The Big Picture - The ‘Promising Young Woman’ Conversation. Plus: Delroy Lindo!

Episode Date: March 2, 2021

Amanda and Sean dig into one of the thorniest movies of award season, Emerald Fennell's feature debut as writer-director, 'Promising Young Woman.' They talk through the premise, the themes, the history of the revenge movie, the controversial ending, and a whole lot more (0:20). Then, Sean is joined by actor Delroy Lindo to talk about his work in Spike Lee's 'Da 5 Bloods' and his long career on stage and screen (57:00). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Delroy Lindo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Twice a week, Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay dissect the biggest topics in Black culture, politics, and sports on their show, Higher Learning. They discuss the most important and timely conversations while also frequently inviting guests on the podcast and occasionally debating each other. Check out Higher Learning on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Sean Fennessy. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about a few promising young women. Later in this show, I had the pleasure of talking with one of my favorite actors, the mighty Delroy Lindo.

He was most recently seen in Spike Lee's The Five Bloods, which we talked about among other roles in his great career. I hope you will stick around for that. But first, Amanda and I will dig into one of the thornier awards contenders of this extended Oscar season, Promising Young Woman. Amanda, we've avoided talking about Promising Young Woman for a while. You first had a chance to see this film over a year ago at Sundance, and I know that you did not respond positively to it. In fact, it suggested maybe I should skip it, and so I didn't get a chance to see it.

I saw it later in 2020. I enjoyed it. I thought it was an interesting film, but I definitely had a few lingering, unresolved feelings about it. So here we are. We've both had a chance to watch the film a second time. Where are you in the Promising Young Woman

conversation right now? I'm excited to talk about it. And not in a, I want to eviscerate it sort of way. You're right. I saw it at Sundance, I believe at the premiere, and parts of it really did not work for me. And I kind of thought that I was just having a Sundance experience. And I was like, cool, won't need to talk about that movie anymore. And like tried to find you guys at a bar or whatever at like 1am and went on with my life. And guess what? I was wrong. And I gave you some bad advice. And I think in revisiting it this weekend,

I also missed some stuff that I do really like about this film, in part because of the impression that it leaves at the end, which we will talk about the ending. This is going to be a spoiler conversation. But it's been interesting to watch the response. I got to talk to a lot of

like my female friends some who really follow movies some who don't over the last week about this movie and and that was really interesting too like a range of opinions and it does seem like people are engaged in this film in a way that has made me more engaged and want to talk about it even if i can't quite personally still solve it. Yeah, so I think that there is a lot of textual stuff to break through here, the sort of the filmmaking, the style, the acting, the writing, the provocations in this screenplay and in the story. And then there's also a lot of extra textual stuff, a lot of stuff that has happened in the aftermath of the release of this movie. I think we'll spend most of our time on the text and a little bit of time on the extra text. But

just as a jumping off point, for those of you who haven't seen the film and want to keep listening to this conversation, or for those of you who just need a refresh, let's just briefly talk about the premise. This is, of course, a film starring Carey Mulligan, written and directed by Emerald Fennell. This is her feature film debut as a writer-director. And it follows a 30-year-old woman named Cassie who essentially dresses up every night and goes to a club alone and pretends to be seriously inebriated. She does this to attract men who are looking to take advantage of an intoxicated woman. And when the man looks to make a move that would cross the line of consent, Cassie snaps to sobriety and humiliates the man. Effectively, that's the trap

that she is setting on an ongoing basis. Now, the reasons for why she does this are complex. I think talking through specifically her day-to-day life choices is part of where I think you and I will try to figure out what the intent of this film is and then ultimately what that means for the film. But essentially, we learn as the story goes on that this ritual is performed over and over again as an act of revenge, a kind of penance and guardianship on behalf of her late friend, Nina, who was raped when they were students together at med school. After the school and authorities dropped the investigation, Nina dropped out and later killed herself.

Now Cassie is on a personal sort of mission of reckoning here. And the film itself, I think, I think effectively creates a kind of episodic structure where what you get to have is like a series of cool experiences with Cassie over and over again. When you first saw the film, what did you think about the decision to frame this as a sort of like series of mini episodes of TV inside of this big story? Just the way that you just said cool episodes and also the description that you read of the film, which is, which is accurate.

Um, and I think isolates a lot of like the themes and also is literally what happens, um, is very different from the experience of, of watching the film and whether the episodes are cool is something that we can discuss, but also kind of the,

the, the very heavy and grim and upsetting plot that you just described is set against like a kind of rollicking at times, very funny, very arch, like a black comedy. But there are a lot of choices and a lot of stylization to the point that you're wondering what kind of movie you're in. And are you in like a weird TV episode? Are you in a comedy? Are you in a rape revenge movie? Are you like in a feminism issue movie? It keeps going. And that's true of the dialogue. That's true of the cinematography and the costumes and the stylization. So I just wanted to get that up front for anyone who just heard the description and was like, oh, okay. So now we have to watch like a very solemn,

I don't know, Oscar bait movie or educational documentary. That is the one thing I'm sure they don't intend. No, and I don't use the word cool to be glib. I think cool is speaking to that stylization. You know, the colorways, the musical choices, Mulligan's performance, the way that the entire film is essentially mounted

is, as you say, this hyper-stylized, almost fantasy experience at times. And while there are certainly significantly traumatic events in the movie, and there is a lot of sort of emotional reckoning happening throughout the movie, there is the stylization, I think, is part of what has given the movie a bigger reputation than something like this out of Sundance historically may get. It is, you know, in a perverse sense, accessible. It looks good. It sounds good. It is attractive in

a very traditional movie format way. And yet the issues that it's dealing with are obviously incredibly fraught. And I think one of the reasons I've had some reluctance to talk about it is I don't think I'm necessarily the right person to talk about this movie. I don't know that I necessarily have the right insight and point of view to effectively communicate about, say, whatever my problems with the movie might be. That's kind of useless. That being said, I think it is fascinating to unpack why a movie like this has gained attention, why it is an awards contender in 2021. And also, I was so interested in your specific response to it. Yeah, I guess as the 30-year-old white woman, or 30-plus white woman, 30-something.

30-ish, 30-ish, yeah. That's 30-ish. We'll just cling to it. But I'm pretty close to this demo, right? As far as these things go. And I guess it's funny being in that driver's seat. I don't feel like I've particularly earned the right to speak on it any more than anyone else.

And I'm interested to talk to you about it. It was interesting to talk to a lot of friends and female friends, many of whom are in their 30s, who don't normally seek out movies like this and had sought it out and were excited about it. And that, to me, signaled, I guess, that it is speaking to our demo, which is good. Like, thank you. And also that it was marketed effectively to a demo and some of that stylization and those colors and that kind of Instagram vibe that like pops up again and again in movies is effective. And I do think it worked. Like I had one female friend who was like, I thought it was fun, which in some places it really is fun. It kind of pinballs from being really fun and funny to being

subverting whether it's romantic comedy or whether it's you know Seth Cohen who we all grew up with to being dramatic and dark you know it it walks a fine line on tone and also has a lot of different tones which you and I could come back to. Another friend described it as like, I just trusted the vibes. Like I could sense from this atmosphere that this was someone who was looking at things in an interesting way. And it was a world I was happy to be a part of

or to follow along with for two years. Maybe not happy, but interested in. So I do think it works. And I guess it is really specific. And maybe that specificity is part of its limitation as well. I don't know. There have been vanishingly few VOD movies, which is to say movies that were released during the pandemic that were opened in a small number of theaters and then did not go to a streamer

that have created active conversation. And most of the movies that have done that have been on the order of Trolls World Tour or Tenet. This is one of the only movies that I can really think of that I think has had a sustained lifespan where there has been an ongoing conversation about this film, an ongoing engagement. Obviously, award season is a factor here,

but I think there's been a lot of provocative writing about the movie. I think people are still discovering it. It's still 20 bucks on iTunes. It's not cheap necessarily to engage with this. So you have to seek it out. You have to want it to experience it. And I'm just interested in the general audience reaction to it because it does have a kind of candy coating.

