It's hot in Vietnam.
Just the climate,
the way it hung on you,
the way it stuck to you,
that's gonna inform
how you play the scene, what's going on.
Hello.
My name's Jonathan Majors,
and I play David in Da 5 Bloods on Netflix.
You here for the gold.
Don't lie.
The bloods have gone to Vietnam to embark
on what's called their final mission.
I show up, and I crash the party.
I get up under my dad, played by Delroy Lindo,
and I kinda start my mission, which is to get closer to him.
You wanna tell your bloods, or should I?
I become a part of the unit and they accept me.
And they allow me to join them on the search for gold.
Why did you come here?
Well, he's my dad.
Feels like my last chance with him.
I read the script, and I saw that this was
a fella who was dealing with an issue.
And that issue was his love for his father.
You ain't been nothing but an anchor
around my neck, yeah, I said it.
And the love he needs from his father.
In developing this role, I began
to really study Delroy Lindo,
and kind of created a dossier of what
our life might have been like,
as he's a Vietnam war veteran.
You consider me checked on.
Come on now, dad.
That relationship that you see in that moment
is built upon my birth, on.
You've got to chronicle all of that.
You have to somehow put that into your nervous system.
And so I did a lot of these things
that I learned in drama school,
where you just set up imaginary events
in your brain, and you play 'em out.
And so, what became a driving force is to get my father's pride.
How you holding up?
Boy, you ask me that every five minutes.
David is a Black Studies teacher.
My father was a soldier, and I'm not a soldier,
but he respects the warrior spirit
and what does a warrior look like?
Mental acuity, emotional sturdiness,
a strong body, a powerful will.
And so I began to embody those things in creating the role.
I'm here with a group of Vietnam vets,
one's my father.
Most particularly, I looked at what was the relationship
between Black men and the Vietnam war.
And Spike was really helpful with that.
He gave us a book called Bloods
and it was a memoir of these stories
from all these different type of fellas.
And that gave me a great insight
as into what these men went through.
Let's go, get the boat moving.
Move off it!
Delroy's Paul is so emotional, and so broken,
and as I was working with David, I would say,
"Okay, if Dad's like this, I've gotta be like this,
or I've got to join him here, right?
But I've only got two options, because I am his son."
I don't like the way you did it,
but I'm glad you here.
You know he's a Black Studies teacher,
so he has a certain level of education.
Which lets you know that this man
can use language, can speak.
And anyone who's from New Orleans
knows that these folks speak a certain way.
Dad, what is that sound?
Uh, cicadas.
To that point, my brother-in-law
is a very well-spoken man from New Orleans.
And so in prep I had him record things for me.
And so you lay down a language track.
They don't sound like that back home.
We ain't home, son.
All costumes help you get into character.
David was wearing trainers.
That told me that he can move, he likes to be comfortable.
And then as the dramatic action begins to push,
it's no longer the undershirt and the button down.
We've gone into war gear, right?
We're in Nikes, windbreaker, ball cap.
You know, we're going into the jungle.
And so, as you watch David move through the piece,
he begins to take things off.
So he takes off his windbreaker, right?
And what do you see?
Morehouse, that's the T-shirt he decides to wear.
That informs so much, the pride he has
coming from that school, and two, what that school
symbolizes and the strength and the power
that shirt's gonna give him.
Where you going, where you going, boy?
I'ma go down to the bank and make a deposit.
I would say that I did have to sharpen up some skills.
For instance, inclined running became a thing
that David did, because he was a track runner at Morehouse.
So with that idea, I would run from base camp to set.
And sometimes set was up in the boonies way up.
Sometimes it was way down, sometimes you had to climb.
So yeah, it became a skill after a while, to
get your ass up that hill, six o'clock in the morning,
four o'clock in the morning.
Hey, what happens if somebody get heat stroke
or sprain an ankle or something?
What attracted me to the role of David,
just humbly, it's Spike Lee.
The cinema history that he's laid out,
to be a part of that, was such a opportunity.
And then what really made me go, "Yeah, man!
I'm glad to be here," you know,
was the fellas I was around, who had already
accomplished so much and held such esteem for the work.
And to contribute to that experience, it was a no-brainer.