When the legend that is Clifton Davis hits the screen, it’s always bold, but also a sort of quiet authority that soap operas rarely afford their elders. 

That’s exactly what he serves in his latest role as Vernon Dupree on “Beyond the Gates.” He's a patriarch who’s stylish, steady, and, in equal measure, full of mischief. Dupree, a longtime senator and family head whose steadiness gives the show its moral anchor even when the plot throws him into the kind of chaos daytime viewers adore. 

“He’s got a fundamental foundation; it’s spiritual and moral,” Davis told BET Current. That steadiness is the secret the writers lean into as Dupree navigates blackmail, family secrets, and old deals that whisper from the shadows…all the juiciness that makes a daytime soap undeniably entertaining.

“Beyond the Gates” premiered as a landmark for daytime TV — widely described as the first major Black-led network soap in decades and a fresh, hour-long attempt to revive the genre. The show is literally history in the making as it places Black excellence in front of and behind the camera while leaning into classic soap operatics. 

Davis — a man whose résumé already spans Broadway, sitcoms, and songwriting — described how the production deliberately breaks soap convention. “We have different ways of filming things than soap operas have ever done. … When I look around our set, and I see what we're doing, we look like we're filming a movie,” he said, praising the cinematography, lighting, and crew commitment that make the series feel cinematic even as it runs five days a week. That mixture of theatrical craft and daily grind is exactly the muscle Davis has built across a long career. 

Davis’ performance as Vernon Dupree is balanced. It’s part craft, part lived experience. He leans on his father to portray Dupree. “My father was a minister, and he was an orator. I utilize his rhythms. I utilize his insights” — to give Dupree the cadence of authority and empathy viewers respond to. 

When the story demands firmness, he offers it. When it asks for tenderness, he provides. “His heart is on his sleeve when it comes to his wife. He loves his family desperately,” Davis said, and that platform makes Dupree believable when the scripts push him toward both righteous stands and secret compromises.

There’s also the unexpectedly delicious pop-culture footnote: long before soaps, Davis wrote a song that would become a Motown classic. He worked with a young Michael Jackson and penned “Never Can Say Goodbye” — a song he later revisited on his own jazz album of the same name and even on “Beyond The Gates.”

Davis shared, “They created a story where I was getting voice lessons. And so, everybody thought Vernon was having an affair, but he was taking voice lessons. And he got to deliver [the song] at Christmas, just at the time when she [Vernon’s wife Anita Dupree played by Tamara Tunie] needed to know that he could never say goodbye to her. I love the context that they put it in.”

“I loved helping him [Michael Jackson] learn the music,” Davis mused. “I'm proud of that period in my life, those five years I spent in Motown. It was really terrific. While I was doing ‘That's My Mama,’ I was writing on the staff at Motown.”

“I’m fulfilled. I am so fulfilled by the opportunities I've had. When I perform, I’ve given it my all,” he said. In Vernon Dupree, viewers get a character shaped by history — personal, cultural, and professional — and played by an actor who treats daytime as work, craft, and now, legacy. This soap may be new, but with Davis at its center, it already carries the weight and warmth of something built to last.

Davis appeared in his first soap opera in the late 90s and he’s proud of where progress has taken him: as the lead of the first hour-long, Black-led soap opera. He said that “Beyond the Gates” is “miles ahead from where we started, from where I started. There were one, maybe two Black shows on television.” And now, that’s not the case anymore. 

“That’s progress,” Davis said. “I know that we've got a long way to go. I know that there are troubles in this land.I know that we're facing all kinds of issues with museums. I know that our history is being challenged and trying to be erased. But here we are making history continuously. And we leave a lasting impression, not because we're different in a color way. We leave a lasting impression because we're different in a creative way.”