[MUSIC PLAYING]
Good afternoon, and thank you for joining
us for today's In Conversation.
I'm Laken Giles, a performing arts senior
from Ormond Beach, Florida.
Last month, Yahya-Abdul Mateen II
struck Emmy gold for his captivating dual performances
as Cal Abar and Dr. Manhattan in HBO's powerful adaptation
of "Watchmen."
His historic at home acceptance speech
quickly went viral for its inspiring humility and honesty.
Since his screen debut in 2016, Abdul Mateen
has solidified himself as an acting powerhouse
through films ranging from "Aquaman," "Us,"
"The Trial of Chicago 7," the highly anticipated "Candyman,"
and the long-awaited "The Matrix 4."
Before committing himself fully to acting,
Abdul Mateen studied architecture.
A discipline of balance, precision,
dimension, and art to create structural brilliance.
His performances reveal the same cornerstones characters
cemented in humanity with acres of passion
and magic swirling within.
Let's take a look.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
I, Bobby G. Seale, have a motion pro se to defend myself.
I'd like to invoke the precedent of Adams versus US ex rel.
McCann where the Supreme Court--
JUDGE: Overruled.
I am being denied right now--
JUDGE: Mr. Seale--
My constitutional right--
JUDGE: -- will you be quiet?
-- for legal representation.
Will you be quiet!
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Are you at least going to take one of these?
If I knew I'd use that, I wouldn't
need to be making the speech.
Ladies and gentlemen, Distinguished Performance Award
Honoree, Yahya-Abdul Mateen II.
Congratulations!
Thank you, thank you so much.
Appreciate it.
Thank you to the Savannah College of Arts and Design.
Thank you to the students, thank you
to the president, Paula Wallace, for this distinguished award.
It's such an honor.
For me, when I took this role, it was a chance
to advocate for Bobby Seale.
Bobby Seale was a man who advocated
for people like myself--
for black people, for people from underprivileged
communities, people who grew up in poverty, people who
were against war, people who were historically
downtrodden by our government.
And he went through so much and he
sacrificed a lot to put himself on the line for our cause.
And it's always a great honor when
I can use my own artistry to-- in return, advocate for him,
to advocate for his story.
So I'm just so, so grateful that I can lend my own artistry
to a good cause, and thank you.
Thank you so much for this award.
Appreciate it.
Hi, and welcome to the SCAD Savannah Film Festival.
I'm "Entertainment Weekly's" Chancellor, Agard,
and I am so, so happy to be here with Emmy award-winning actor
Yahya-Abdul Mateen II for a lively chat
about his really, really successful career
over the past five years.
How are you doing, Yahya?
I'm chilling, man.
I'm doing well.
It's glad to be here--
I mean, pardon.
It's good to be here--
I'm excited, man. I'm doing good.
How about yourself?
I'm doing well.
I want to talk--
I think you've had such--
I think you graduated at Yale, what five years ago?
Yeah, I mean, that was June 2015.
And in the past five years, your career has just blown up
in such an amazing way.
I mean, how do you feel when you look
back at all you've managed to accomplish in a relatively
short amount of time?
To be honest, I saw "The Real," and it's shocking, man.
It's really shocking in this moment because I have.
I've been on the move, and I've been
able to stay around the tastemakers
to really feed my appetite.
I'm doing the thing that I left school to do,
and I haven't really gotten a chance to catch up
and to reflect.
But when I do, I'm always shocked, and then I'm grateful.
I'm really, really grateful for the things
that I've been able to experience
in such a short amount of time.
And as the student introductor mentioned,
you wanted to become an architect
and then made your way into acting.
For you, I mean, how much of your career
since moving over to acting--
so it has been having a plan or being adaptable to changing
circumstances.
What's that balance like?
That's an excellent question.
For me, I've had a plan.
And at some point, my plan was to try acting
and to give it my all.
And then giving it my all got me into graduate school,
and I needed to make another plan.
And then, once I was in school, my plan
was to accumulate as much experience and tools
as I could to really challenge myself to become an actor.
I didn't go to graduate school considering myself an actor.
I went to grad school considering myself someone
who wanted to be an actor.
And I had to learn to change my vocabulary.
It took about a whole year to change my vocabulary
to call myself an actor.
And then my plan was to get better.
Once I graduated again, I had to make
another plan because my skills had
gotten me into a certain place.
And so then my plan was to be able to have artistic freedom,
which meant that I wanted to become financially
stable through my art.
And I wanted to even more importantly,
be able to move across projects and genres
in a way that fulfilled whatever appetite
I tended to have at the time.
