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Bill Nunn

Bill Nunn brought weight, warmth and quiet authority to the screen, often making a supporting role feel essential to the world around it. Born in Pittsburgh in 1953, he worked across film, television and the stage, building a career filled with characters who could be imposing, grounded, humane or some combination of all three. Nunn attended Morehouse College alongside Spike Lee, and their connection became an important part of his early film career. He made his credited movie debut in Lee’s School Daze in 1988, then played Radio Raheem in Do the Right Thing. Carrying a boombox and moving through the neighborhood with a commanding physical presence, Radio Raheem became Nunn’s best-known role and showed how much he could communicate through movement, expression and restraint. He later appeared in Lee’s Mo’ Better Blues and He Got Game. His range extended well beyond those collaborations. In New Jack City, Nunn played Duh Duh Duh Man, the bodyguard to Nino Brown. His other film credits included Regarding Henry, Sister Act, Canadian Bacon, The Last Seduction, Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead and Runaway Jury. A later generation of moviegoers knew him as Daily Bugle editor Joseph “Robbie” Robertson in the Spider-Man trilogy, a role that made good use of his steady, credible presence. Nunn also appeared on television, including the series The Job and a 2016 televised adaptation of A Raisin in the Sun. On stage, he performed in August Wilson’s Pittsburgh-set Fences with Anthony Mackie, who played his character’s son. Pittsburgh remained more than a birthplace in Nunn’s story. His father was a journalist and editor at the Pittsburgh Courier as well as an NFL scout, and Nunn established his own Pittsburgh-area community outreach project in 2008. Across his work, he had a gift for making characters feel firmly rooted—men who seemed to arrive with a history, even when the movie gave them only a few scenes to reveal it.