It seems like it is luring people in with, you know, the way that it's lit and how beautifully shot it is. And I think for Emerald Fennell, it's a really impressive debut. And frankly, there are just not very many appealing thrillers directed and written by women in Hollywood right now. So that's probably another reason why it's gained some attention. The film does make some fascinating choices, I think, that are a little bit hard to unpack. Along the way in the story, Cassie re-encounters a former classmate of hers named Ryan, who's played by Bo Burnham. And as their relationship becomes more serious and Cassie learns that Al, the man who raped Nina,

is getting married, she digs deeper into her plan to exact a kind of justice on the people who failed to protect her friend and could be held responsible for her death. So the movie goes from this kind of episodic structure to a kind of descent. You know, there's a kind of a MacGuffin-ish reveal leading to a portentous climax. And the movie, I think, kind of tips over a little bit in an interesting way that I think we should unpack. And I think the question of does this movie work

is a little bit difficult to say. I will say that the idea of like a hyper-stylized fairy tale, if we see it through that prism and we accept that the movie is trying to accomplish something that is on the levels of unreality, then I think it works. But what's challenging about that for me, and I'm curious to know what you think about this, it's dealing with such

weighty themes. And there are moments in the film that are played so straight, that are played in not that stylization, that I think it genuinely confused me at times, where I did not know what kind of movie this sought to be. And not all movies don't have to be any one singular thing. I don't mean to mischaracterize what the goals of a filmmaker are, but especially watching it the second time, I think I worked in reverse. I think the first time I saw it, I was kind of awed by it. And then the second time I saw it, I felt like I could really see seams on it. How do you feel about the balance between the trauma

and then also that style? It didn't work for me. That's my central problem, is that I still don't understand the logic of this movie. And I don't know to what extent I am supposed to invest in the fairy tale and what extent I'm supposed to invest in the fairy tale and what extent I'm supposed to invest in kind of like the emotional serious reckoning.

And I think I'm, I'm capable of doing both if the film kind of explains it for me and hits the, you know, the right buzzers at the right moments. But the turning point for me in the, the first time I watched it, um, The turning point for me in the first time I watched it was the scene with Alfred Molina, who plays a defense attorney who I believe defended the rapist.

His name is his name, Al. Al. Al. Yes. And has made a career of this. And the Cassie character goes to see him and confronts him. And you're meant to believe it's another in her episodes of confronting people who have failed Nina and who fail sexual assault survivors all the time. And in about two minutes, it just completely turns because the Alfred Molina character is like, well, I'm really sorry. Please forgive me. And there's like almost a, like a,

there's almost like a Virgin Mary tableau where he's like has his head in Cassie's lap. And then she leaves and she like calls off the hitman that she's hired because she realizes like, no, it's okay. And it's both completely surreal and also going for like a real emotional, realistic gut punch. And I just like, I couldn't emotionally understand it.

And I was like, I don't know which way you're trying to send this character. I don't know which way you're trying to send the morals of this story, like about this system and about sexual assault. Like, I don't know where I'm supposed to send like my interest. And I think that that is an issue throughout the last 30 minutes of the movie, even as I do kind of understand on paper what it's trying to be. A lot of the motivations and a lot of the ideas just like don't actually connect to the character that I'm seeing on screen. And like, and at some point, if you're asking us to buy into like a fairy tale and all of these like ridiculous things, that's great. And I can do that, but

it's either, if there's nothing to hold onto, then there's nothing to hold onto. And it seems like it's both asking us to try to hold onto this emotional stuff and be like, but you know, it's just like a fairy tale. It's like all this is made up. And I just couldn't reconcile that in my head. Maybe I overthinking it i like i really could be and it could make sense for other people but that's where i am yeah i think when we use the phrase fairy tale we need more like in the grimm's fairy tale sense of the word you know these the sort of like doom-like ending to a a magical story and i think the word fantasy is kind of a fascinating phrase that's been thrown around about this movie because it does have a lot of revenge fantasy elements and a lot of the things that Cassie does not just

the sort of ensnaring men in this this ruse that she's putting on in these clubs but that moment with Alfred Molina's lawyer character the moment when she effectively kidnaps the daughter of the dean of the school that that she and Nina attended and then confronts that dean, played by Connie Britton, about their history. And then also this encounter with Alison Brie's character, who is a former classmate who sort of idly observed a lot of the terrible things that were happening at that time. She executes each of those plans almost perfectly. And so it does feel like we are living in a kind of fantasy. It seems like, in a way, if you had told me the whole movie is

taking place when Cassie is standing bored at her day job at a coffee shop, thinking about how she could get revenge on all of the people who touched her and Nina's life. I could buy that as a structure. I could understand that. But that isn't what the movie really is, or at least it doesn't frame itself in that very specific way. And so when you get these kind of convulsive or highly emotional or intense moments, we're obviously ripped out of this otherwise fancy structure. One thing that I noticed, I was curious to hear your thoughts on this one too. A lot of the time when men are talking to Cassie in this movie, whether it's someone who's cat calling her

at the beginning of the film when she's walking down the street, or when she has an encounter, when she has her head down in her car after she has just had the encounter with Connie Britton, and then she gets into a fight with another person on the road, the language that the men are using towards her is incredibly hostile, right? And that's obviously

a comment on what a lot of women in this country, world, whatever, have to endure in terms of the way that men perceive them and the way that they treat them. But it felt like every time something like that happened, it seemed as if she blacked out. And then when she blacked out, and then the thing that she did next was one of these fantasies. And so I think the lack of clarity on what the actual literalization of this movie is, is part of what was holding me back from fully grasping what it was trying to be. Yeah. The credit sequence in particular, which is when she stares down the construction workers, is interesting because she stares them down. And it's to the point that they are silenced and scared and they go away.

And that seems like a real fantasy or that's positioning her as like, you know, a female superhero. And I don't mean that in the like, I'm a part of the MCU way, but in like the, you know, making fun of these. The idea of like all women are heroes and look what we you know all of this all of the nonsense that we are marketed to and i think that this uh this movie is like very smart about kind of all of the women's bullshit marketing that exists in the world and is definitely skeptical of it um but i just ultimately i don't understand this character's motivation like i and i think I know on paper why she's doing it because we learn about Nina and she um feels guilt and there's this scene with

Molly Shannon who is Nina's mother where I think the character is supposed to be the stand-in for the audience and the character tells Cassie like you have to let it go for all of us and is, and is isolating the grief and the guilt. And also that this is something that has gotten out of hand, like, and that Cassie isn't really in control of it. And, you know, it's someone processing all of those motions and someone as a friend of mine put it like, it's about trauma, but the trauma is a friend's suicide and not rape which which is interesting but Nina's not really a character and they don't really establish that relationship at all and trauma and terrible experiences definitely make people lose their grip on reality grief makes

people lose their grip on reality guilt all of these of these issues. But again, we just don't, it doesn't illustrate that. And I just, I personally don't understand the ultimate incentive or I do know it, but I don't think it's demonstrated in the film. I think that the Cassie character is so far gone by the time we see her. And maybe that's the point. I had another friend who was like, actually, what I think this movie is about is just about how the experience of being a woman just at some point can make you go off your rocker. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. And it's that carried to its worst conclusion and super heightened, obviously. But even there, that's bringing in a lot i like i don't know it that it can be about so

many things to me meant that i didn't ultimately understand what it was about and i feel that i do need to understand cassie's motivation in order to be able to walk that line of fantasy and reality and and the the tonal balance that this movie's trying to do. One of the things that I think muddies some of this stuff is not just that we don't know Nina. We only see a photo of her with Cassie many years ago, and we hear Cassie's reflections on their friendship, but we don't really get to know her in any meaningful way. But I don't really feel we get to know Cassie.

