Getting a role in "The Great Debaters" film initially was an impossibility to Antravian Carter, graduating senior and mass communication student at Wiley College.

Carter, who's been gracing the theatre stage since his middle school days, admitted when he was first selected by the Career Services Department at Wiley to work as a production assistant, he didn't expect to be working alongside two-time Academy Award winning actor Denzel Washington.

"I went up and started working as a joke," said Carter. "They would allow people to be extras so one day, they asked me if I wanted to be the second Howard debater and that's how it happened."

Working in an office just down the hallway from Washington, Carter often bumped into the famous thespian in the kitchen during break time. While the encounters with one of his boyhood idols were awkward, Carter said he was able to stay professional and keep his composure.

"I use to see him all the time and I would run into him in the kitchen and he talked to me about being at Wiley and just random things," Carter said. "I was nervous because you don't want to be the typical fan because I worked there, so I didn't want to screw up my job. So I had to play it smooth," he said.

Establishing a good working relationship with one of the producers, Carter was able to earn the role as one of the Howard debaters in the film and given a chance to review some of the playback footage of his acting scenes.

While Carter hasn't had a chance to see the film in its entirety, he said he's seen snippets from a trailer sent via e-mail to him and was been taken aback by the big screen portrayal of his school.

"I just hope everybody goes out to see it because it's going to be real inspirational, especially coming out on Christmas. Everything the movie is about, the different racial things, the different uplifting things that happen are really overwhelming once you see it on screen," Carter said.