- Hey, what's up, it's Jharrel Jerome and I'm In Studio
with The Hollywood Reporter.
(upbeat music)
- It's so nice to see you again.
- Thanks.
- We met briefly at the Oprah Winfrey event
for When They See Us.
So it's nice to see you again.
I have to tell you, not much has happened in my life
since that day.
It's been business as usual.
- Nothing at all?
- Nothing at all.
But the same cannot be said for you.
- Yeah.
- Tell me what your life has been like these past few weeks.
- Oh man, I couldn't, I really couldn't.
I haven't grasped the idea or the past few weeks.
I've felt like I've been dreaming.
I've felt like that night at Oprah,
I fell asleep on the couch,
I just didn't wake up.
But it's been a blessing.
It's been a beautiful ride.
It feels like a really incredible accomplishment,
more than anything.
But before the nominations came out,
I already felt like the work that needed to be done was done
for those men.
Korey Wise himself came up to me and said "You did it."
Simple words, but "You did it."
And that affirmation right there
was the nomination, if anything.
So to have the nomination as well on top of that feeling,
it's just, I'm ecstatic
and I'm so proud to be a part of this project.
And for my first major recognition to be this project
and for this role,
that means the world to me.
- And so take me back to the day you were nominated
for an Emmy for your role in this,
in When They See Us.
Where were you?
How did you get the news?
- So I was in New York City, which is where I'm from,
so I got to be back in my city,
but I was in an restaurant.
I was with my manager and I was with some friends
from high school, who I've known for a very long time.
And my mom was coming out of work.
She was leaving work early, like "Screw this,
"I'm comin' to see you,
"if it happens or not."
So she was in a car on the way over.
And I had my phone out
and I was watching it live,
and I put it up on the thing.
Just 'cause, yeah, I've never,
I didn't even know those shows happened
where you had a show for the Emmy nominations.
So I was like okay, I'll watch it,
and we watched it.
And it was funny because I was terrified.
I was just terrified.
It was a weird feeling I had.
The moment before is just this,
your heart is pounding.
You know that you've been in conversations,
you know you've been in the talks,
and you just don't know what's gonna happen.
So I remember
my leg shaking so bad,
to the point where I was like this looks weird
in this restaurant.
I look so scared.
And my manager was trying to calm me down.
Perry was like, she said, "Relax, it's okay.
"Your category won't be said first.
"It'll probably be said in the middle of the show
"so we can breathe.
"Just drink your water.
"Everything's okay."
My category was the very first category to be spoken.
- Wow.
- They right off the bat started
with just Lead Actor in a Miniseries.
So I was like just no, why, why?
And yeah, they went through the names
and I believe my name was the fourth or fifth name said.
So it was like the names of everyone I'm inspired by
are being said and I'm like this is crazy.
And they said my name.
And freaked out.
- Take me back to the beginning of joining this project.
I remember the night with Oprah and Ava on stage,
where the subject of your beard came up a lot
and how it almost ruined your chances for this.
- It did. - So tell me
about how the audition came to you
and how your beard screwed it up.
- Almost screwed it up real bad.
- Almost screwed it up, almost screwed it up.
- The story is I auditioned for young Korey.
That was what was the plan
and the goal was to try to book young Korey,
not old, nothing about that.
Just that part.
So I auditioned for it via self-tape
'cause I was living down South,
working on a project.
And I taped it with the beard.
So Ava appreciated the tape, she liked it,
but her one note was "Can you send it back without a beard?"
And so we tried to get the production
that I was workin' on to clear it and make that happen
but we couldn't.
Just being tied into the script,
being in the middle of the season.
And so for four months, at least four months,
I was just freaking out every day.
Just my team,
they were checking in with the casting department
and making sure they hadn't casted Korey.
And for months, she hadn't casted Korey.
It was weird how that aligned.
She had been casting every other part,
every other part was being taken,
and then Korey was still empty.
And so when I wrapped the show,
my team called Ava and made sure,
even if she was in Beijing or Russia
or wherever she was, I was gonna fly over there,
shaving my beard on the flight
and going to this meeting with Ava.
- Wow.
- And Ava accepted the meeting.
She said, "Yeah, I'll see him."