I think even in the moments when we're with Cassie and her parents, which ostensibly should be the most intimate moments of the film, she's at a total remove. It's very clear that she is detached, dissociated from the experience of life and that she spends a lot of her time kind of plotting and thinking solely about this mission that she's on. Her parents have clearly identified that something is wrong and they're concerned for her and they're trying to stay connected to her. The handful of moments when she seems to even come back to whatever a sense of normalcy might be when she starts dating Ryan, the Bo Burnham character, they have the dinner together with her parents. Even then there's this kind of unease in the room about, is Cassie going to be okay? And so if we don't get to know her, we don't get to know who she was, and she's solely defined by this thing that happened to her and her satellite of experience but didn't happen specifically to her,

then I can't think of another example of a film like this where the film was entirely based on not the motivations of herself but what she perceives to be the revenge she has to seek. Maybe this is like an opportunity to kind of put this movie in a little bit of context. I think the revenge movie is a tried and true movie format. And I think originally when the film came around, there was this expectation that it might be in the kind of rape revenge category. This tradition of 70s exploitation movies that were largely made by men about women who were raped and then sought a very visceral kind of revenge on the people who assaulted her. And so like I Spit on Your Grave and Miss 45, Lady Snowblood, these are movies that very actively

pursued this idea. And I think we're political in some respects, but we're also grindhouse movies that were meant to titillate. And so they're really complex. I remember many years ago, our friend Rich Joswiak and I rewatched I Spin on Your Grave because there was a remake of that movie

and tried to kind of unpack that movie from our perspective as best we could. And the truth is, is that's a very old relic of a different time in movie making. And I think that those movies are important as historical documents. And I think some of them

are still quite interesting. This movie is actually not a rape revenge movie in the traditional sense of the word because it's about Cassie. It's not about Nina and it's not about the revenge that Nina seeks.

But there have been a lot of movies that have been kind of in dialogue, I think, with those 70s exploitation movies. The handful of them I thought of. Obviously, Kill Bill is very relevant to a lot of this. If you think about what the Uma Thurman character goes through, which is in terms of both physical and sexual violence, and then the way that she seeks a kind of revenge on all the people who perpetrated that against her. And then I think I thought of Gaspar Noa's Irreversible, which is also a very difficult

film to watch that is about a very similar subject, the Park Chan-wook trilogy of vengeance movies. And then more recently, there was a 2017 movie called Revenge, a French film that I think candidly more accurately captures some of what Promising Young Woman is going for. And then in 2018, probably the single most difficult movie to watch of that year was a movie called The Nightingale from Jennifer Kent, who also made The Babadook, which is a brutally intense Australian kind of Western, you know, frankly, rape revenge crime film

that is relentless and unrelenting on its audience and on its characters and it's it's tough to put those movies in context with promise young woman which stylistically tonally is so bright and is so effervescent it's so neon does this does promising young woman want to be entertaining well i was going to ask you a very similar question because i don't know i was going to say do is it meant to be satisfying because and that's maybe a lead into the conversation about the ending and kind of how we feel about that i i think we'll have that conversation and gosh do i not know the answer to it but we'll have that conversation but first you know there are funny jokes at like this and there are are the Christopher Mintz-Plasse, have you read Consider

the Lobster? Just like A++. I believe that Adam Brody serves her kumquat liqueur, like very funny. The casting of Adam Brody and Christopher Mintz-Plasse and Bo Burnham and the casting in general, but specifically those guys who you've always understood to be nice guys and or non non-threatening guys and who are using that kind of pop cultural awareness it's a very pop culturally savvy movie which for the most part I really appreciate hearing the Spice Girls and I really really appreciate the Paris Hilton Stars are Blind scene which do you think most people recognize Stars are Blind as the Paris Hilton song I guess they say it in the movie I think it's a sweet spot for me and you and Emerald and Carrie's generation. We're all around the same age.

And I think if you were sentient and in your 20s in like 2008, 2009, that song seemed like it mattered. Now it is pure curio, I think. But it's effective in that sequence. But delightful. And one tricky thing is that the rom-com that is kind of in the middle of this movie is so effective.

And I think like Bo Burnham is wonderful in this and he and Carey Mulligan have a real chemistry in this. And I understand that to be intentional that you're supposed to invest in it and like it so that when the twist comes and he's on that tape, you're like, oh no. And let me tell you that worked. And that is for on me. And that is because I'm a person who loves romantic comedies. And I understand that this movie is trying to teach me something about that and have me think of it in a different way and subvert it. So I respect that.

And to some extent, I do think then that I'm supposed to enjoy the jokes. I'm supposed to like the color. Of course, that means by implication that I'm supposed to be rooting for Cassie. And I think I am supposed to be rooting for Cassie. And I think to some point I'm supposed to question rooting for Cassie because this movie is ultimately asking I think it's asking like both what not what is the point of revenge but like look at um the results of revenge it's supposed to question that premise it's also supposed to question the fact that revenge is um has to be sought because the system fails. There are a lot of things that it wants you to think about. But I did enjoy some of it. I can't remember why I asked you whether it's meant to be enjoyed. Well, I think it's because of the way that it's produced. It's beautiful to look at,

and it has great musical choices, and it has these strong performances from people that we like and have a relationship to. Right. Oh, but that's because in comparison with like the traditional rape revenge films that you were listing and that get increasingly difficult to watch. And I understand that that is like a form of enjoyment for some people who are not me. Again, like another friend, her review is, I was happy that Promising Young Woman wasn't as much of a slasher film as I expected. So it's like finding its audience and also upending some of the expectations. But it is interesting to make a movie like this about these topics and ultimately with these events and then ask people to have fun. I think that's one of the more daring things about it. I think it's a honeypot movie. What she is engaged in is

a kind of honeypot scheme. And I think that the movie is meant to lure you in with its sweetness and trap you with its stickiness and its inability to disconnect from it. And it works. It's effective. I've now watched it twice and I was entertained all the way through. Entertained, though, is a very loaded word when it comes to some of these subjects. And I think that that's part of what we're trying to parse through whether it's satisfying as a whole other can of worms um you know should we should we just talk about the ending should we just walk through the events okay you have to why don't you why don't you break down how this movie sort of concludes oh brother all right well first of all there are

two endings not one so that's that's always a little bit of a danger zone just i i can't think of movies that i love that end five times but actually i'm sure i can i'm sure people will tweet them at me and i won't see the tweets but i believe the lord of the rings the return of the king had about seven endings they were all good they were all good i actually did see that in theaters one day at college they showed all of them and i went but and i don't remember what happened wonderful no comment on why i don't remember them okay two endings essentially did you mention that the tape that is produced i know i did in passing because bo burnham's character is on it but yes a a MacGuffin-ish video appears on an old phone that Alison Brie's character delivers, which is a very movie convention.

