[2] His television acting credits date from the 1980s and include episodes of What's Happening Now,[3] A Year in the Life, Sex and the City, and the made-for-television movie The Drug Knot, directed by Happy Days star, Anson Williams.
Duane Boutté was born and raised in Fresno, California where his mother (Velda Neal Boutte) taught piano.
Boutté's father, Alfred Boutte, is an Air Force veteran and was regional administrator for California's Employment Development Department.
"[14] In GCP's Junior Company, Boutté worked alongside youngsters who would later become his Broadway colleagues (Audra McDonald, Heidi Blickenstaff, Sharon Leal, Andrea Chamberlain, and Sarah Uriarte Berry).
[12] That year, Boutté toured the U.S. with Jeffrey Wright, Rainn Wilson and other young actors in The Acting Company's A Midsummer Night's Dream.
[17] In 1994, he played "Enoch Snow, Jr." in Lincoln Center's TONY Award-winning revival of Carousel, and was one of Michael Hayden's "Billy Bigelow" understudies.
[18] Among his favorite roles performed, Boutté names "Mercutio" at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and opportunities to premiere works by playwrights like Terrence McNally, Eric Overmyer, Charles Randolph-Wright, and Robert O'Hara.
The film, also starring Anthony Mackie and Roger Robinson, presents circa 1920's Bruce Nugent as an unapologetic homosexual accepted, and embraced by celebrated Harlem Renaissance figures like Langston Hughes, and Zora Neale Hurston.