So my plan really has always started from looking at myself
and seeing what I desired, never really aiming
for a specific end result. But just
more so aiming for a quality, or aiming for a feeling.
And then, fighting, working really hard,
vehemently, I think to give myself that feeling.
And that's something that's been my formula up until this point.
I think right now I'm in a place where I'm beginning to take
more ownership of the place that I'm in, beginning,
to say, OK, well now that you are at this current juncture,
what do you want to do?
What do you want to do with it?
How do you want to grow, and how do
you want to begin to inspire?
So that's currently the way that I'm planning right now.
And thinking of inspiration, I think your performance in "The
Trial of Chicago 7" is really inspirational because as Black
Panther co-founder Bobby Seale, you've suffered through so many
injustices in this movie, and you have
to just sit there in court.
But before we get to those courtroom scenes,
your first scene in the movie is totally
different from everything else you're going to experience.
Yeah.
And we actually have a clip of that.
So can we roll the clip, please?
You can't give the speech in Chicago.
Fred Hampton wants me there.
Let him give a speech.
Between Hayden and Hoffman, there could be 5,000.
I should talk to 5,000 people.
Not while you're in trouble in Connecticut.
That's why I'm in trouble.
I'm the head of the Black Panther south.
When the hell am I not going to be in trouble.
Travel bag.
You're going to be in a lot more of it if you stand up
and say fry the pigs.
If they attack me.
You're taking it out of context.
So will every white person in America.
Cops don't give a shit about context,
and you don't have enough protection in Chicago.
That's no place to be right now, but in it.
But fry the pigs?
If they attack me.
- Doctor King-- - Is dead.
He has a dream.
Well now, he has a fucking bullet in his head.
Martin's dead, Malcolm's dead, Medgar's dead, Bobby's dead,
Jesus is dead.
They tried the peace fight.
We're going to try something else.
Sandra, it's only for four hours-- that's it.
Snack.
Are you at least going to take one of these?
If I knew I would know need that,
I wouldn't need to make the speech.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
And I said that scene is just dramatically different
from the rest of the movie.
What was it like shooting that particular sequence,
and how did you go in--
how did you prepare for that first scene as Bobby Seale?
Yeah, that scene was the first scene that I read.
I think that was the first scene that I read in the script--
it's his first scene.
But it was the last scene that I shot.
And that scene to me, that was when I made the choice that I
wanted to do the movie because that
was the Bobby Seale that was closer to the person
that I had found in my research.
That was the Bobby Seale who was lively, who was extremely
quick-witted, strong-willed.
And Bobby Seale, he's a charismatic person--
very charismatic, lights up a room with his smile
and with his stories.
He'll talk about cooking and with the same enjoyment
that someone will talk about sports.
And then he'll get personal, and he'll tell you
about the struggles of his trial,
and they'll tell you about being in prison.
And so Bobby, he's a very multifaceted character.
And for me, that was really a marriage
between my own instincts and the excellent, excellent writing
that Aaron put on the page for us.
Mm-hmm It's funny when I interviewed Aaron Sorkin before
the piece I wrote about you a month ago,
he mentioned one of the things he noticed in this movie was
a lot of the time that you--
while a lot of the other actors that you played with,
"The Chicago 7," they would hang around
together and hang out and joke around,
you were a bit more reserved.
Because in the movie, Bobby Seale isn't
really part of this group.
He's been added into this terrible trial
because he's apart of Black Panther.
Was that a conscious choice on your part to keep yourself
removed from the actors so that distance
came through on screen?
No, I never even noticed that if I'm being perfectly honest.
I never noticed that.
But I think a lot of what that has to do-- at least with it
visibly appearing that way is--
the place where I sat inside of the courtrooms was literally
on the other side of the rest of the quote unquote,
"co-defendants," who would be the cast.
So I came to set, I sat in my chair, which was on the end
and everyone else sat along the row.
And that's just how the set up was.
But I just wanted to just be clear
that there was no effort to isolate or anything like that.
And I actually had a really good time on set--
a really good time on set.
So, yeah, so, no.
I think if anything, it was really just maybe a reflection
of the focus, making sure that I could capture those moments
in between because at the same time,
I am advocating for a character who is in prison,
who is in prison and who doesn't have
the freedom to come and go.
So at some point in my preparation,
I had to make sure that I put on that mentality
to make sure that when he says, action, that I'm ready to be
in whatever headspace that was.
But, no, it wasn't really, it wasn't
a conscious decision at all.
And, I mean, one of the scenes of this movie and recreates
a real-life thing that happened, and Bobby gets bound and gagged
in court, which is just a harrowing thing to watch at any
point of time, but especially in a climate in which we are now.
