The Emotional Reason Sterling K. Brown Decided at 16 to Go by a Different Name
The This Is Us actor's story brought Kelly Clarkson to tears.
Once upon a time, Sterling K. Brown went by a totally different name. The Emmy-winning actor and father of two chose to go by his middle name, Kelby, for the first 16 years of his life and recently shared the emotional story behind why he wanted to go back to what’s listed on his birth certificate.
Sterling K. Brown reveals the emotional reason he decided at 16 to go by a different name
During an appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show in April 2025, Kelly Clarkson asked the This Is Us actor why he wanted to go by a different name when was younger.
RELATED: Where to Watch and Stream Every Episode of This Is Us
“Is it true that you told your mom … you told her to call you by your middle name when you were younger?” Clarkson asked, adding that her own son, 8-year-old Remington "Remy" Alexander, did this as well. “At a red carpet … He just like chose his middle name as his last name, he just changed his name right there in front of me.”
“What made you change yours?” Clarkson then asked Brown.
“So I went by my middle name. I went by Kelby until I was 16 years old,” he explained. “My dad’s name is Sterling Brown Jr. My grandfather’s Sterling Brown Sr. I’m Sterling Kelby Brown.”
The Paradise actor added that while he wanted his “own name” when he was younger, he also “felt like Sterling was an old man’s name.” But several years after his father unexpectedly passed away from a heart attack in 1986, when Brown was just 10 years old, he missed hearing the strong family name.
“But because he passed away when I was 10, by the time I had turned 16 and I hadn’t heard his name for five, five and a half years,” he continued. “I was like, ‘I kinda just wanna hear that name again.’ So I asked people to call me Sterling.”
“That was so sweet and beautiful,” Clarkson said through tears.
“It’s alright,” Brown responded, also choking up as he wiped a tear away from his eye.
Sterling K. Brown says his late father “filled me up with so much love”
In 2019, Brown opened up to Willie Geist on Sunday TODAY about the tragic day his father died at the age of 45 and the loving memory he has of those final moments with him.
“I remember, like, really specific things,” the Golden Globe winner shared, adding that he remembers his mom calling the paramedics in the kitchen as his father was in bed after suffering a heart attack.
“He looks at me over the railing and he winks, just winks,” Brown recalled of the moment paramedics arrived and took his father away. “They carry him out the door, last time I saw him.”
RELATED: Sterling K. Brown's Youngest Son Amaré Is His Mini-Me After Fresh New Haircuts
Brown added that while their time together wasn’t nearly long enough, his father showered him with love as a child. “I will say this about Sterling Brown Jr.,” he told Geist. “He filled me up with so much love. So while the time was short, it was everything that I could’ve hoped for for 10 years.”