But I think, as you said, very effective in that sequence when we see Cassie watching the tape. We don't see the tape, but we just see the look on her face. And then that is when the movie kind of goes into a higher gear. Yes. And that is one of the examples of it nails the tone you can just you feel everything changing and from there on cassie decides um that she needs to recommit herself to this revenge fantasy and she uh blackmails the bo burnham character into telling her where the bachelor party of Al the rapist

is happening is occurring and then she goes to the bachelor party to the string quartet tones of Britney Spears is toxic which I just this I don't want any more string covers of pop songs I'm good okay we did it. It's a thing. You know, music has different powers. Once again, thank you to musicians and we're done. But she goes to the bachelor party and she's dressed as a nurse stripper

and presents herself as a stripper and then lures Al to the upstairs room. And you think that she is about to pull another one of her stunts, but Al fights back and suffocates her. And the suffocation goes on for several minutes. It is really, really tough to watch. But so Cassie dies. So that's that. And then there's a scene with Max Greenfield as well, who that's another great piece of casting where they, he and Al just dispose of Cassie's body. And then the movie keeps going. And there is a search for Cassie from her parents, the police interview Bo Burnham's character.

He lies. No one knows where she is. And we make it to, I might be forgetting something, but ultimately it's at the wedding, the last scene. And is it the Bo Burnham character receives the text? Is that how it starts?

Yes. We see that they're at the reception. Yes. And we hear the dulcet tones of Angel of the Morning. Right. And all of a sudden the sirens arrive and the jig is up and all the bad guys are going to get arrested. Yes.

And Cassie sends those final texts and then the movie's over. Mm-hmm. Well, the movie is not over before you see shots of Nina and Cassie's halves of their friendship, like broken heart bracelet, one in a pile of ashes and one in the cash register left for Laverne Cox, who doesn't really get to do anything in this movie, but it's good. So you get your nice Thelma and Louise moment before everyone is arrested and the last text with the winky emoji is sent and then Angel of the Morning keeps playing so two quick things before we unpack those events there are two significant music cues that happen right at the moment when Cassie receives the phone and then after she has died and there are two very purposeful moments of dissonance relative to what's happening.

The first is a song, a lullaby sung by a little girl in the movie, the night of the hunter, which is the song that is playing when Cassie leaves her house after she's gotten the phone. And she is overcome by the pain of having seen this awful video of her friend being assaulted. Once upon a time,

there was a pretty fly. And it's an amazing callback to a movie that I think it wants to have a lot in common with and in some respects does have a lot in common with, which is a movie about innocence and violence and what happens to people who don't deserve to have anything terrible

happen to them. And does true evil lurk in the world or are we a manifestation of all of our influences i can see a very clear correlation there the second is the song something wonderful from the king and i As long as you live. Which plays as the Max Greenfield and Chris Lowell characters burn Cassie's body and bury her. And obviously The King and I is about this relationship between this powerful man and this young woman who is attempting to essentially become part of a meaningful union in a foreign land and it's a little on the nose but it's also really effective and i both times i was like oh

this is clever emerald finnell has like kind of something up her sleeve she has a and obviously i'm a sucker for a sense of movie history and i found myself getting drawn in deeper and deeper and i wasn't i wasn't bothered by the fact that the movie kept going after she had been buried and that it continued to reveal itself and show the way that Cassie's plan was stitched even deeper by sending a letter to the Alfred Molina characters so that he could kick off the investigation in some way and capture these guys. But I have a lot of questions about all of the decisions in the actual execution of the ending. One, so Cassie is with the Chris Lowell character, Al, in the bed. She's chained him to the bed with handcuffs,

and she's going to tattoo Nina's name on his, or carve Nina's name into his stomach. And then he breaks free and suffocates her. Now, do you think that she expected that she was not going to get out of that party alive? Again, I don't know because they're yes and no. And that's kind of like the issue. It doesn't really add up for me because the death scene is like grim and difficult to watch and and very sad there is a sort of internal logic to this character who has kind of been lost in her own grief and revenge kind of ultimately being lost to that grief and revenge

if the movie is trying to subvert this idea and if the movie is trying to say like this is kind of what happens when you don't actually there there is no actual justice for these victims. Then like, look at what happens and look at how this consumes all of us. Like that I actually get. So, and also the arc of the Cassie character is that she has been kind of going through this ritual and then she meets Bo Burnham's character she's starting to soften up like you can kind of see her considering the life that she sort of abandoned um in the wake of Nina's death and there's even that scene with her father where her dad is like we loved Nina so much but we missed

you too so she's coming back and then the tape shows up and she's not able to follow through in that progress and she like okay so I understand like the character arc there. I understand the logic of the movie. But all of that would imply that she doesn't think that she's going to die and she would only send the letter and schedule the text messages, which I did not know that you could do. And I would love some tech on that just as a side note. Anyway, she, everything that happens after her death suggests like, you know, some grand plan and that this was the arc for the character.

But then I don't understand the other arc for the character. Yeah. So it clearly, she had a backup plan in the event that she was not able to successfully etch Nina onto onto the chris lowell character's stomach and if she were successful and he was not able to break the handcuffs would she just leave the party while everyone was passed out and then would she go on with her life like would that have been a reasonable amount of revenge i i actually can't

figure out what the next step was i mean maybe it's really dark and you're just supposed to think that she believes that she's going to her death and is setting it all up and it's like that's the price that she has to pay or something like that doesn't really make sense for me in terms of the character, in terms of the movie, and in terms of like the actual death scene. But I guess that would connect all of the dots on paper. Yeah, clearly she is preparing for the event that she may be killed. But it's a little bit confounding. And I think when you look a little bit more closely at a movie like this, as opposed to just having the events unfurl at you the first time you watch it, you start to get a little bit confused about the

intention. Now, the second part of the ending, I would say, has drawn a lot of criticism and I think is fairly complex in terms of determining the thinking behind some of these choices. This is specifically the first time I saw it, I was like, whoa, you kind of undid a lot of my love for this by doing this, which is specifically that the expectation that the police, the authorities are the right people to seek kind of ultimate revenge, the ultimate, you know, winky face emoji, we got you, because obviously the police and the authorities have literally already failed in this story and we know that their failure is part of what motivated cassie to begin on this mission so how that could be perceived as satisfying i i've been utterly confused by this since the moment i saw this

movie for the first time what do you make of this choice yeah i can't tell whether it's like the ultimate arch ending. And because you're like, when you look at the necklaces of Nina and Cassie, this is like a pretty direct visualization of two dead women as like the cops are sirening on, like, you know, maybe the comment there is like, well,

once it like the police can't fix anything because here are these two dead women like the juxtaposition is there if you want it i it didn't land for me that way i had the same reaction and i think a lot of people did i would point people to a great dana stevens piece and slate um that singles out this issue among others and And it's just like, this is just basically like a law and order episode or it's not that different. And it's not the resolution that I expected from a film that has subverted pretty much every other type of movie

or trope or expectation throughout its two hours. Yeah, I guess I hadn't even really considered necessarily that that stark contrast should be considered ironic somehow and that there is no hope for anyone ever. I mean, I kind of like a movie that's that bleak. And part of the reason why I responded to the movie was I think its bleakness felt true to a lot of human experience, frankly. But the idea that you would then return power to the people who failed you is is just intellectually just feels like a like a failure like it's it strikes me that no one said hey like do we really want to just like do we are cops the last people we want to see in this movie that like is that really the right choice here um i i don't

know i'm still i'm still trying to untangle some of that. I am too. And maybe I'm just too basic. Like maybe I just liked the rom-com aspect of it a little bit much. And it's like you can subvert almost everything. But my brain can't go that far in terms of irony or just, you know, hopelessness. And maybe it's expecting too much for this movie to like have a solution or offer some sort of, you know, forward motion for it. But I still found myself craving it. It's not even that I craved it. I was just kind of like, I don't know what to do with this ending.

