An IRL group chat with the stars of ‘Love, Brooklyn’

0:00From KCRW Santa Monica and KCRW.com, it's The Treatment.

0:14Welcome to The Treatment. I'm Elvis Mitchell. At this year's Sundance Film Festival, I interviewed the principals of Love, Brooklyn, the romantic comedy. I spoke to Nicole Bahari, Dewanda Wise, Rory Wood Jr. and Andre Holland, who also co-produced First of all, Andre got this thing made and a mutual friend of ours kicked this thing in the gear giving him a film making career the same way he did for me Let's talk about how Steven Soderbergh got on this Yeah, man, thank you for your kind words, man I appreciate you and thank you for having us here It means so much and, you know, you mean so much to the community, man, and just thank you for the support Yeah, you know, Steven and I, our relationship started back on the Nick.

0:56And, you know, from day one, he was not only a wonderful director, but was also just really open and generous. And, you know, I had a lot of questions about filmmaking and about producing. And he was very like, hey, man, come on, let me let me tell you what I know. And not many people will do that. You know, there's a lot of gatekeeping and a lot of people who don't want to share information. But he wasn't like that. So we finished the Nick together while we were on the Nick. I had this idea about a basketball movie. And so I pitched him that and he, you know, was willing to listen. We developed that movie, ended up making it.

1:26It was called High Flying Bird. You know, with this movie. Thanks, man. And then with this one, this script came along five, almost six years ago, Elvis. And, you know, we pitched it around town and tried to get people to give us some money to do it and support us. And I don't think people saw the vision for it that I saw, that Rachel, our director, saw, that this cast saw. And I, you know, met Stephen at Brandy Library one night and we were talking about it. And he said, tell me the story. I told him. He said, who's involved? I told him. He said, let me read it. Send it to him. The next day he called.

1:56He said, all right, start tomorrow. And, you know, he put some money up. My company put some money up. And together we managed to get it financed. And off we went. But it's a really interesting movie because it's a movie about people who are kind of who they are when we meet them. They just have to understand who they are themselves, which I think is so often movies force change on us. And these are people who kind of know who they are, but they're afraid to admit it to themselves. And I want to start by asking you about your character, Nicole, because I feel like she kind of knows who she is, but she's kind of hiding behind all these other things, keeping herself busy in a way.

2:32Have you been speaking to my therapist? Is that what's going on? Oh, no, he's not on my speed dial at all. No. Look, it's such a beautiful script and such a gift to get to play someone who is as free, beautiful, complicated, but also, like you said, has the affinity to deflect, you know, and does it with finesse. So people think that it's charm and effervescence, but it's actually maybe fear and a little bit of arrested development at times. You know, so it's funny that you put it that way. I think the film is largely about, to me, the landscape changing. Right. For her, she has this gallery that she loves.

3:12She has this legacy from her family. She has these artists that she advocates for. And she's not sure that she can fulfill that in the way that she has in the past and the way that she feels good about. And choosing who you're going to be now as the landscape is changing and then your internal landscape is also changing. So, you know, I'm talking about it in sort of a heavy way, but it was a lot of fun to play her, though, because she is sort of this, like, effervescent free spirit. Well, I feel like it's a movie that, and you get into this, exists as a comedy and a drama at the same time. It's not this thing that tries to be— There's levity.

3:46Yeah. Yeah, but it doesn't try to alternate between one another. Because so often when that happens, the movie ends up defeating itself. Well, this is funny, so why would you take these people seriously? and I feel this is a movie that is not serious about taking the character seriously which is a hard thing to pull off I think that's the testament to Rachel Abigail Holder and her worldview just literally an extension of who she is and how she views and experiences life and I can say that because she and I share we share so much in common and there's this just this idea that life is kind of wild and strange and, you know, all these things at the same time.

4:26And so it was for her a bit more effortless to express that kind of simultaneity, you know what I mean? Because that's how she lives and views and experiences humanity. It's interesting you're saying these things because your character is the one who I think has to be the most adult because you're actually a single mom taking care of a child. And because you lost a partner, there's a thing that happens where certain times an emotional development kind of arrests at that moment where you lost the person. So even though you're conducting your life and you have to as an adult, you, for me, kind of epitomize the movie because you're a different person at night as opposed to when the sun is out.