She actually had been in New York so it was perfect timing.
I came from Charleston to New York
and I shaved and I went in to speak with her
and she looked at me like she saw a ghost.
She was like "What?
"Who are you?
"What is this?"
And then she goes, "How old are you
"because I thought you were 30 years old?"
At the time, I was 20.
So I said "I'm 20."
And she was like "Wow, okay.
"Read the part."
And so I did the young Korey's sides
and then she goes, "Great.
"Now read these,"
and it was the older Korey sides,
which threw me for a loop
'cause I just shaved my beard
and now I'm about to read the older Korey sides through.
But I guess she had this vision when I walked in,
and yeah, the next day, she ended up calling me
and said, "It's really impressive
"how you can look super young without the beard,
"but also look very old with the beard.
"And so I wanna challenge you and put you to the test
"and see if you can portray him at both ages."
- You said that once you found his voice
is when it happened for you.
Tell me more about that process
of being able to lock that in
and where you went as an actor
to find out who Korey Wise was.
- Yeah, absolutely.
It was incredibly difficult.
The most challenging role I've taken on
and probably the most challenging just experience
I've put myself through
or allowed myself to go through.
It was a multi-step process.
It was like one day, I'm working on this side of him.
One day, I'm working on this side of him.
And it was a lot of research,
it was a lot of watching footage over and over.
And then I worked with a vocal coach
for about a month and a half,
just on dialect and on how to adopt the Harlem speech.
And Korey's so unique.
If you watched that Oprah special,
you'll see how unique he is and no one is like him at all,
and so I think that in order to have fully embodied Korey,
the only thing that was right and fair
was to capture that voice.
And so, like you said,
once I'd found that voice,
that's where I felt extremely comfortable.
It almost led into the body,
it's almost like it started with the voice
and then it almost naturally went into how he moved
and how he acted and how he was as a person.
- And at what point did you meet him?
- Very early on.
We met at the table read.
So Ava brought the men out to the table read,
to the cast reading of episodes one and two.
So I got to meet him.
The first time I read Korey Wise's words out loud
or in front of anybody, he was right there.
- Oh wow, no pressure.
- No pressure at all.
And it was the first time I had met him too.
And we had spoken briefly before the read
but we didn't get to know each other.
So I still didn't know the type of man he was.
I didn't know the type of person he was.
So I was so scared.
I was reading these lines and I was like
what if I'm not doing it right,
what if I sound weird,
what if I'm forcing it
or what if he's offended by how I'm speaking.
So all of that
tied into that reading,
but the second we finished,
he was wiping tears off of his face.
- Oh wow.
- And he took the chain off of his neck
and he put it on mine and he says, "You're the king now.
"You're Korey Wise."
- What's amazing about your relationship
and hearing about that is because,
for many people today,
who maybe didn't know the story back then
or had forgotten
because people have short-term memories sometimes,
is that you are the reason
that they know what he went through.
So talk to me about portraying those experiences,
some of which are brutal,
and I mean most all of them are brutal.
And I hate to ask you, this is a dumb question,
because I'm sure all of it was difficult
but what was the most difficult
of those scenes in the prison
and the physicality that you had to go through,
and just the fighting in solitary?
What was the hardest day on set?
- That's a good question
because there was so many difficult days,
there were so many days
where I felt as though it'd be hard to get out of this day.
If I'm tryin' to go into my head now
and think about a day,
it'd be that assault that Korey got into with the eight men,
where he was trapped inside of his cell
and he was being stabbed and assaulted.
That day was extremely painful
and emotionally taxing
because I think, I didn't count,
but maybe 11, 12 takes of that scene.
And I yelled at the top of my lungs each take for Korey.
I couldn't imagine him yelling any less.
And so I made sure that every time
Ava said action that I gave all that pain
and all that fear that he must've been through.
And when you do it over and over,
you start to get used to yelling
and you start to get used to,
even though it's staged combat
and it's not real, you still get used to big men
just putting pressure to your body
and you're yelling and you're being pressed against the bed
and it's all magic and it's all film and magic
and we're all just putting in a performance,
but it leaves you
and you still hear the screams.
