Regina King has seen the discourse. She knows that some pundits, critics, and others have criticized her new Best Picture contender, “One Night in Miami,” for feeling at times like a “filmed play.” In reality, screenwriter Kemp Powers did adapt his own play for the screen, but in her view, it’s reductive.
“You’re always going to have those people who’ve never read the play or have never seen the play who will say that it’s just like the play,” King says. “It’s been funny hearing some of those reviews. Kemp and I still talk all the time, and he’ll have read a review that’ll say that, and because this is his baby, no one knows this more than him. He can tell just by what the reviewer is saying that they’ve never read the play or have never seen the play. If you have, then you would know that any dialogue in our film from the play doesn’t even start until like 30, 40 minutes into the film.”
READ MORE: Four Legends spend “One Night In Miami” [Venice Review]
Of course, “One Night” is not the only contender originally produced for the stage. Florian Zeller’s “The Father,” George C. Wolfe’s “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” and even Kornél Mundruczó’s “Pieces of a Woman” have theatrical origins. And they’ll all impact the season in one way or another.
“One Night” chronicles a fictionalized meeting between Cassius Clay (Elie Goree), Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge), Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom, Jr.), and Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir), in the hours following Clay’s surprise win over Sony Liston in 1964. Over the course of the night, the historical figures discuss their stances on the civil rights movement of the time and where they think they fit into it. All four actors are impressive with Ben-Adir already winning Breakthrough Actor at the 30th Gotham Awards earlier this week.
King has spent the past decade honing her directing skills in television on varied series such as “Scandal,” “Shameless,” “The Good Doctor” and “Insecure.” After the response to “One Night,” you should expect many more feature directing assignments on the Oscar winner’s docket. Assuming she wants them, of course.
The four-time Emmy winner jumped on the phone on Monday to chat about “One Night,” finding its exemplary cast and more.
_____
The Playlist: I know that you’ve done a bunch of work directing for television over the years. What made “One Night in Miami” the right movie for your first big screen effort?
Regina King: I was looking to do a film that was a love story with a historical backdrop, and I had expressed that with my agent while we were out trying to procure what that debut would be. Then this came to [his] attention, and while it wasn’t a romance, he definitely felt like it spoke to that idea of a love story with a historical piece. I agreed 100%. Then, it’s that Kemp Powers’ words are just so powerful. The dialogue is so powerful. It’s an actor’s piece. We’ve never seen these men portrayed in such a human way. There’s just a laundry list of, “Yeah, of course, this would be the first.”
Was it harder or easier than you thought to find the right four actors to play these historical figures?
Ooh. I didn’t think that it was going to be easy. Definitely. I’m one of those people that really believe that the role chooses the actor, opposed to the other way around. I knew that it was going to be four actors that truly understood the undertaking; that were going to be willing to take their egos out of it and embody these legends in a way that has never been seen before. I believe that the universe was going to make that very clear when that actor’s audition came, and it was very clear. I would not change any of the players. Even if I had 15 chances to do things differently, the one thing that would definitely remain the same is that it would be Kingsley, Eli, Leslie, and Aldis.
I know that Kingsley originally auditioned for a different role, right?
He had gotten the part to play Muhammad Ali in Ang Lee’s film [that didn’t go forward], so that audition tape or screen test or whatever [was] sent in, obviously, because Muhammad Ali is Cassius. The amazing casting director on our film, Kimberly Hardin, got her hands on that so that I could see it in consideration of Cassius. I thought that it was a great screen test, but, I don’t know, I just felt like it was a more mature version of Cassius that wasn’t the Cassius that we were trying to capture. Now, I totally believe Kingsley could play anything, but I just don’t think I was seeing it at that point. So, we continued on, and as we were trying to cast our Malcolm, it was Kimberly Harden who said, “You know the guy that you saw the screen test for Cassius? What do you think about him coming in from Malcolm?” I said, “Huh. Well, if you think so.” Kimberly can see things before you can see them, and that’s what makes her such a great casting director. So, she sent him the sides for Malcolm. He had a couple of days. He was in New York, working on a show, and he sent in his tape and I was just like, “Oh, wow. Okay. There is something here.” She had also told me that he was in “The OA” and in “High Fidelity,” so I looked at a couple of episodes of both of those shows and I was just blown away because there’s just a difference in all of those performances, and his ability to just master dialect was not lost on me. So, I called him and we had a really in-depth conversation, I think we spoke for like an hour of just sharing thoughts and some things I wanted to see that he would explore and if he’d be willing to put himself on tape again after that conversation. Long story short, he’s brilliant.
