| Rembrandt Brown | |
|---|---|
| First appearance | Sliders, Part One |
| Last appearance | The Seer |
| Created by | Tracy Tormé Robert K. Weiss |
| Portrayed by | Cleavant Derricks |
| Information | |
| Nickname(s) | Remmy |
| Aliases | The Crying Man |
| Occupation | Singer |
Rembrandt Lee Brown is a fictional character played by Cleavant Derricks on the science fiction television show Sliders. In 1994, Rembrandt was living in San Francisco. Rembrandt is a musician, whose stage name is The Crying Man because of his ability to "cry real tears" on stage. It is stated by Wade in Summer of Love that Rembrandt is a Gemini; however, a "slide online" feature of the Sci Fi Channel's Sliders website listed Rembrandt's birthdate to be March 4, 1955. He served time in the US Navy, and he is the only character to remain with the show for the whole series. He was the main character during the fifth season of Sliders.
Rembrandt was going to make a comeback on September 27, 1994 when he was going to sing the national anthem at a San Francisco Giants baseball game. On his way to the stadium, Rembrandt was pulled into Quinn Mallory's sliding vortex along with his Cadillac. Rembrandt was the only of the original four sliders who didn't choose to slide, and at the beginning, he strongly resented Quinn for accidentally pulling him into the vortex. However, Quinn and Rembrandt later became good friends.
Wade and Rembrandt were able to slide to Earth Prime in 1997 or 1998. However, the Kromaggs quickly took over that world and captured them. The Kromaggs threatened to send Wade to a breeder camp on another world if he didn't tell them how to find Quinn, whose independent development of sliding would allow them to invade their own homeworld, Kromagg Prime. Rembrandt didn't tell them what he didn't know, so Wade was sent to the breeder camp. A month after Wade was taken, Quinn and fellow slider Maggie Beckett freed Rembrandt from the Kromagg prison. After this experience, he had strong guilty feelings towards what happened to Wade, as well as anger toward the Kromaggs.
Rembrandt is the only character who stayed in the show from the first to the last episode. He had to see the death of Maximillian Arturo (allegedly, as there were double issues) as well as deal with the fates of Wade Welles and Quinn and Colin Mallory.
In the final episode, "The Seer", Rembrandt found a biological weapon there that he intended to use against the Kromagg invaders on Earth Prime. At the same time, a psychic (who already knew a lot about the Sliders, suggesting that the psychic's powers might be real) predicted that the next time the Sliders would slide, they would die. Rembrandt decided to slide alone for this slide because the Kromagg sliding equipment being used was heavily damaged and would only accommodate one person. The others believed they might have altered the future predicted by the psychic by having only Rembrandt slide instead of all four of them. The seer died before he could answer them.
Rembrandt Brown has a career as a musician. He is called The Crying Man because he cries real tears on stage. Some of his songs include:
Rembrandt used to sing with a group called The Spinning Topps (parody of The Four Tops) with three other members named Jared Gray, Robert Walker and Sam Howell. His last performance with the Spinning Topps was in December 1986 (Reference: Into the Mystic).
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