I really enjoyed the film and I'm so happy to speak to you both today
because you guys made this film
and I loved your characters and performances and I just you're
just good people.
Are you guys are they just really good people?
Thank you. Thank.
Is it quite nice to play good hearted individuals
because I find so many characters a victim of the kind of intention
to explore the darker sides of our demeanor.
But these two, the two you play, they're just quite naturally good people
that almost felt quite right to say in some ways,
girl, baby.
Well, I think
I mean, I guess I don't want to correct you,
but I kind of want to broaden this out,
I don't think, from a from a jumping standpoint.
Mm hmm.
He's he's not necessarily.
He does he does good things, but he's in a situation
where he's he's tempted every day to
to do something that
that ultimately,
you know, would damage himself or his family
because because of the times in which he lives,
but he chooses to
to sort of transcend that and and try to do what is the right thing.
So I don't necessarily know that he's so much a good person
as as it is that he he makes good choices
and and in spite of the temptation not to.
But that having said,
it is nice to play somebody who can make those noble choices
despite feeling like doing the other thing, you know,
because it creates sort of a an internal conflict that becomes very real
that every every person can relate to as we go through our day to day lives. Hmm.
You know, I.
I think there is something incredibly gripping when
you can
tell stories about the regular people you see on the streets
and in the tubes, in the subways every day.
We don't need the extra drama.
I think they're the interesting stories that speak to your spirit
are the stories of people that you rub elbows with every day.
And there's great beauty in that.
You don't always need the explosions and the car chases and the espionage
and all of that just basic human existence is incredibly interesting.
And I don't know if something, you know,
we only sort of see to some degree as an audience member,
we see some of the good you talk about good choices.
We see the good choices as an audience.
We see a young girl standing by her.
I mean, nobody else does.
But as the two actors embodying them, do you have to create the bad?
You know, every human is more than one thing.
We have good choice sides. You have bad side.
You have an obligation to the characters, how you understand them to go off
and understand what their lesser nice traits could be, if that makes sense.
Yeah, I think so.
I think that's. That is our job.
That's that's the that's the assignment to create
a multidimensional individual
that that that then we can that we can present
to to an audience.
I mean, I think that's that's the job of an actor is to
is to is to manifest humanity in all its, you know,
the good, the bad and the ugly.
And and I think that's the only way it becomes relatable
because just as easily as as as jumping and Mabel
could take in Kaia and embrace, you know, a kind of parental responsibility to her.
We could have chosen to protect our our own
being business people in the Jim Crow
South, being an exception to a rule
and having something that could be taken away from us
in an instant, simply if somebody didn't like
our relationship with Kaia,
you know, that was at risk.
And yet, you know, we chose to do the right thing
or to do what we perceived as being the right thing.
And and I think that can only be measured as being right
if there's a if there's an alternative not to.
And just very quickly, if I go
this is is this a side of America you both know quite well?
I've been to the States a few times, and it's like a million countries
rolled into one, different landscapes feeling so different, wildly
different to the next.
You got the desert in Arizona, to the New York, to the marshes in Louisiana.
But is this world being depicted, one that's familiar to either of you?
Mm hmm.
I don't know.
The South to the extent that Sterling certainly does.
But when when we talk about the subject matter of the story,
which to me is social consciousness, when we talk about cultural differences
and how how we embrace and deal with them in this country.
Absolutely. And that's why I was attracted to it.
Social consciousness, racial
and social and cultural consciousness is something that is my passion to to
to speak on in my daily life and in my art.
And this is a representation.
And that's why I think it will resonate with audiences,
because it is a slice of life, whether it be period or in current day in 2022.
Yeah. Yeah.
I mean it was very familiar to me in the sense that I grew up
in, in the South
and I mean, without the marshes
I had, I had mountains, I had,
you know, foothills and mountains.
But it was the south nonetheless.
And, you know, there's always, you know, vestiges of
of those things, even of Jim Crow,
while it's not not legal anymore, there there are not legal in in
in in words.
But certain.
Certainly still in some people's hearts, you know, is is in practice.
And so growing up in that environment, yeah, I'm very familiar with it,
but I for your performances are fantastic and thanks for speaking to me today
and good luck with the release the movie.
Thanks, James. Thank you.