For you, what was it like shooting that sequence--
emotionally?
Yeah, that was a difficult scene to shoot--
very difficult scene to shoot.
And I never really even thought about what it would be like--
I just remember that it was my job to sit down and to be bound
and to have the--
to go through that.
But I also hearken back to there's a line that Bobby Seale
says in one of his interviews.
He says when you're a revolutionary,
they can't break your spirit.
And I knew that I was doing it in order to advocate,
in order to tell Bobby's story.
In my performance, it all goes back
to me understanding that this was somebody
else's real experience.
So I wanted to make sure that I honored that experience
and that I meant that I had to put myself in that position
and allowed my own self to go through that.
But knowing that it was nothing like what
Bobby actually went through.
He was silenced in a way that I was not ever silenced.
I could put my hand up, and I could wave,
and I could say, hey, I need out.
Bobby couldn't do that-- there were no hand signals.
His hands were actually shackled.
His mouth was actually tied.
And so, it was difficult. But I also had a responsibility.
I couldn't let that moment break my spirit.
I couldn't let that moment be larger than my own self
because Bobby was victorious in that moment.
He wasn't victimized.
He wasn't demoralized.
He might have been a humiliating experience,
but Bobby was defiant in those moments.
And so, at some point as an actor,
I had to put on that same pride that he had as well to say,
hey, you can cover my mouth, you can put me in chains,
but you can't lock me down nor silence me.
And there was something very powerful about forcing myself
as the actor about, about causing myself as the actor
to force everybody in that scene to witness
what the United States Justice system had just done to me--
how I and my rights had been violated.
And when the work is that important,
when it's rooted in something real, then it's fun.
It's fun because you get to--
it's difficult, but it's also cathartic,
and it's also a pleasurable experience because you know
why you're in that position.
So I just put myself in those shoes
and tried to make sure that I was an advocate knowing
that it was bigger than me.
Mm-hmm, and as if I didn't say you just graduated five years
ago, I mean, but I'm curious, did
anything at Yale prepare you for what you
have to go through right now?
You're in Berlin right now shooting
"The Matrix 4" amid a pandemic.
I mean, what has it like been--
what is it like to shoot a movie like "The Matrix
4" in a pandemic and deal with all those protocols?
Allow me to say, no, flat out, no.
There's nothing that prepared me to be in a pandemic.
I mean, we felt like we were isolated from New York
because there were school seven days a week,
and so there was nowhere to go.
But that's just about it.
There's nothing that can compare.
But Berlin, it's been good to be here.
Berlin, beautiful, beautiful country.
A country that appreciates the arts,
appreciates music and art, art culture, theater as well.
And we're making something really cool
here on "The Matrix 4" that I think a lot of people
will be excited about.
But we're doing it in the same way
that everyone else in the world, hopefully, is.
We're trying to be safe and respectful
and really use our artistry.
Our artistry right now is actually community building.
It's the thing that's keeping us strong
and keeping us together while a lot of us are away from home.
So we get to say, hey, I'm going to get up go to work,
and I'm going to do my art and build
community at the same time.
That's really the theme of how we're making "The Matrix,"
but it's also the theme of how myself,
personally, getting through these pandemic days,
these crazy pandemic days.
And I mean, also we have a lot of students watching this right
now, for you, I mean, what advice would you give them
about entering this profession and being
an artist at a time like this?
Ah, man, I think, I would say trust yourself, trust your gut.
I would say to young artists, trust your instinct,
and tell yourself in the mirror every single day
that you are enough, stay curious, and fight
for your artistic integrity.
Because at the end of the day, I think that's going
to separate you from the crowd.
It's what makes you you.
So stick to your guns.
And that you won't always be appreciated, but in the end,
if you stick to your guns, I think that you
will appreciate your own work.
The world needs artists.
There's a refrain in the movie of "The Chicago 7,"
the whole world is watching.
And art is definitely needed to get out messages that voice
what the youth are feeling, that voice
the direction of the world.
Art has always been a tool--
be it painting, writing, acting, filmmaking, photography.
There is such a strong medium to express
the rage and the inner feelings of the world.
So thank you for your art.
Advocate for the Arts, advocate for students and keep at it.
That would be my advice.
Awesome, well, it looks like that's all the time we have
for tonight's conversation.
Yahya, thank you so, so much for being here
and for taking the time to talk.
Appreciate the open communication.
And congratulations, again, on the Emmy, and again,
on this award tonight as well.
And thank you, everyone, at home for watching and tuning in.
And please stick it out, please keep
tuning in for more of the SCAD Savannah Film Festival.
All right.
It's been such a pleasure.
And thank you to everyone.
And be well.