What was most helpful from your grab-bag when it came to this role?
In a lot of ways, this role really maps onto my own experience. I live in Brooklyn. I’m very much connected to the scene of artists who are around here. I’m in my early 40s – or in my 40s, I should say, at this point – trying to figure out what this next part of my life is going to look like. I’m not married. There are a lot of question marks still at my old age. In a way, it was more about lending my own vulnerability to the character, more so than trying to craft a big character out of nothing. It lined up nicely with my life.
On the note of specificity, the cast that came together for this had a lot of existing knowledge of each other, which is helpful whenever you’re working on a tight budget. When you’re pulling from those kinds of connections that you have with actors, how do you make sure that the specificity of that private vocabulary is something that can be read by an audience?
One of the reasons why I was really intent on helping to choose the actors and reaching out to people that I know was that I knew I could trust that they have a process that is compatible with my own, and one that I think leads to specificity. Nicole Beharie [who plays Roger’s ex, Casey] and I go back a really long way. She went to Juilliard when I was at NYU, so I saw a lot of her early work. I know how hyper-specific she is. Same with DeWanda [Wise, who plays Roger’s lover, Nicole], we go back a long way. Cassandra Freeman [who plays art collector Lorna], all of us kind of come from a similar school of thought. I knew I could trust that they would show up with their very best.
This is a role you sought out for the opportunity to be a romantic lead, which was something you hadn’t had the chance to play before. What new skillset did that require you to develop, and what did you learn about yourself from playing this role?
The main thing is that it required a lot of belief and faith in myself, that I could be seen as a romantic lead. One of the things about acting that people often don’t talk about is that when you’re working on a part, it really brings you into close contact with yourself. It’s easy for issues of self-doubt to come into it, and I found myself walking this line of feeling like, “Are people really gonna buy me as the romantic lead of a movie because I’ve never done this before?” And yet, at the same time, I was feeling like, “No, I can do this! I think I can believe myself as this guy.” Teetering that line took quite a lot of work, but I learned that I think I can believe myself in as a romantic leading man.
Relationships and “situationships” don’t always lend themselves to decisions that are the most logical. How do you approach playing moments when a character might not necessarily know what they mean by saying or doing something?
I think it’s a trap to play the middle, to play, “I don’t know, I’m not sure.” It’s often better to play it’s one thing and then, in the very next moment, it’s the other thing. I’m 100% sure, and then in the next instance, I am not sure at all. It gives you something to commit to. Once you start playing passively, “I don’t know, I’m confused,” the audience tends to unplug.
Selfishly, as a writer, I have to ask how you render such a solitary artistic craft like writing as interesting to watch?
That, actually, was really tough. I spoke to a bunch of writer friends of mine before doing the part and just asked, “What is the process like? What is it like when you’re stuck and on a deadline? How do you get to the place where you turn something in?” And a lot of them said, “Well, there’s often just a lot of waiting.” It was interesting because when I talked to Titus Kaphar about painting, he said the same thing. People think you come into the studio and you start painting. No, you actually spend a lot of time just waiting and thinking. That was something that really surprised me.
Obviously, no production wouldn’t trade for more money, but thinking about how the production was able to lean into friends for things like locations, do you feel that having such a strong contribution from the community was necessary to give the film the feeling that it does?
Originally, the movie was set in Manhattan on the Upper West Side. I really wanted to move it to Brooklyn, and I wanted it to be set in the black Brooklyn community. I wanted it to be about artists who were trying to create art or make work. I wanted this gentrification angle to be present. Not that it’s something that we want to lean all the way into, but that’s the backdrop of their lives. [We were] calling in favors to friends who have restaurants or cafes. I mean, we shot in my own apartment! Those kinds of things weren’t like, “Oh no, we don’t know what to do. Who can we call?” We want this to feel homegrown and of the community. We want people who see it and are familiar with this community to go, “Oh man, that’s my coffee shop! I know that place.”
Did playing Roger as he wrote “The Evolving City” change your feelings at all about NYC and who gets to call it home? As someone also from the South but now living here, I find this very tricky.
It has changed. When I was doing this movie, I had more or less made up my mind that I was ready to leave New York because I’d been feeling disconnected from the community and the city in a way. So much has changed, and so many people who I came up with here have gone on. Either they’ve started families and left the city, or they’ve just left the city because it’s too expensive. But now, I feel recommitted to staying here and to really making a home in this place. I had a party this weekend, and I invited probably like 20 people. I was like, “I don’t want to go crazy!” Then, like 115-120 people showed up at my place. It was folks that I hadn’t seen in years! Danai Gurira and actors who’ve been [in New York] forever were here, and I was like, “You know what? This is what I love about this place. This is what I miss.” It’s worth staying here and fighting for.
“Love, Brooklyn” begins its theatrical rollout on August 29 via Greenwich Entertainment.