And I don't know what to do with this movie. And I don't really know what to walk away, you know, what to think, except, you know, I liked the jokes. And yes, I agree that society fails women every day, all of the time. But like, frankly, I knew that already. So I, it just didn't work for me, but that's for me. It's, and it seems like it worked for a lot of other people. And again, it seems like maybe some of those people aren't overthinking it. Like we are,

we could be overthinking it. I think it depends on what you want out of a movie. If you're, if you're engineered to have a certain kind of expectation about enjoyment and fun and distraction and then move on. Great. And if you are engineered to host a movie podcast and watch movies multiple times and analyze them and talk to one of your close friends about them all the time, you might find yourself down a rabbit hole here. But I do think that because the themes and the ideas in this movie are important and are relevant and we're in this, you know, a sea change moment, I think with the way that men and women relate to each other and the expectations of women in the workplace and women in society.

And a lot of the things that we talk about on the show on an ongoing basis with women in the arts, I think that it's all worth unpacking. And if something doesn't work, I think it makes sense to try to understand why it didn't work for us. Yeah, and I have found it absolutely fascinating that it has sailed through awards season thus far. I mean, obviously, it was shut out at the Golden Globes, which I was completely surprised by. I had picked both Carey Mulligan and Emerald Fennell, and I thought there was an outside chance that it could be one of those Globes spoilers. But that so many people have accepted it and been interested in it. And

honestly, I guess you and I have been having this conversation, but there does seem to be a sort of uncomplicated acceptance of it. Like, I don't know, maybe that's also me just characterizing online discourse, which as we know, is never a good, never, never a good thing. I think that's a big challenge. That's a challenge of two things, right? That's a challenge of you did the good work. I think I'm just talking to your friends about this movie and just getting other people's perspectives, but we're looking at Twitter all day. Yeah. We're in a pandemic. So we're not out at parties talking to people about what they thought about this. I mean, that's one thing I've thought about with all of this Oscar bullshit is I'm not

having the conversations that I usually have. Occasionally, I'll Zoom with somebody that I know that's in the business or in the academy, just kind of take their temperature. But for the most part, I'm relying on my wife's opinion and your opinion and a very small handful of people about what's really taking place here. And so I don't really know what the general perception of this movie is. I think it certainly seems like it's liked. It certainly seems like it is stoking conversation. We probably should talk about one of the very complicated conversations that it did stoke, which is essentially a controversy

around one of the film's reviews, which appeared originally in Variety shortly after that screening that you attended at Sundance. And it was published by Dennis Harvey, who is a longtime freelance contract critic for Variety. Many months later, in December, there was a New York Times feature about Carey Mulligan. And in that feature, Carey Mulligan cited this review and took issue with it. So I'll read the passage in question, and then I'll read Carey Mulligan's thoughts on it. So Dennis Harvey writes, Mulligan, a fine actress, seems a bit of an odd choice as this admittedly many-layered apparent femme fatale. Margot Robbie is a producer here, and one can perhaps too easily imagine the role might once

have been intended for her. Whereas with this star, Cassie wears her pick-up bait gear like bad drag. Even her long blonde hair seems a put-on. The flat American accent she delivers in her lowest voice register likewise seems a bit meta, though it's not quite clear what the quote marks around this performance signify. Still, like everything else here, this turn is skillful, entertaining, and challenging, even when the eccentric method obscures the precise message. So here's what Carey Mulligan told the Times. I read the variety review because I'm a weak person, Mulligan said, and I took issue with it. She paused, debating whether she really wanted to go there. It felt like it was basically saying that I wasn't hot enough to pull off this kind of ruse, she said finally. Now, this set off a multi-layered storm of sorts. On the one hand,

we have an artist responding to criticism, which is always messy territory. Every time an artist reads a review and doesn't like it and talks about it publicly, we get into this anxiety-riddled state of affairs amongst critics, editors, the media at large, because this is a group of people that is in a constant one-sided dialogue with its subjects. And so when the subjects deign to address it, we get some messiness.

But I would say Variety made this significantly worse when they made an editorial decision to append a note to Dennis Harvey's review, which read, Variety sincerely apologizes to Carey Mulligan and regrets the insensitive language and insinuation in our review of Promising Young Woman that minimized her daring performance. So before we get into the continued blowback of this story,

what do you make of this complex controversy? Well, I think any artist always has the right to respond to criticism. And I think that you have to, anything you say in public, you have to know that someone's listening and is there and can respond. I truly believe that. That is why I'm willing to speak to Steven Soderbergh at any time that he would like. But, you know. That's not why. No, but she had absolutely the right to respond.

And like, I do understand. I honestly don't need to weigh into who's right and who's wrong on this because she is entitled to her feeling. And I think probably the writer is certainly entitled to his opinion. I think it probably could have been expressed more clearly. I think, you know, once an editor, always an editor over here, but like, where are the editors in this? And that leads me to where is variety in this because at the end of the day variety just cut a long time freelance contributor loose and that is just not fair to the people that you employ and editorial support is should have been there at the beginning and certainly should be there after the fact. That's what I have to say. I think that what Dennis Harvey wrote is imprecise and arguably insensitive.

And there are certainly a number of people who are responsible for it not working. In context, for example, for those of you who don't know, when you go to Sundance and you are a freelance critic like Dennis Harvey is, you're expected to churn out copy immediately after the screening and to get it to your editor so it can get up on the website. And if you read these trade reviews in particular, and in this review specifically, it's not just an evaluation of the performance and the filmmaking, but also whether audiences will respond to it and how it will be perceived in the marketplace. There's all

this unusual kind of language that is used because this is a trade paper and this story has to move quickly so that it gets out into the trade so that people can respond to the reaction. Now, with Harvey, it's complicated because I think some of what he is trying to untangle here in this graph, and that is the last graph in the piece, is some of the confusion that we have about this movie. I think some of it is, is this some sort of a fantasy? Is this purposefully, and I think not specifically about the way that Carey Mulligan's character is physically presented, but the comment about her accent and the voice register likewise seems a bit meta, though it's not quite clear what the quote marks around this performance signify. That was resounding for me. I felt like I understood what he was trying

to elucidate about this movie, which is it doesn't seem to totally know what it is. On the other hand, I mean, Karen Mulligan can feel however she wants to feel about any criticism and is entitled to share her opinion about that anytime she likes. I think that I ask filmmakers on the show all the time how they feel about criticism because I want to know. I think that a lot of the feedback that artists get on their work does inform their work and it does inform whether they retrench and dig deeper into the work that they're doing or whether they look at the criticism and try to respond to it in some meaningful way. All of this dialogue is really important. What's messed up is that,

like you said, Variety cut Dennis Harvey loose. I think he's been writing reviews for them for 30 years, which is, I mean, that's unreal to have had that kind of a relationship and to put that forever on top of that review and basically just say like, we fucked up and this guy who doesn't have benefits doesn't deserve to be defended by us. It was just a bizarre choice all around. And it, once again, kind of stoked more, quote unquote, controversy around this movie. At the end of it, I think everybody comes out looking not great, like all parties involved. And whether it's their fault or not, I think is immaterial. It's just one of those unfortunate scandals. But it does raise some questions about who should be writing reviews.

