Shaka King’s “Judas and the Black Messiah” has arrived at something of a cultural tipping point for Hollywood. Months before the tragedy of George Floyd‘s death or the millions of people marching in the streets for social justice, his period piece about the assassination of a prominent Chicago community leader, Fred Hampton, had wrapped production. So, had Aaron Sorkin’s “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” Regina King’s “One Night in Miami” and Lee Daniels’ “The United States vs. Billie Holiday.” All period pieces. All films that touched on the social justice movement and the government’s history of trying to squash it. So, how did all these films find themselves on the same creative path? King has some thoughts.
‘Judas And The Black Messiah’: Daniel Kaluuya Is Electric In Hampton Biopic [Sundance Review]
“I think it’s tough to say definitively, but I think that the same way that Obama presidency ushered in the black excellence industrial complex, where you just saw a bunch of movies and TV shows directed by black directors and written by black writers, starring black actors kind of funded at the highest level and put forth into the mainstream. And as black creators have been saying for decades, gobbled up and adored. I think in the same way that the Obama administration made something like that thing possible,” King says. “I think that Trump’s presidency, obviously brought forth into the mainstream, outwardly racist rhetoric, and that’s been put forth in fake news and the QAnon’s and all those things. I think it’s also brought up a reaction of whether it be filmmakers or whether it be the studio being more comfortable releasing material that may be in the past they might have seen as too radical. I think that, honestly, it’s not so much that I think that any studio executive has had some kind of political awakening as much as we kind of normalized [that] if you disagree with Donald Trump and the like, people who think like that, they are just saying what they feel and expressing what they feel. And there is no political correctness. And I think that what you see from the other side is just less political correctness as well. People say, ‘That’s how you feel? Well, this is how I feel.’ And I think that that led to some of these movies that kind of take on state-sponsored violence in much more stark, real terms than they have in the past.”
“Black Messiah,” tells the story of how civil rights leader Hampton (Daniel Kaluyaa) and FBI informant William O’Neal (LaKeith Stanfield) crossed paths in the Chicago chapter of the Black Panthers in the late 1960s. Spoiler alert: it’s a tragedy, but it’s earned its critical acclaim, and both Kaluyaa and Stanfield are potential Oscar nominees for their performances.
During an interview earlier this month, King also discussed the four-year journey of getting the movie made and how important it was to get the sign off from Fred Hampton’s only son, Fred Hampton, Jr.
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The Playlist I’ve read about this part, that the Lucas Brothers had been working on this, and they sort of came to you because it had been developed as a project somewhere else but fell apart. Is that correct?
No, so they had actually been trying to take this pitch that they gave me, which is that they wanted to make “The Departed” inside the world of COINTELPRO. COINTELPRO, being the type of intelligence program that J. Edgar Hoover created to crush [social justice movements]. And they basically brought that to me, and I started developing an outline with them. They had me make a one-page outline of evidence, and they’d be about two to five-page outline, and then started doing some more pieces, and I started writing when I was introduced to Will Berson. And Will was interested in writing a traditional Fred Hampton biopic. Sort of soup to nuts and looking to attach a director. And so, I went to Will, and I said, ”Look, we’re making this movie kind of from this vantage point, would you be interested in being on our team and basically starting from scratch?” And so Will, and I rented a spot in LA for about a week, and he sat at my kitchen table, and we put this movie on cards and then turned that into an outline, and got to writing.
How many years have you been working on this overall?
Four years.
And the release has been delayed because of the pandemic as well. So this feels like a long journey, I’m guessing?
Yeah. I mean, the release was delayed because of the pandemic. We still had to shoot the movie and have it in the can by the end of December 2019.
Did you go after Daniel and Keith for their roles specifically?
[We wrote] the movie with Daniel and LaKeith, Dominique [Fishback], and Jesse [Plemmons] in mind. And so, before we even went to Warner Brothers, we’d attached Daniel and LaKeith and Dominique. Jesse, we got attached later, probably two weeks after shooting [began]. They were always part of the package.
Did you go to them while you were in the process of making it, and ask them to come on board or, or was it just a hope that they would want to be involved?
Well, Lakeith, I had a relationship with them before making the movie, so I told them what I was doing, and he was like, “Yo, I’m in. I’m in once you’re ready to go.” Dominique and I met and formed a relationship over the course of a year, but she read the script, and she was in. And Daniel, I met through Ryan [Coogler] because Ryan became a producer, and I told him I wanted Daniel, and he went and pitched him the project because they worked together on “Black Panther.” And, and Daniel and I sat down in New York, and I sent him the outline. He really, really liked the treatment that we put together, and he read the script, and he [was in].
