graduate student, his mentor professor, a computer store clerk, and a washed-up soul singer named Rembrandt “Crying Man” Brown. While the others chose their journey into parallel dimensions, Rembrandt was quite literally dragged into it – his Cadillac was parked in the wrong place at the wrong time when Quinn Mallory opened the first vortex.
It was a comedy beat, sure. But Derricks understood something fundamental about Rembrandt from the beginning: “What I understood about the show and about my character was who he was and what he was about—entertainment. That’s where my contribution was lying: to show that music meant a lot to him. It wasn’t just some fly-by-night silly thing.”
From the pilot’s first moments, Derricks made choices that would define the character for five seasons. Rembrandt wasn’t just comic relief. He was a man who’d tasted success and lost it, who carried both the swagger of a performer and the vulnerability of someone who knew what it meant to fail. When he sang, even in those early episodes, it meant something.
Building Chemistry in Season One
The original cast of Sliders—Jerry O’Connell as Quinn, John Rhys-Davies as Professor Arturo, Sabrina Lloyd as Wade, and Derricks as Rembrandt – clicked immediately. “We were like a family,” Derricks remembered years later. “It was a great show!”
That family dynamic translated directly to screen. While Quinn provided the scientific explanations and Arturo the intellectual weight, while Wade brought heart and resourcefulness, Rembrandt grounded the fantastic premise in everyday humanity. He was the everyman, the one who asked the questions the audience was thinking, who felt the fear and homesickness that came with being lost across infinite earths.
The beauty of that first season was its sense of wonder. Each world offered a fresh canvas: What if the Soviet Union had won the Cold War? What if antibiotics had never been discovered? What if gender roles were reversed? The show asked big questions while keeping its focus intimate, on four people trying desperately to find their way home.
For Derricks, one episode would always stand out above the rest. “What stays in my mind, in all honesty, has got to be the first one,” he said. “That was the beginning of it. It was getting to know actors and characters, it was getting to share and starting to grow. It’s the most memorable to me.”
That pilot established everything: the sense of adventure, the stakes, the relationships, and the heartbreak of being so close to home yet impossibly far away. It set the template for what Sliders would become—and gave Derricks a character he would inhabit for five years.
The Advantage of Location
One of the unique joys of filming Sliders was its production approach. Unlike most television shows that shoot primarily on soundstages, Sliders took advantage of its San Francisco Bay Area locations extensively. The show filmed throughout Northern California, using real streets, real buildings, real landscapes to bring parallel worlds to life.
“How many times can actors say that we can go outside a stage door, travel a 75-mile radius, and do different episodes every week in a new location?” Derricks observed. “There are not many opportunities, but we were able to do that on a weekly basis with Sliders. That part I really appreciated and enjoyed.”
This wasn’t just about scenery. Filming on location gave the show’s parallel worlds authenticity. Each alternate Earth felt real because it was real—the same streets the audience might walk down, but transformed by different histories, different choices, different outcomes. The production approach reinforced the show’s central premise: these weren’t alien worlds, they were versions of our own world that might have been.
Music as Character
From those early episodes, Derricks fought to make Rembrandt’s music meaningful. He wasn’t content to have his character simply mention being a singer. He wanted to sing – and he wanted the songs to matter to Rembrandt’s journey.
The show’s creators embraced this. Throughout the series, but especially in those early seasons, Rembrandt’s music became a through-line. His songs weren’t performances for the other characters; they were emotional processing, a way for Rembrandt to work through the trauma and loneliness of being lost across dimensions.
“I wanted to portray Rembrandt Brown as being serious about his musical career,” Derricks explained. “I wrote songs for the character – songs which would have meaning for Remmy.”
Music was in Derricks’ DNA. Born in Tennessee to a Baptist preacher father who was also a singer and gospel composer, Derricks grew up in a family where singing was tradition. His twin brother Clinton was also an accomplished singer and actor. The Derricks family had moved around a lot during Cleavant’s childhood, following his father’s ministry, and that exposure to different regional music styles would influence his own eclectic taste.
When Rembrandt sang on Sliders, it wasn’t acting. It was Cleavant Derricks channeling a lifetime of musical heritage through his character.
The Science Fiction Learning Curve
Derricks came to Sliders as a theater actor, not a science fiction fan. While Jerry O’Connell and John Rhys-Davies would pitch episode ideas and engage deeply with the show’s scientific concepts, Derricks was more focused on understanding his character’s emotional truth.
“These guys understood sci-fi a lot more than I understood sci-fi,” he admitted. But that outsider perspective became an asset. Rembrandt’s confusion and wonder at the worlds they visited, his tendency to react emotionally rather than intellectually to each crisis, made him the audience’s surrogate.
You didn’t need to understand quantum mechanics to understand Rembrandt’s homesickness. You didn’t need to grasp the scientific principles of sliding to feel his fear when facing down yet another dangerous parallel world. Derricks brought humanity to the high concept, grounding the show’s fantastical premise in recognizable emotion.
Growing Into Season Two
As Sliders moved into its second season, the show hit its stride. The production had learned from first season growing pains. The writers had a better handle on balancing sci-fi concepts with character development. And the cast had truly become the family they’d always claimed to be.
For Derricks, each episode meant an opportunity to discover something new about Rembrandt. “What kept me coming back was the fact that my character was growing,” he said. “I appreciated that, and I really fell in love with this guy. I really wanted to see this through, because I found it fascinating to continue to travel to parallel Earths and find new adventures.”
That growth was subtle but real. The Rembrandt of the pilot – primarily comic relief, the reluctant traveler—was evolving into something more complex. He was finding his courage. He was learning to be a valued member of the team, not just the guy who got dragged along for the ride. He was becoming a hero in his own right.
The early days of Sliders established not just a show, but a phenomenon. It created a devoted fanbase that would stick with the series through cast changes, network moves, and creative upheavals. And at the heart of it all was Cleavant Derricks, the Tony-winning Broadway star who’d taken a chance on television and found himself on a five-year journey across infinite earths.
Looking back years later, Derricks reflected on those formative seasons with deep appreciation. The show had given him something unexpected: a chance to combine his two passions—acting and music—in a role that would connect him with fans around the world.
“You never know,” he said, reflecting on his career’s unexpected turns. “My walk of life in this business has always been, I’m just walking…and it just happens.”
Sometimes the best journeys are the ones we never planned to take.