That's an answer I still don't really understand. As I said, I expressed to you at the beginning of this conversation, I'm not totally sure I'm the right person to even talk about this movie. Yeah. And I do think specifically to Promising Young Woman, it's just flavored the way that people have spoken about the movie because there was such a firestorm. So before anyone had even seen the movie that kind of made people nervous, perhaps you and you and me included about criticizing it in any way, shape or form. Now, I think that's a little bit unfair to even what Carey Mulligan was trying to do, because Carey Mulligan was focusing on like a couple pretty specific misbegotten lines about her physical appearance. And even within that, there's a question of, can you talk about someone's physical appearance or

costuming choices or else in the context of a review, because cinema is obviously a visual medium and these things are intentional. On the other hand, there's a really long tradition of male reviewers just writing really wild stuff about female actors in their reviews. So within everything, you want nuance and consideration. And it seems like for all of the reasons that you just mentioned, that all just flew out the window. But it has definitely flavored the entire conversation around Promising Young Woman. Yeah, I don't have any clear answers about the future of criticism and who ought to... I feel comfortable having an opinion about Promising Young Woman and talking

about my feelings about the movie. But what is authority, I think, is a big part of this. Who has authority in this case? Is it variety? Is it the variety critic? Is it the filmmaker or the actor who stars in the movie? And whose word matters the most to the people that are paying attention? Because that's kind of what it boils down to. It's like, who is loudest? Is it? And we're speaking to a subset of people here in like the critical and media community.

But also, like I said, I do think that this stuff shapes culture the same way that award shows shape culture. So I don't feel that we're necessarily ascribing too much significance on it. What ramifications there will be, I know in newsrooms across the country, there are a lot of people saying, is this critic the right person to write about this movie? The next time Emerald Fennell makes a movie, I highly doubt that Variety will ask a man to review that film. I think that's true.

And, you know, criticism has been white male dominated for a long time. So more female critics is great. And more black critics and critics of color, men and women, extremely important. I do also, you know, like you being afraid to talk about this movie or not being afraid. I mean, you're, you're a very brave man, Sean, and we're grateful for you today and always reluctant. I was reluctant, reluctant, but it's just like, at some point I, I don't want you to opt out of all of this stuff targeted at women because then that is just kind of on its, all the female movies are on its own track anyway, you know, and that doesn't help us either. Like I would, I would like to be at the center of the conversation. I feel like

one of the long frustrations of my career has always been that there's all the popular stuff. And then there's all the stuff that a man is interested in and there I'm very specific person, but the stuff that I'm interested in usually features a larger number of women than the stuff that is popular. And I like, I would just like to not be in the special category. I think everyone would... Well, I can't speak for everyone. I can speak for myself. But I would like for everyone to talk about the things that I'm interested in with me. That's all I want. So... So to that point, there's one other complexity to this that I want to underline, which is we don't talk about enough movies made by women on this show. That's certainly my fault.

We don't have enough movies made by women, which you talk about all the time. And this is very true also of films made by Black artists or Asian American artists or Latino artists or down the line, underrepresented groups, a lot of times the stories that they're able to tell that get greenlit, that get funded are stories about trauma or struggle or pain. Not all stories are about pain, but this is a very acute kind. And Promising Young Woman falls into this category of a story focused on a woman, made by a woman, but also about this very traumatic experience of being a woman, as opposed to every Vin Diesel movie in which he's just like, gets to be Vin Diesel and cool,

and there's no psychological confusion there about why this movie is being made. And so we are betwixt and between as a culture. We want to be able to platform these voices that don't get as much of a chance, but too often when we do that, we find ourselves doing it with stories that also shine a light on the pain in the community. And so it's a very difficult thing to unpack. There's no clear solutions. I'm not suggesting that there is, but it is quite difficult to navigate this landscape. Do you think that this will be nominated for many Oscars? I do. I do. Do you think it this will be nominated for many Oscars? I do. I do. Do you think it will win any?

I think it's certainly possible that it wins a Best Original Screenplay. Yeah, I can see that as well. Because last night when we reflected on the Golden Globes, there's only one screenplay category. At the Oscars, there are, of course, two, which increases Emerald Fennell's chances. God, they're so lazy. They just don't want to do any serious work. How many musicals or movies with music in it can we nominate? But God forbid that we have 10 writers at the Golden Globes. I know. I remember last night that there's no best documentary category at the Golden Globes,

too. Just a bunch of jerks, those guys. Anyway, I think it's likely to be nominated for Best Picture. I think it's likely to be nominated for Best Screenplay. I think Carey Mulligan will be nominated. And then hairstyle and makeup as well, I think will be a possible nomination. So you're looking at a movie that's going to be pretty widely recognized that a lot more people are going to be watching

over the next couple of months. And maybe this is just one of many conversations that we'll be trying to untangle some of its deeper themes. Any other closing thoughts on Promising Young Woman? Would you recommend this movie to a living human? Yes, I would. I think that I took it a little too, not that I took it a little too seriously.

I was just a little bit too much of a killjoy the first time around. And it didn't work for me, but it is fun to get to talk about it. Even if it's talking about some really tough subjects and some things that I don't totally understand. So if you like being entertained and then having conversations, which why are you listening to this podcast? If you don't like honestly, then I then I absolutely recommend it. I echo those thoughts. I think it is imperfect,

but it is fascinating and often very well made. That's Promising Young Woman. Thanks, Amanda. You and I will be back later this week to talk about Eddie Murphy. But until then, please stick around because I'm about to talk to the great Delroy Lindo. It is an honor to be joined by Delroy Lindo. Delroy, thank you for doing the show today. No problem. Happy to be here. Delroy, of course, we're here to talk about Defy Bloods and your work in that film, but you've made a number of films with Spike over the years. I was wondering if you could remember or recount for me

the first conversation you ever had with Spike. The first conversation with Spike was probably very very brief because it was in context of my auditioning for malcolm x and i just i can't remember anything in the specific other than um he was there were a number of actors waiting in the waiting area, and they were kind of behind. I'm not sure why that was. And so when I finally came into the room, I really can't remember. He probably said, hey, how are you? Sorry for being late.

