LeVar Burton talks about his changing definition of success on NPR's 'Wild Card'

Transcript

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

Each week, a well-known guest draws a card from our Wild Card deck and answers a big question about their life. LeVar Burton first rose to fame as a teenager playing Kunta Kinte in the hugely popular TV miniseries "Roots." From there, of course, he would go on to host "Reading Rainbow" and play a lead role in "Star Trek: The Next Generation." Burton reflected on the impact that those three roles had on him with Wild Card host Rachel Martin.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)

RACHEL MARTIN: Pick a card - one, two, three.

LEVAR BURTON: I want to go one.

MARTIN: You're feeling one.

BURTON: I am.

MARTIN: Has your idea of success changed over time?

BURTON: Yes. I used to embody success unconsciously by how busy I felt and how busy I was. Now I feel that success is spending my time well because I recognize, at this stage in my life, that although I have a lot of energy, there's a limit to it. And the older I get, the more important it is for me to create that balance of activity and recuperation.

MARTIN: Yeah.

BURTON: My job - I've come to the conclusion that my job is to be LeVar Burton, and I love my job. And as it happens, my job requires a lot of energy going out, right? It's energy output.

MARTIN: I get that.

BURTON: And unless I recharge this battery, it's not good.

MARTIN: It's interesting, though. You got so high so fast, right? Like, after "Roots," you were up here.

BURTON: I was 19.

MARTIN: Yeah, you were 19.

BURTON: I was 19.

MARTIN: I mean, you're still, like, a kid. And so I wonder if your definition of success - that epiphany of realizing you need balance, you got to conserve...

BURTON: Yeah.

MARTIN: ...You can't just soar, or you'll burn out - I wonder if that had to evolve.

BURTON: That was experiential, yeah.

MARTIN: Yeah.

BURTON: I had to learn that.

MARTIN: Because that's a long life, God willing.

BURTON: Exactly. And I think one of the gifts of "Roots" was that I had to come to terms with - you know what? - I may never do anything as big or as important or as impactful as this, OK? And I'm 19. So you just need to manage your expectations.

MARTIN: (Laughter).

BURTON: No, seriously.

MARTIN: Yeah.

BURTON: About what's going to happen next, because clearly, A, you don't know and, B, chances are this may be the pinnacle. It may be, so yeah.

MARTIN: It wasn't. There were many other high mountains.

BURTON: No, it turned out to be, right?

MARTIN: Yeah.

BURTON: And that's the miracle of my life.

MARTIN: Yeah.

BURTON: I have these three jewels, I call them...

MARTIN: Yeah, yeah.

BURTON: ...In my career crown in "Roots," in "Reading Rainbow" and "Star Trek." And I think part of the beauty of that journey for me is seeing that, as a storyteller, I've been able to portray the Black experience in America from our enslavement to the stars. And LeVar, the "Reading Rainbow" guy, is absolutely in the middle of that continuum. And so to really plot the trajectory of Black people through time and space in this roughly 20th, 21st century time frame...

MARTIN: That is very profound.

BURTON: Yeah, yeah.

MARTIN: What a gift.

BURTON: Yeah, what a gift, what a gift.

MARTIN: Yeah, what a gift.

BURTON: Who gets to do that? I do.

CHANG: That was LeVar Burton speaking to NPR's Rachel Martin. For more from that conversation, follow Wild Card wherever you get your podcasts.

(SOUNDBITE OF LEGG0LAND SONG, "4 LEAF CLOVER (SKIT KINDA)") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.