I can still feel the metal of the bed
and being afraid that my head might hit it
and things like that,
but I can't even imagine what Korey was afraid of.
That was by far one of the hardest days.
Any scenes I shared with Niecy Nash
was extremely difficult.
The idea of my mom going through what Niecy's character
went through is heartbreaking to me.
And it made it very real,
especially Niecy's performance was so,
it was just, I don't know, so motherly and so loving
but also so painful and so much tension,
and it's like I never want this with me and my mom.
So those scenes were hard.
But I'll tell you this,
I think my hardest scene or the hardest
thing to get into was young Korey,
was playing Korey outside of any prison
or outside of any precinct
because we don't know Korey as that.
When you look up videos of young Korey
or Korey at 16, you won't see him eating pizza.
You won't see him hangin' out with his friends,
ridin' a skateboard.
You'll see him behind a desk, being interrogated by police,
and you'll see him in a mugshot.
And I couldn't allow those pictures
and that version of Korey to
fuel my young Korey performance
because that's not who he was.
He was a whole different person.
And so I had a hard time doing the scenes with Lisa
and the scenes in the park
where I'm just havin' a good time,
just knowing that in about five hours,
he's gonna go to that park
and everything's gonna change for him.
How do I smile and make jokes at the chicken shop
when I know that Korey just wishes he coulda stayed
in Kennedy with Lisa the whole time?
- Talk to me about Ava as a leader on the set
and what your relationship is like with her now.
- That's the greatest word to describe Ava, a leader,
a leader at its best.
I think the best directors are the directors that
know exactly what they want,
know exactly how to get it,
but allow the people they are working with
to breathe and have space to create on their own as well.
And so Ava,
I think Ava trusted me and the other actors as well
with the research of our characters.
She wrote the script, yes,
but she understood that I spent a lot of time
learning who Korey Wise was.
So rather than her
giving me exactly what to do
and say no, this has to be that, that has to be that,
she allowed me to play and there was a lotta moments
where she said, "You know Korey.
"You know Korey way better than I do.
"How would Korey respond to this?"
or "How do you think Korey would react to this?"
- That's amazing.
So let's look back now a little bit.
I mean we've been doing that a lot already.
But look back to just your resume, right?
So you started Moonlight,
which won the Oscar for Best Picture,
and then now this,
which has a dozen Emmy nominations,
including one for you for Lead Actor.
Where do you go from here?
I mean what scripts are coming your way?
What do you wanna do next?
- I stop, I stop here and I say I'm good, movin' on.
No.
To me, the last thing I want is this nomination
to feel like it's the button,
it's the, yeah, good, you did it.
I haven't done nearly half of the things
that I hope to accomplish, as an actor, as an artist.
So my goal in life is to continue to work on projects
that really speak.
I do wanna do comedy though.
I wanna make a couple of jokes here and there.
So I would love to just work on anything really
that means something to me in the end.
Art is medicine.
I think art is what imitates life.
Art is the imitation of life
and I think we need art.
I think TV, especially TV,
just what's happening with TV,
and all these stories that are coming out,
it's what we need.
So I wanna focus on those projects,
the ones that we need.
- Comedy's medicine to you.
Do you have any jokes before we go?
- Comedy's, oh God, you can't put me on the spot.
- No. (laughs)
- No, I don't,
- Okay, okay.
- But somebody will write it.
- Somebody will write it.
- And then I'll try to say it. (laughs)
- And then give it to him,
and so we'll make that happen.
Anyway, we're outta time.
Thank you so much.
- Thank you.
- So good to see you again.
- Thank you very much.
- I'm still just racking my brain,
tryin' to think of something funny to say,
but there's nothing funny about it.
- Me too.
- You know what, check out the Emmys coming up,
where you can see this guy.
Maybe we'll make some jokes on the red carpet there.
- Yeah.
- Do you know what you're wearing yet?
- No, I don't,
but my mom is looking real hard on what she's wearing.
She's got like seven dresses lined up, she's ready.
- Good.
- But I'll figure it out.
- You'll figure it out, you got some time.
Anyway, thank you guys for tuning in today
and be sure to check out When They See Us,
now airing on Netflix.
And for everything news and reviews,
check out THR.com.
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