Cleavant Derricks in Sliders: The King is Back
“The King Is Back” isn’t just the title of a Season one Sliders episode – it’s a statement that resonated throughout the show’s evolution. As cast members came and went, as the show moved from Fox to the Sci-Fi Channel, as the premise shifted and the tone changed, one constant remained: Cleavant Derricks as Rembrandt “Crying Man” Brown.
By the time Sliders wrapped its fifth and final season, Derricks was the last original cast member standing. And his journey through those five seasons – watching colleagues leave, welcoming new cast members, navigating creative changes, and ultimately saying goodbye – tells the story of the show itself.
The Losses
The departures began in Season Four. First Sabrina Lloyd, whose Wade Wells had been captured by the Kromaggs in a devastating Season Three cliffhanger, did not return. Then John Rhys-Davies, whose Professor Maximillian Arturo had been the show’s intellectual anchor and moral compass, left the series.
For Derricks, these weren’t just cast changes – they were the loss of family members. “We were like a family,” he said of the original cast. “It was a great show!” The chemistry between the four original Sliders had been genuine, the relationships real. Losing two-quarters of that core group fundamentally changed the show’s dynamic.
Then came perhaps the most jarring change: Jerry O’Connell’s departure. Quinn Mallory wasn’t just the show’s protagonist – he was its creator, the character whose invention of sliding had started the entire adventure. How do you continue Sliders without Quinn?
The show’s solution was audacious: they didn’t. Instead, they had Quinn merge with his alternate self in the vortex, emerging as a different person in a different body, now played by Robert Floyd. “Jerry’s character went through the Vortex, came together with another Quinn from another parallel Earth, and they somehow physically became one person,” Derricks explained. “So you have our Quinn’s thought processes but another Quinn’s body. They handled it very, very well. It made a lot of sense to sci-fi fans.”
Charlie O’Connell’s character Colin, Quinn’s brother, met a more definitive end. “Charlie splattered into a thousand pieces,” Derricks noted with a laugh. “That’s clever, huh? That’s what happens when there’s a change!”
Staying the Course
Through all these changes, Derricks remained. But why? Why stay with a show that was losing its original cast, moving networks, shifting in tone and focus? The answer came down to character growth.
“What kept me coming back was the fact that my character was growing,” Derricks explained. “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.”
This growth wasn’t accidental. Derricks had fought from the beginning to make Rembrandt more than comic relief. He’d insisted on the character’s music being meaningful, on Rembrandt being taken seriously as an artist. And as the show progressed, Rembrandt evolved from the reluctant slider who’d been dragged into the adventure to a true hero – brave, resourceful, and increasingly central to the show’s emotional core.
By Season Five, with Derricks as the only original cast member, Rembrandt had become the show’s anchor. He was the living link to the show’s origins, the character who remembered where they’d come from and never stopped believing they could find home. His presence provided continuity through all the changes, a reminder of what Sliders had been and what it still tried to be.
The New Family
While Derricks missed his original co-stars, he embraced the new cast members who joined the show. “I had a great time with the cast,” he said, speaking of the entire run. Even as the faces changed, the sense of family – of actors coming together to create something special – remained.
There was Kari Wuhrer, who joined the show in the last half of season 3. There was Robert Floyd taking over as a merged Quinn. There was Tembi Locke as Dr. Diana Davis, bringing both scientific expertise and emotional connection to the final season.
Each new cast member brought their own energy, their own interpretation of what Sliders could be. And Derricks, as the veteran, helped welcome them into the fold. “Actors are like gypsies,” he observed. “You’re in one place, you’re there for a little while, and then you move on. We’re artists, we have so many facets of our lives that we’re involved in, we come together, we break bread together and we commune together.”
Season Five: The Final Slide
Season Five was bittersweet. The show had survived network cancellation once, moving from Fox to the Sci-Fi Channel. It had survived cast changes, budget cuts, and creative upheaval. But nothing lasts forever, and by Season Five, everyone knew it was the end.
“I am most proud of Season Five that the fans believed and fought for us to come back,” Derricks said. The loyalty of Sliders fans – who had written letters, created websites, and campaigned vocally for the show’s continuation – had given the series one more season. That meant something profound to Derricks.