Yeah. They’re all brilliant.
Yes.
Did you have a lot of time for rehearsal before shooting began?
No. We did not. We basically had zero time for rehearsal. We had a table read because they were all in different cities, some in different countries, and we had a schedule. We were able to rehearse the night before our cameras rolled for the first time, and the scene we were shooting was the scene when they all are in the hotel room for the first time together. That was the first scene shot. Because we did not have rehearsal time, a lot of time on shooting days that would’ve been time shooting, that time got eaten up because we had to rehearse [in blocking out the scenes].
Going into the production, was that your biggest concern?
Absolutely. We kept trying to find places to create a week here or there to rehearse before, and we never could get them in the same city together at the same time. I kind of felt like it was going to be more of a disservice to have just two of them or just three of them than to have all four of them together. I felt like this was a brotherhood. If one person didn’t get equal time within the foursome, that might show itself in production, and I felt like it was riskier to just rehearse with not all of them than to just not rehearse it all.
Was there anything before you started filming, in pre-production, that you were most concerned with from a directing perspective?
I guess just [that my] overall concern was you always did not want it to feel like a play. Always wanted to make sure that the dialogue remained the star, but without it ever feeling like a play. That was always a concern. But there were things that I went into production with, ideas that I had that we actually employed with hopes that it would not feel static, that it would not feel claustrophobic unless I wanted it to feel claustrophobic. There are some moments that I wanted that feeling, but I only wanted it to be the case because it was staged in a way or blocked in a way to have that feeling; that it was what we were doing in camera that was creating a feeling of exclusion or tightness. Hopefully, we achieved that. You’re always going to have those people who’ve never read the play or have never seen the play who will say that it’s just like the play. It’s been funny hearing some of those reviews. Kemp and I still talk all the time, and he’ll have read a review that’ll say that, and because this is his baby, no one knows this more than him. He can tell just by what the reviewer is saying that they’ve never read the play or have never seen the play. If you have, then you would know that any dialogue in our film from the play doesn’t even start until like 30, 40 minutes into the film.
I didn’t even realize that.
Yeah.
I never saw the play. Raising my hand. Never saw it.
Yeah, me neither! Me neither, but I read the play. I read the screenplay, and before I was going to meet with Kemp, I wanted to read the play. So I bought the play and read that play. I was amazed at his ability to keep all of those things in the screenplay but still find a way to open up the screenplay.
There are three films released over the past five months, “Trial of the Chicago 7,” “Judas and the Black Messiah” and your film, all movies that were in production or shot before the pandemic, before George Floyd’s death and the social justice protests this past summer. They all feel so timely, but clearly there a zeitgeist in the air that these films were being made when they were. Why do you think that was? Is it all just coincidence?
Well, I think we call it coincidence, but the universe is very powerful. We can have faith in what fate has in store for us, but I believe fate has already been planned. That’s already going to happen. We don’t have a crystal ball, we can’t see what’s going to happen, but I think the universe, by design, made sure that these stories were being told at this moment. Life sometimes imitates art, and art sometimes imitates life, but what we do know is through music, through film, through TV, cultures are shifted, new cultures are created or subcultures are created, and those pieces of art, especially, are quite powerful. So, I think that it’s no mistake that in the universe, as these things are happening, that this is a perfect companion, these films, to truly keep the conversations going because the thing that is true is that the subject matter in those films has always been timely. We’re taking historical moments and making films about them, but these historical moments are historical moments because of the structures that are in place in America.
“One Night in Miami” debuts on Amazon Prime Video on Jan. 15.