Obama impersonator: A role I was born to play

Reggie Brown says he won’t settle for being known only as the Barack Obama impersonator who was escorted off stage during a Republican conference Saturday night. Instead, Brown would prefer you think of him as the pre-eminent Faux-bama.

The Chicago native says he’s ready to star whenever they make a film of the 44th president’s life story.

“It’s the role I was born to play,” Brown says. “When the movie finally comes out and things like that, I’m trying to show people now what I can do. I don’t think there’s anyone better for it than me.”

Perhaps he took a big step in that direction last weekend at the Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans. Contracted for what he says organizers called a 15- to 20-minute routine, Brown’s mic went dead and the act was halted after his material shifted from Obama jokes to gags about some GOP heavy hitters. The ensuing news stories and video clips have made Brown something of an over-weekend sensation.

Still, he contests news accounts that say he was yanked off stage because he aimed his comedic sights at Republicans, insisting that organizers halted the routine -- around the 18th minute -- because it was running long.

“The music started playing. I thought it was a glitch in the PowerPoint,” Brown said. “Right when I started my Michele Bachmann joke and her (picture) came up on screen.”

But not before he’d gotten off jokes aimed at GOP presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty, and not before he’d delivered some racially oriented material earlier in the routine.

That, says Republican Leadership Conference President and CEO Charlie Davis, is why Brown’s act was cut short.

“Had I been in the room I would have pulled him sooner,” Davis told CNN. “We have zero tolerance for racially insensitive jokes. As soon as I realized what was going on, I rushed backstage and had him pulled.”

Brown takes some license in the fact that he, like Obama, was born to a black father and white mother, adding that his mom, Jane, raised him and four siblings largely by herself.

Brown said he tailors his material based on the audience but wouldn’t speculate on whether the same abrupt ending would have happened at a Democratic function.

Raised on 60th Street near Midway Airport and later in the western suburbs, Brown says his brother, Lawrence, first told him of his resemblance to Obama when he was 21.

Brown, 30, studied at Acting Studio Chicago, spending long hours crafting impersonations of Obama and others. He gained some notoriety as a restaurant server/Obama look-alike and through some work for WMAQ-Ch. 5 before moving to Los Angeles two years ago.

“The odds of someone being born with such a resemblance, and doing what I do, the odds are less than winning the Lotto or being struck by lightning,” said Brown, admitting that a mole to the left of his nose is among the added embellishments.

rmanker@tribune.com

Twitter: @RobManker