(shuffles paper)
(laughter)
- That's called shuffle, right there.
If your cast had a theme song, what would it be?
- [Group] (groans)
- Yeah, good question Shea.
- Feel like you must know the answer.
- You've been the DJ for the whole, for the whole movie.
- It's Amazing Grace.
- I was just gonna say.
'Cause you played that so much.
- It's Amazing Grace, it's the grace of everybody here
taking on this wonderful story.
The grace of Bryan Stevens,
the grace of Walter McMillian
and all those guys who,
maybe they didn't even know
that something like this would,
you know, be in our future.
'Cause what's crazy about it is that,
at any point in any time,
we could feel,
(snap)
things slip away from you in the situation
that you don't know if you're gonna get out of it
but the amazing grace of great people
is always, you know, celebrated.
(relaxing music)
"Just Mercy" is a movie about Bryan Stevenson,
who is an incredible human being,
a defense attorney who started the EJI,
the Equal Justice Initiative.
And it takes place over a course of several years
along one of his most famous cases of Walter McMillian,
a wrongly convicted man of a rape and murder,
of heinous crimes that he didn't commit
and he gets him exonerated.
Along the lines you meet a few inmates he had
to take on early on in his career
and yeah.
Is that a good hell of a pitch?
- That was good.
- Kinda?
- (clapping)
It was a little rough on the edges but we've got this.
- No, I bought it. - Take it man, take it.
- Good start.
- I wasn't ready, that wasn't fair.
(laughter)
- Ten, ten, ten, ten.
I remember when learned about it
'cause I was with Destin.
We were kind of just talking about the state
of the world and I was talking about just feeling
like I wanted to do more
and he was like, oh you should read this book.
And the book just was hard for me,
it just hits in waves of knowing that I needed
to finish it and feeling so much pain while reading it
and it really stayed with me.
- I think it's especially right now,
it's so easy to just get depressed
with how much problems there are in the world
and feel like, oh there's nothing really I can do
so I'm just not gonna do anything.
But the life of Bryan Stevenson
and what he has proven to me,
is that we can make a difference,
And it's incredible the amount of change that
that one man and the team that he has created
has done in this country already
and I'm so excited to see what he's gonna do next.
- When I saw the first picture of Minnie McMillan,
I felt like I knew her.
I felt like in her I saw my grandmother immediately
and so being from the south, there was an experience
that I absolutely understood,
so allowing her to live in all of those moments,
that's what I was trying to do
and to best serve her experience.
- When I read the script,
it was so unbelievably humbling
to be asked to be a part of this project.
And yet the character is really
quite an extreme
person
and so it asked for a level of characterization
that is anything but humble.
(chuckling)
So it was really about finding that balance
to
keep the pyrotechnics down
but still be honest to who the guy was
and that was a really interesting balance
to try and achieve.
- I know for me, reading up on Anthony,
Anthony Ray Hinton,
everything he had to go through for him to,
you know, just be cutting the grass for his mom one day
and then to get picked up and to be accused
and put on a death row for a murder he didn't commit.
Sixteen years in, he got a ballistics specialist
who proved that he didn't do it
and all he had to do was have any judge
in Alabama look at that report
and they didn't for an extra fourteen years
and he had to lose his mom.
And you know, for somebody to have that much taken away,
I wanted to give something to him,
you know, so it was important for me
to embody Anthony and you know he's a joyful man,
he likes lifting peoples spirits
but it's just a certain feeling you get
when the cell doors close, you know,
even on set, it's just that quiet on set,
you know, it's just a feeling that blankets over you
and so you know, you gotta harness that
and realize what you're there for.
- One of the lines that resonate with me,
I believe you have is,
watching a river full of people drown
and can't do nothing about it,
you know, it's like that kinda attitude
towards our justice system on
the outside looking in blatantly
on how it disrespects, you know,
if you're poor and innocent, you're way more guilty
than you are if you're rich and guilty.
You know what I mean?
If you're a teenager being accused of stealing a book bag
and you sit in jail for three years without no trial,
then you're a college student,
rape a girl behind a dumpster
and you get six months probation
because they don't want to mess up your future.
What kind of justice system is that?
Hopefully with this movie
we can create that kind of dialogue,
that we can move towards some healing
and actually get a real justice system in place.
You know?
(relaxing music)