I'm really not sure. But that was the circumstance. At that time, did you just read for West Indian Archie and then that was it? I had read for a casting person in California. I was working on a film in Northern California. I got in a call to come down to Los Angeles to meet Spike. When I got to meet Spike and auditioned for West Indian Archie, when I got down there, there was no Spike. It was just a casting person, a camera, and a young lady who

was sitting in the back of the room chewing gum and looking out the window. I will never forget that. So needless to say, I was not happy. So when I left the audition room in Los Angeles, I called my then agent and said, this was just not satisfactory. And I want to meet Spike. You said I was going to meet Spike. So I'd like to meet Spike. So then they rearranged another audition for me in New York. And that's when I actually got to meet him. So you've made four films together, but it's been a quarter of a century since you made a movie together. Were you in touch in that period of time, that interim? Intimately, we were. I would bump into him every now and again prior to my getting the call for Bloods. I think the last time I had seen Spike was probably three years prior in New York. I was doing some work at NYU. He is a professor at NYU. And we bumped into each other on the street on Broadway, right around the NYU campus. And we talked. That was probably the last

time I had spoken with him prior to getting the call from him about Bloods. Was the idea, you know, we'll reunite at some point? Did you guys actively discuss that? Yeah, I did. We got to do something, man. We got to work together. Yeah. So we had mutually, I don't know how serious it was from Spike's point of view, but yeah, we had talked about, man, we got to do something again. And he'd always said, yeah, we got to do something. I was curious about your relationship to Bloods and the story that's being told there. So you were born in England, you moved to Canada as a teenager. What was your perception of the Vietnam War as you were growing up? Honestly, I didn't really have a strong impression or perception of the war, particularly

at all. And much of what I had exposed myself to and learned, quote unquote, was subsequent to to leaving Europe. I remember reading Bloods, a book by Wallace Terry. Bloods is a verbatim accounts of African-American vets, of their experiences in NAM and or the military. And that made a deep impression on me just in terms of hearing so directly and the breadth of the experiences of these men. That was eye-opening to me. But to answer your question, my impression of the war per se

was much more general and impressionistic, for want of a better term, prior to this time. So tell me about your first reaction to reading Paul. Paul is an enormously complex character, and I imagine difficult to necessarily know how to play right out of the shoot so when you first read the script how did you feel um clearly a wonderful part a wonderful story when I read it I know I'm sure you know at this point I had reservations about the Trumpian aspect um but it was a wonderful story. Clearly, it was. And I spoke to Spike about my reservations about the Trumpian aspect. To his credit, he didn't say to me right off the bat we were on the phone. And I was frankly trying to talk to him about changing that aspect from being a MAGA hat wearing individual to cannot, can I just not just be an arch conservative, just somebody who's really conservative without

specifically being Trumpian. And to his credit, he said, look, let me think about that, man. Let me, let me, let me think on it. A few days later, he texted me and said, no, I need Paul to be what I've written, Trumpian. And I didn't question that. I accepted it completely. If that's what he needed, that's what he needed. And I then said to him, give me a couple more days, man. Let me read the script again. And that's what I did.

I read it twice, twice more. My lady read it also once and it was clear once. And I read it. So at the time that I by the time I got back to speak with Spike, I had read the script three times. And this is what was clear to me. Great part. A huge, you know, what I've what I've taken to calling a huge, tragic character started the process for myself of understanding or creating for myself a scenario that could encompass why Paul cast that vote in 2016. So the next time I got on the phone with Spike, it was, of course, man, I want to play. This is the part. This is man, I want to play. This is the part. This is the part I want to play.

I revisited the film last night, and it now has a kind of period piece within a period piece kind of a feeling because of that Trumpian aspect. And, you know, obviously, the world hasn't changed radically, but we're in a new administration. We're maybe not talking about Donald Trump as much as we were. On the other hand, there are a lot of things that Paul is going through that are timeless, you know, suffering from PTSD, the trauma, the relationship to his son. How do you prepare to play a character like that? Are you talking to vets? Are you reading? What's your, where do you start? The paradigm is how do you eat an elephant? Bite by bite. It's step by step by step. So all of the things you mentioned, talking to vets, reading, watching films, processing for myself, internalizing all of that, and making personal choices that I feel are appropriate for Paul and the story.

So it's all of the above. And I'm speaking very, very, trying to speak very, very succinctly. But it was a process. You know, I was speaking with, I just finished doing a television series and um i was at a photo shoot for that tv series and i was sharing a dressing room with an actor and she said what what are you doing and i was i was reading um i might have been reading bloods i don't remember but i was reading a book and i said oh i'm getting ready to play this vet. And she said to me, oh, I remember when you did that. I remember. It started way before the time that I,

you know, got on the plane to go to Thailand. And it was just talking to my cousins, both of whom are vets, two cousins that I have, speaking, seeking out other vets who spoke to me about their experiences in Vietnam. I was introduced to a retired major, an African-American lady who was an Iraq war veteran. She spoke with me very specifically about her experiences with PTSD and reread Bloods, read other literature, films that I looked at. So it really was a building process, step by step by step by step by step. Spike has talked about films like Treasure of the Sierra Madre and Apocalypse Now and maybe some of Oliver Stone's work. I don't know if, does he give you guys a watch list of any kind? Are you doing your own research in terms of the films you mentioned?

Right. He gave us all additional copies of Bloods. He gave us another book that was written by a gentleman who, a Vietnam vet who actually, we had his book and he actually came in while we were in rehearsal in Thailand, came in and talked to us a few days. He brought in two young men who educated us about the choreography of the dap, the dignity and pride handshakes, very intricate. And we had sessions with them, just like you would have a session with a dance choreographer and learn moves we were learning the moves of these these intricate handshakes that were

central to a lot of the brothers and their experiences in Vietnam we had training with the military advisors on the film one of whom was also a Vietnam vet, and he took us through the processes of the various formations, fighting formations when we were on set. He and his partner would take us through essentially choreographed moves of how we would conduct ourselves, how we would comport ourselves with the weapons, how we would comport ourselves in relationship to each other in the field. We were being educated in all those various areas. And, you know, Spike was laying the groundwork for us, right? In terms of the things and the people and the processes he was exposing us to.

And then it was on us to go in and incorporate that into our personal processes in service of our characters and the story. one of the things I like about the performance that you give is it is incredibly subtle and non-verbal and also very big and explosive and it seems like a difficult part to play I'm curious about during production what your feel and Spike's feel is is like when you have to have one of these you know the line the landmine scene for example you know do you have to do something like that a number of times how are you effectively knowing well this was too big this was this was not big enough that's i want to say that's spike's job you know watching it um to say if something's too big or not quite right that if something doesn't have quite the right tone for the scene, but he never said that. So that if you do a scene that is, to use your word, big emotionally,

that is involved emotionally, and your director does not say to you, change that or this is not quite working, then you know that you're on the right track. You know, I want to say something about a term you've used, you know, you use the word difficulty and challenging. And I didn't, certainly it was challenging, but I don't use that term as a negative in any way, shape or form. You know, it's the job, and one relishes the job. One relishes the challenge of meeting the story and the character

and meeting him where he is and fleshing him out. I mean, I really relished it. Such a brilliant part, you know. So while when one is offered a part in an August Wilson play, for instance, or Shakespeare, there may be a certain amount of trepidation in terms of acknowledging this has magnitude, this has size, but by the same token, there is also the aspect of really relishing that challenge. And I would to the size of the preparation that one did. That was partially why I was delving in or attempting to delve in as deeply as I could. You know, I'll use the metaphor of being in the ocean, right?

And you dive down there, man, and you get everything you can. So that when you come up, you're, you're halfway ready. And then you dive down again and then you come up again and you're ready. You've done, you know, the deep dive. And it was, it was, there were various. And in that deep dive where one was the equipment that one had to take those dives were the books and the research materials and the, you know, the films and the, you know, at the end of the two, the session that I have with my two cousins, for instance, one of my cousins gave me a shoebox full of photographs.

