Acting opposite Rosie O'Donnell and Ruby Dee, Johnson portrayed a troubled teenager placed in a youth treatment facility after attempting suicide who struggled to work through his traumatic past experiences with foster care and sexual abuse.
Johnson was discovered by two of the executive producers of America, Rosie O'Donnell and Larry Santisky, at a Detroit coffee shop called Small Plates.
O'Donnell, who was in town to work on America, told Entertainment Tonight that she sensed "a soulful kind of stillness" in Johnson.
[2] O'Donnell's casting crew had seen almost 200 children for the role, but was still undecided, because the boy needed to be "vulnerable, fragile, wounded, broken and non-presentational".
Having been recruited by several Ivy League colleges including Harvard and Northwestern, he chose to attend the University of Michigan.