‘I don’t chase the dollar. I never did’: the astonishing hidden life of Mr T

He is here to discuss a new Netflix documentary, Untold Mr T: I Pity the Fool. At 74, he rarely gives interviews. But when Mr T decides to talk, he really does talk. What Mr T thinks, Mr T says. And I’ve never heard anyone trash the very thing they’re here to promote quite like Mr T does today.

The actor, former wrestler and cultural icon is full of surprises. Perhaps the most surprising is that he’s still famous. As he says, he has no right to be. It’s more than 32 years since he participated in a wrestling match. Thirty-five years since he had a significant acting role in a TV show. Thirty-nine years since he starred as BA Baracus in The A-Team, and 44 years since Rocky III – the only TV show and movie he’s really remembered for. And yet, somehow, he’s still a household name.

In the 80s, many boys and girls wanted to grow up to be Mr T. The A-Team was shown all over the world. This action-adventure TV series about four US army special forces commandos turned mercenaries became a huge hit and helped define the era.

The movie star George Peppard was supposed to be the show’s headliner. But much to Peppard’s chagrin, Mr T proved far more popular. His BA (Bosco Albert or Bad Attitude, take your pick) Baracus was a mechanical genius and problem-solver; a peerless brawler and human battering ram, who wore an African Mandinka-style haircut, rattled with gold chains and had a pain threshold second to none. In some ways, BA Baracus and Mr T were similar. In others, they couldn’t have been more different.

Born Lawrence Tureaud, Mr T grew up on the south side of Chicago, in poverty. His minister father left home when he was five, leaving his mother, Willie, to bring up their 12 children. The family survived on her work scrubbing floors for the wealthy, and welfare. Lawrence was known to his brothers and sisters as Little T. When he was growing up, everyday racism had a devastating impact on him. He was horrified by the disrespect most white people showed his family.

Aged 18, he changed his name to Mr T. “Let me explain that,” he says. “See, everything I do there is a reason behind it. My father was a minister and I watched him being called Boy. And I watched my uncle being called Boy. I watched one of my brothers who was a marine come home from Vietnam in his beret and uniform, and some white guys were calling him Boy. So at 18 I had to register for the draft. I said, if I’m old enough to fight and die for my country, I’m old enough to be respected as a man, so I self-ordained myself Mr T at first. Then I legally changed my name to Mr T later on, so the first word out of everyone’s mouth would be Mr.”

We meet on a video call. At 74, he looks wonderful. He’s wearing a stars and stripes bandana and a T-shirt that says Lord’s Gym, illustrated with a picture of Jesus doing press-ups with the crucifix on his back. His face, less full than it once was, is magnificently creased and creviced, with laughter lines galore.

Mr T is part preacher, part poet, part pugilist. Close your eyes and you could be chatting to Muhammad Ali in his prime. It’s all there in the rhythm of his speech, the wit and wisdom, the fighting talk. And yet, over the decades, he has often been portrayed as a muscle-bound meathead. He says if he had been that, his mother would never have forgiven him.

He takes me back to his earlier years at school. Sure, he wanted to be tough like his bigger brothers, and hoped to be a successful footballer or boxer. But even more importantly, he wanted to pass his exams, because Willie had taught him the importance of education. She told him how the abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who was born into slavery, had been taught to read by the wife of his enslaver, “and then his slave master told her: ‘Don’t teach a slave to read, because if you do, he won’t be a slave much longer.’” Education was the route to freedom.

What did he study? “Philosophy and theology. A teacher in high school said, there’s no money in that, and I said: ‘Sir, that’s disrespectful. That’s insulting, because not everybody’s about money.’ They didn’t take the time to know who I am.” I tell him I’ve been reading a lot about him, but it’s the first I’ve heard of him studying philosophy and theology. “See, that’s the problem. I’ve told journalists the same thing I’ve told you, but they don’t print that. They didn’t want people to know what Mr T is like. I was born and raised in the ghetto, but the ghetto was not born and raised in me. We was poor financially, but we was rich spiritually. I never robbed nobody, I never raped nobody, I never broke into nobody’s house. I never snatched a purse.”

By the age of 15, he was a celebrated school athlete and looked like an adult bodybuilder. But his peers mocked him. “Growing up in the ghetto, even though I played football and wrestled, the thugs called me a sissy. You know why? Because I never robbed nobody.” He talks louder and louder. Soon he’s shouting. “They called me a sissy for listening to my mother, for listening to the teachers, for doing my homework. They didn’t go to school. They was dropouts. They was thugs. They’re in jail now or dead. They didn’t become nothing. As the Bible says, ‘Unless two agree, they can’t walk together.’ I told my mother I was going to be something in life. I was going to buy her a house and pretty dresses. They wasn’t going anywhere.” At times like this, he reminds me less of Ali and more of Samuel L Jackson’s Jules Winnfield in Pulp Fiction. Except Mr T’s Bible quotes are for real, and they focus on the loving aspect of the Old Testament rather than the hellfire and damnation.

Despite all this, the new Netflix film zeroes in on a violent incident that happened when Mr