It was a small scene. Orderly enters Patty’s prison cell, asks if she needs more supplies, and, after no response, exits.
And yet Christian Ojore Mayfield's debut last week on "The Young and the Restless" was bigger than any part the Lithonia native has enjoyed to date.
Mayfield, a 41-year-old father of three, knew without a doubt his late grandmother Ruthie Mae Sanders had finally worn God down, making those few minutes on television all the more special.
“That was her favorite show,” Mayfield said. “She talked about the characters like she actually knew them.”
When his agent texted him with the news back in August, Mayfield couldn’t believe it. For one thing, the vast majority of the soap’s characters are in permanent roles, which makes it next to impossible to get on the show except as an extra walking in the background. And for another, it’s also tough to appear in more than one episode.
Mayfield will appear in three. Maybe more.
As he left home that afternoon for another audition, he took a second look at his agent’s text.
“Grandma, are you up there getting on God’s nerves,” he laughed.
But it hit him: “I’m really going to be doing television.”
It wasn’t the first time the young actor had been on television — he’d played roles in “October Road,” “The Gospel” — but “The Young and the Restless” had been around for 43 years and was one of the few in the soap genre with a large following.
Don’t I know it. I have three sisters who talk about the characters just like Ms. Ruthie did. Not a day goes by that they don’t tune in. If you didn’t know better, yes, you’d think Victor, Jack and Neil were all members of the family.
Seriously.
Mayfield said his “Y&R” role came just as another show for HBO fell through and was confirmation he and his wife, Jasmin, made the right decision to pack up, leave Atlanta and all that they loved, and move with their children to Tinseltown.
“It was surreal,” he said.
For the longest time, he’d tried creating his own projects, but he couldn’t get any traction.
One day, his wife, tired of seeing him frustrated and disappointed, offered him a choice: New York or Los Angeles?
The couple agreed to pray about it, and three days later, they agreed God wanted them to move to Los Angeles.
Mayfield had been in love with acting since 1983, when his father took him to see “Crimes of the Heart.”
“I was totally captivated from beginning to end,” he remembered.
He was acting the parts after the show that day when the director noticed and told his father about an upcoming youth acting camp he was running.
Mayfield was 7. The camp was for 10- to 16-year-olds. Impressed with his acting chops, the director made an exception.
In the weeks that followed the camp, his father, Thad Mayfield, got a job promotion and moved the family from Jackson, Miss., to Lithonia, and young Christian’s love for acting soon faded to girls and sports.
He was attending Chapel Hill Elementary School when a teacher suggested he enroll at Avondale High School of Performing Arts, now the DeKalb School of the Arts. He’d have to audition to get in.
Mayfield’s redo of Michael Jackson’s Grammy Awards performance of “Man in the Mirror” did the trick, and he quickly went from playing on the school stage to television commercials.
He left Avondale to play once more on the gridiron at football powerhouse Southwest DeKalb High School, where he graduated in 1993 before heading back to Mississippi to play for Jackson State University.
He chose theater as his major but only because he figured it didn’t make sense trying to learn something new.
But JSU’s theater department was light-years behind Mayfield. He’d already done professional theater and quickly became bored with what was being offered.
He was in his senior year there when he landed a fellowship with Disney and discovered if it weren’t for football, he probably wouldn’t have gone to college in the first place.
“Once my eligibility was up for football, I didn’t see any point to staying in school,” Mayfield said. “It was time to be an actor and so that’s what I did.”
He scored roles in commercials, local theater, including Lucifer in the popular holiday play "King of Glory," and a small part in Tyler Perry's "Meet the Browns" and "The Haves and the Have Nots." Mayfield's biggest role to date was in the 2014 film "The Sacrament," in which he played an African pilot saving reporters from a religious cult compound. But it hasn't been easy, he said.
"One of the reasons I stuck to my guns was because of my grandmother," he said. "When I've gotten frustrated because I didn't book a show, I could always hear her tell me, 'Boy, don't give up.'"
When he auditioned for his part in “The Young and the Restless” in late July, Mayfield was full of doubt, but his perseverance was about to pay off.
The cast, he said, has been gracious, extremely nice, like a real family.
“After my first day there, it was like I’d been with the show all season,” he said.
Well, that has to put a smile on Ms. Ruthie Mae’s face and God’s.
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