Was there anything thematically you were focused on, either writing or directing the film?
I mean, several things, a lot of this movie was about the dangers of being apolitical, and that was important for us to highlight. On the Panther side of things, we were obviously putting forth this chapter of history that is still ongoing. The FBI was manipulating and infiltrating and a fascinating freedom fighter and revolutionaries. So we wanted to put that out there that, despite the Panthers’ portrayal as thugs, they really led with love. So we wanted to really kind of show that by highlighting Fred Hampton’s relationship with Debbie Johnson and the love that they had and just showing the love that, the comrade passed on to one another.
I interviewed H.E.R. a couple of weeks ago, and she said that you guys had approached her over the summer about doing the end title credits song, “Fight For You.” Do you feel like the date getting pushed back was a bonus in a way of getting more time to work on the film than you would have when it was supposed to come out in the summer?
I mean, [Laughs.] I can’t call it a bonus because we needed more time because we couldn’t be in the same room. We had a difficult time that needed to take more time.
But if the film had come out in August, the H.E.R. song wouldn’t have been part of it? Am I wrong?
No, I don’t think that that’s the case. We just had a different timetable. Yeah. It wasn’t like we had extra time. Believe it or not, we didn’t have that time. No, the pandemic played a pretty big role in how the music was played, and it changed the nature of the music in the film, in a great way. But it, wasn’t a balloon in terms of giving it time. Yeah.
Fred Hampton’s son and his mother are still alive. How important was it for you that they are happy with Fred’s portrayal in the film?
I wasn’t willing to move forward until we had their blessing. No one was. And so, we approached that initially from a principled stand, and it took about a year in pain for us to agree to move forward, and really not us: he wanted them to move forward with us and be cultural consultants to come on board officially. And when they did, Fred Hampton Jr., one of the stipulations was that he’d be on set every day and not to say it was without its challenges, but man, I mean he’d be able to help us avoid so many pitfalls. And we were, myself and Will especially, we did tons and tons of research about the subject matter. So, we felt pretty confident that what we were putting out there was the truth, but even within texts written by really well-meaning academics, there were many mistruths often printed. And if you want to get the real history of these people’s lives, you kind of have to talk to them because, as you’d imagine, after the events of December 4th, when Fred Hampton was assassinated, folks went underground. They stopped really communicating outwardly and talking to just anybody. So, there isn’t a ton of, I mean, I think a bit of non-written, but if you want the full truth, you kind of have to go to the source.
Was there anything in particular that Fred Hampton Jr or Deborah Johnson specifically told you guys that you were unaware of beforehand?
I just recently thought of something. This one is foundational. The history books put forward that William O’Neal was Fred Hampton’s bodyguard. He was not. He was a member of the security padre, but he was not Fred Hampton’s bodyguard, and they were not friends. I mean, we’d written six or seven drafts of the script. We had to completely change our approach to making the movie and still manage to give a bond between the two. It was a real magic trick to pull off.
“Judas” along with “Trial of the Chicago 7,” “One Night in Miami,” and even “The United States VS. Billie Holiday” are all period pieces that deal with social justice. And yet, they were all shot around the same time before anything that happened with George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement over the summer. Do you feel like there was a collective zeitgeist in the air over the past few years to sort of get these stories out to audiences? Do you think it’s a coincidence?
I mean, I think it’s tough to say definitively, but I think that the same way that Obama presidency ushered in the black excellence industrial complex, where you just saw a bunch of movies and TV shows directed by black directors and written by black writers, starring black actors kind of funded at the highest level and put forth into the mainstream. And as black creators have been saying for decades, gobbled up and adored. I think in the same way that the Obama administration made something like that thing possible. I think that Trump’s presidency, obviously brought forth into the mainstream, outwardly racist rhetoric, and that’s been put forth in fake news and the QAnon’s and all those things. I think it’s also brought up a reaction of whether it be filmmakers or whether it be the studio being more comfortable releasing material that may be in the past they might have seen as too radical. I think that, honestly, it’s not so much that I think that any studio executive has had some kind of political awakening as much as we kind of normalized [that] if you don’t agree with Donald Trump and the like, people who think like that, they are just saying what they feel and expressing what they feel. And there is no political correctness. And I think that what you see from the other side is just less political correctness as well. People say, “That’s how you feel? Well, this is how I feel.” And I think that that led to some of these movies that kind of take on state-sponsored violence in much more stark, real terms than they have in the past.
“Judas and the Black Messiah” opens in theaters nationwide and is available on HBO Max on Friday