Culture & Entertainment
In this compelling and vulnerable episode of xoMan, David Banner joined host Kiara Walker for a wide-ranging conversation on legacy, love, masculinity, and the realities of being a multi-hyphenate in the entertainment industry. Banner is unfiltered, passionate, and introspective—offering truth bombs, wisdom, and humor in equal measure.
He reflected on the complexity of his multi-faceted career. “I’m blessed, and in some ways, it can be distracting,” he said, acknowledging how his drive for greatness pulls him in many directions. “One thing that I have realized, if you do any one thing at a genius level, it’ll make all the rest of the dreams so much easier… It’s just the truth. The hotter I am as an artist, the easier it is for me as an actor.” Despite overcoming challenges, he’s grateful:
“It’s surreal. But it also protects me as a man and allows me to be more of a man in these spaces because no one space controls me.”
Banner offered powerful reflections on self-worth and perspective. “I also had to realize that my failures are some people’s dreams,” he said. “Sometimes we have a tendency to feel like we’re stuck but we forget what we’re being stuck in—what we’re ‘stuck’ in. My life is great on the bad side, you know what I’m saying?”
He got real about how childhood dreams often meet hard truths. “Growing up, I believed some of the stories about music and acting… My parents told us, you know, if you eat your Wheaties and you work hard and you do what’s right and all those types of things—most of that stuff is a lie. It’s who you know, what you know, what you do, how you stack the cards to run in your favor. My dream is to make it where children can live that lie that was told to us. Where Banner Vision, my company, can even the playing fields.”
On relationships, identity, and emotional maturity, Banner said: “I love me when I wake up in the morning. One of the reasons I’m so happy is because I love to hang out with me. I’m cool.”
When it comes to a relationship, ultimately he wants to be remembered with honor: “I want to die with a woman saying I wish that was my husband… A woman said to me one time… ‘You don’t remind me of my father, you remind me of my grandfather.’ And like, so many times we try to do new things and evolve when the real truth is we probably should go back to those values that made us the Black men and women that we are.”
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