But he couldn’t help acknowledging what was missing: “I really did miss Quinn, Wade, and Arturo.” The original magic, the chemistry of those first seasons, couldn’t be fully recaptured. The show had evolved into something different – not necessarily worse, but different.
Still, Season Five gave Derricks opportunities to continue developing Rembrandt. The Crying Man had come a long way from the washed-up singer whose Cadillac got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. He’d become a leader, a fighter, a man who’d faced down countless dangers across infinite earths. He’d lost friends, made new ones, and never stopped believing in the possibility of home.
The Music Continues
Throughout the series, but especially in later seasons, Rembrandt’s music remained a through-line. The song “Stolen Angel,” which Derricks wrote and performed in the episode “Asylum,” became a fan favorite. It demonstrated what Derricks had always known: Rembrandt’s music wasn’t a gimmick. It was essential to who he was.
“Everyone seems to love ‘Asylum,’ the episode in which I sang the song that I wrote, ‘Stolen Angel,'” Derricks noted. The song captured something essential about Rembrandt’s journey – the longing for home, the pain of loss, the persistence of hope. It was Rembrandt distilled into music.
That fans responded so strongly to Derricks’s singing on Sliders ultimately led to his album Beginnings. “There was so much response from the fans about my singing on the show – ‘Cleavant, when are you going to do a CD?'” he recalled. “When Sliders ended last April (in the year 2000), my wife and I looked at each other and said, ‘Let’s do a CD.'”
The album included “Remmy’s Slide,” dedicated specifically to Sliders fans. It was Derricks’ way of saying thank you, of acknowledging that the show had given him a platform to share his music with the world.
The Final Goodbye
When Sliders wrapped for good, the cast scattered to new projects. “John Rhys-Davies now I think has gone back to the Isle of Man, and Jerry’s here in California, but he’s working behind the scenes,” Derricks reported shortly after the finale. “Sabrina’s into another series, and I’ve gone more into my music.”
But the end of the show didn’t mean the end of the relationships or the legacy. “The thoughts and prayers and the well-wishes go with us when we separate, especially when you’ve had great relationships like I’ve had with this cast,” Derricks said. “That’s not to say that we don’t have the love and the camaraderie – it’s just that our lives go in different directions.”
For Derricks, Sliders had been an unexpected blessing. He’d come into it reluctantly, convinced by his wife to take the audition. He’d stayed because the character kept growing, because the work remained interesting, because the adventure never got old. He’d outlasted all his original co-stars, becoming the keeper of the show’s legacy.
“You don’t want to stay someplace forever, you always want to go down new avenues and experience new and different things,” he reflected. But there was no denying what Sliders had meant: “I really fell in love with this guy.”
A Future for Sliders?
Even after the show ended, Derricks believed in the possibility of more. “I believe Sliders could be brought back to life in a spinoff,” he said in 2001. “And I can’t tell you anything about a Sliders movie yet. I believe all of the cast members would love to be involved.”
Whether that would ever happen remained uncertain. But the fact that Derricks was open to it spoke volumes. After five seasons, after all the changes and challenges, he still loved Rembrandt Brown. He still believed in the show’s premise and its potential.
The King’s Legacy
“The King Is Back” was more than an episode title – it was a promise that Rembrandt Brown, and Cleavant Derricks, would never give up. Through five seasons, through cast changes and network moves, through creative upheavals and personal challenges, Derricks stayed the course.
He did it for the character, because Rembrandt’s growth fascinated him. He did it for the fans, whose passion and support meant everything. He did it for the original vision of Sliders, keeping that flame alive even as the show evolved around him.
When the final episode aired and the vortex closed for the last time, Derricks was there—the last original slider, the keeper of the flame, the king who never abandoned his throne.
“Thank you for your support, your comments, your appreciation of what we tried to do for five seasons,” he told the fans. “Thank you for allowing me to do a CD, because I don’t think it would have happened without the fans.”
The king had returned, again and again, for five seasons. And when he finally had to say goodbye, he did so with grace, gratitude, and the knowledge that Rembrandt Brown’s journey had been worth every slide.