So I had those very personally erected totems, those personally put together totems that I carried with me. What I would like to think I'm doing is exposing myself to all of that data, that information, visual, the literature, all of it. And something is, a process is happening by osmosis. So that by the time on the first day of filming and Spike said action, I feel a certain kind of groundedness. Not to the point where I'm saying to myself, oh, I got this. Not that, but just I've done the requisite preparation up to that point so that I can negotiate the challenge

of starting the work, beginning the process of creating this character. I think I use the words difficulty and challenge because it's difficult to watch Paul sometimes. There's a lot of anguish in him and it's challenging to hear him talk to his friends the way that he's talking to him. I'm curious, especially since you're living with so much of this material, are you the kind of actor who takes this stuff home with you or are you able to just separate when when the camera is off it's probably a little bit of both i would say broadly speaking no i'm not taking it home with me and as much as i'm not carrying that anguish back to the hotel but i am constantly processing the information for myself in order to get ready for tomorrow's work.

Certainly, it's sensitive. It's a sensitive process because certainly it is, for me personally, necessary to maintain connection both inside and outside of the work. But I would say it is completely inappropriate to walk around with that anger and rage offset. That's not the work. whatever the emotional journey, the emotional landscape of the character is, and focus it in such a way that it is there to be accessed when it needs to be accessed on set. Not in the hotel, not in the van, even though one may be thinking, and one is thinking about, you know, one is processing all the time in one's head and making notes and working with the script.

But there's a time to work and there's a time not to work. You've mentioned August Wilson a couple of times. From afar, I see your career in three phases. You tell me if I've got this right. So in the 80ss you do an extraordinary amount of work on the stage and appear in some of wilson's plays in the 90s you were everywhere in movies in all kinds of movies you were you were in 30 movies between 1990 and 2005 i didn't know that it does seem like in the last 15 years you've primarily worked in tv and i

wonder is that a choice? Is that a function of what's been offered to you? Why do you think it's been demarcated in this way? It's a function of what was offered to me. It was a function of what happened to me in that second phase, both in terms of how my career unfolded and my relationship to how my career was unfolding and my relationship to the choices that I made in that second phase and what some of the consequences were of some of the choices that I made, which resulted in my working more in television in the last few years, as you say, 15 years, which was based on what I was being offered. Are you happy with how that turned out?

Again, to use your paradigm of the last 15 years, certainly there has been work that I have done in the last 10 years or so that I would have preferred not to do. That's being completely candid. So from that standpoint, am I happy? No, the reality is I would have preferred not to do some of that work. And there were some unfortunate experiences in that period.

However, what I'm happy about is that what I am happy about is that I did indeed continue to work. I didn't give up. I didn't. The disappointments that I experienced, and there were some deep-seated disappointments, but those disappointments did not result in my giving up. They resulted in I hung in, and I'm really happy that I hung in. And I'm really happy that I have been able to continue to work

and make a living as an actor, even though at some points I was, it felt like I was hodgepodging it together. And at some point, certainly, I felt like I was hanging onpodging it together. And at some point, certainly I felt like I was hanging on by my fingernails. But the most important aspect is that I continued to work. You know, my brother and I became big fans of yours in the 90s. And we always felt, we talked about how you would elevate maybe less than great material by just showing up in a film.

And sometimes you would appear in truly great movies. I revisited Crooklyn last year during quarantine, which I just, I loved. I kind of fell in love with all over again. And I was wondering if you could just talk to me about the experience of making that film and what your relationship is to it at this point in your career.

Man, I so appreciate Crooklyn. There's so many aspects of Crooklyn that I appreciate. The fact that it has endured in the way that it has endured, it has proven itself to be kind of sort of a mainstay of the lexicon, the cinematic, not only Spike's lexicon, but the lexicon of cinema. And it's so interesting that you, as a young, you know, white kid, can be impacted by the film, which speaks to the, I don't know, not the efficacy of the film, the impact of the film. Because, you know, in the specific is the universal. On its face, it is about an African-American family

in Brooklyn in the 70s. But because it works, because it unfolds in the way that it does, it becomes, it has a universality that impacts audiences right across the board. And that is such a treasure to be a part of. And in a few weeks ago, I was doing some press for Bloods and they played back for me. I'm not quite sure what the context was. Some scenes had been selected. And I was watching the scene between Troy and I in the bedroom before going to the funeral when she's saying, I'm not going.

And I'm saying, Troy, you got to go. It's a beautiful scene. Heartbreaking. And, you know, I hadn't seen that scene in a long time. And I was watching it. And I just appreciated the work all over again. So, you know, it's really gratifying and affirming for me to hear you as an audience member say how much the film means to you. Because it's a special film it's a special film and it is more so because when the film was released spike got all kinds of

um it was just a negative response this is not a spike Lee film. People had all kinds of things to say about the film, but it has endured. And that is incredibly gratifying and rewarding. Speaking of revisiting things, Delroy, we end every episode of this show by asking filmmakers and actors, what's the last great thing they have seen? Have you been able to see anything that you've loved recently? Oh man, I haven't seen as much this year. Um, just because I've been working and, and, and, you know, in some funny way, um, while for a lot of people who have been quarantined, they have gone back and watched a lot of films. it hasn't quite played out like that for me. What I will say is a film that just knocked me on my ass.

I just adored this film. It was so rich. And it's a film from last year, actually, called Capernaum. And if you haven't seen Capernaum, watch it. It's, in my personal opinion, it's an extraordinary film. What was it about it that spoke to you? The director was working with non-actors. The performances that she extracted from the actors,

the protagonists of which are a little boy who is eight or nine. And he forms a relationship with this, literally a toddler. This toddler, three, maybe, or four. A friend of mine was one of the producers, Danny Glover, and I called Danny after I'd seen it, and I said, man, how did that director get that performance out of that toddler? I swear to you, I swear to God, I found myself looking at the screen at this toddler's, what this toddler was doing. And I started wondering if the toddler was computer generated.

You know how those commercials last year when a little toddler would come and speak? And I'm saying, is this toddler real, man? How did you do that? And it was a brilliant example of, it was a brilliant acting lesson. It was a brilliant example of how a director, passionate and committed to the subject matter, who then gathers actors who are familiar enough with the terrain of the story, the emotional terrain, the socio-political, the cultural terrain of the story, that they can deliver that story. They can tell the story that the director wants to be told,

needs to be told, and elevate the whole experience for everybody, which in turn elevated the experience for me. I was so moved. I was so touched. And also, I don't know what the budget was for this film, but I just had the impression they didn't have a lot of money. And that impressed me. That impressed the hell out of me, that working with these kinds of,

these aspects, I don't want to say constraints, but working with whatever the budgetary, the realities of the budget were. I don't remember the name of the director, a lady, who worked with her actors clearly in a way that was so efficacious, so dynamic. And this is not a $100 million film. It is so beautiful and so human and rich. And just the fact that I single out the two kids who were the protagonists, but everybody in that film was just, to use your word, heartbreaking. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful film. And in context, it was one of the, it didn't win Best Foreign Film, but it was in the running.

It was in the mix, I think. For me personally, that film stands head and shoulders, and it has nothing to do with the lack of talent of the other filmmakers and the other films and everything to do with the monumental achievement of the filmmakers connected to Capernaum. It's a fabulous recommendation. Delroy, I'm such an admirer of your work. I really appreciate it this night. I like talking to you. Thanks for doing the show today. God bless, man. Thank you so much. Thank you to Delroy Lindo. Thank you to Amanda Dobbins. And thank you to Bobby Wagner. Please stick around. Later this week, Amanda and I will be digging into the career of Eddie Murphy, building a Hall of Fame, and chatting a bit about Coming to America, the sequel to his comedy classic. We'll see you then.