5:09Yeah. Big time. Big time. I think she was trying to make this space and we were talking about the multitudes, right? Because it's a woman who's grieving, but she's still a woman in her body, you know? And so she's trying to process, honestly, her physical desire and what she needs and grappling with this love, this deep love that she still has for her partner and trying to make sense of the life that she thought she was living you know i think all these characters are really kind of reconciling the life that they thought they were going to be living with where they are in real time so much of it is like grappling like roy's character for sure like we were talking a lot about that for what our parents presented love to be and what traditional media in our 20 you know in our 20s presents love to be a very linear you do this and then you do this and then there is happy and i think what this film you know represents to a degree with andre's character is well which this or this should i do what my character is grappling with well should i have done that or should i have done this it's it's a man who is trying to decide what choice to make and from time to time he gets to check in with a friend who's already made that choice and grappling with that as well.

6:39And I think the other thing to the ladies up here and their characters, it also presents the fact that where a relationship goes is not completely up to the man. And being able to present that and make that perfectly clear of women who set boundaries and women who also decide in what they want to do first before you even fit into the equation. I think that makes all the sense in the world to me, Roy. But also, your character reminds me of what you do as both a stand-up and in your work on TV, is that you're constantly calling out the truth when you see it. It's sometimes an absurd thing to do, but you don't laugh as you're calling out that truth.

7:20You laugh after you say it, but as you're saying it at the moment, because you have my favorite line in the picture, all of the above is not a choice. Yeah. And do you feel that affinity that you have for that character kind of relates to where you lead your life in some media terms? Yeah, but I have to give credit, you know, again, to our director, Rachel, and to Andre for giving me a place to have less of my comedic performative ideologies, but just more of my worldview and using that to inform the character. You know, for the time that I was on The Daily Show, yeah, it was a lot of calling out political, you know, back and forth and, you know, all of that type of stuff.

8:02But here the subject is love and trying to get to the truth of that. So still being able to embody that a little bit, I think still played to my comedic strengths from a sense of ideology versus them just going, just be energetic and, you know, do the thing. go eat some sugar and then come back and be high energy. Do you get to have the big romantic gesture in the film? I'm not going to give it away, but it's like, again, this thing I was saying, everybody knows who they are when we meet them. And we're thinking, well, what is this about then? And it's about stop running away from yourself, which it feels to me like it's almost a central black dilemma in some ways.

8:46Yeah, I think that and that's also a conversation that I don't think we normally have as a race. You know, comedian Baron Vaughn said something to me profound a couple of years ago. He said that black people of this generation were burdened with being the curse breakers where we are trying to unpack what is different about us. I'm hesitant to say what is wrong about us, but we're trying to unpack what is different about us and how to fix that. You're trying to diagnose yourself while repairing yourself concurrently, while also, to Dewanda's character's point, deciding how to protect your child from that.

9:33And so how do you protect your child? How do you protect yourself going forward as you mature into something that you haven't wholly identified? You haven't done the full diagnostic yet. So you don't know what's wrong. You know something is wrong. Something is off. Maybe this dream of love and the trajectory that was originally laid out for me, maybe I shouldn't buy into that. But if I'm not buying into that, then what is the alternative? I think I want to ask you about this, Andrea, because it's a movie that as you're watching it, you have to almost watch it twice because it washes over you in a way that feels kind of effortless.

10:08Because, again, I can define these characters in so many ways. Because again, yours, she is so different when there's sunlight out and she has to deal with an awakened child. She can't pretend that she's that person. It's almost like you guys are on an island together at nighttime. And then those worlds start to collide. And so much of this is about these worlds colliding because these people all know each other. There's usually kind of a subterfuge. Somebody's usually a liar in a movie like this. And there's none of that happening here. Yeah, man, that's one of the things that I thought was really remarkable about the movie, you know, is the fact that not a whole lot happens.

10:46And to Rachel's credit, she takes this approach, this kind of fly on the wall approach where we really are inviting an audience to, you know, see from our perspective these black people's lives. You know what I mean? And just watch them try to move their lives from this place to this place. And for me, that is like enthralling to watch. It's a little radical. You know what I mean? Like, ain't no car chases, ain't no trauma, ain't no, you know, major explosions. It's just this person, these three people trying to figure out how to move their lives forward against a changing landscape that is a rapidly gentrifying Brooklyn.

11:18Was it Washington singing that old Roy Ayers Jr. song? Roy Ayers song, right? We Live in Brooklyn, baby. And what that song used to represent, that Brooklyn belonged to us. I guess that song, the Ubiquity album. And how that world has changed. And that song is now being sung by all kinds. I've actually heard it being sung by all kinds of people in Brooklyn now. And it's a scary thing to realize that even that song is colonized by everybody. Yeah, man. It's funny. That song came up for you. In my head, what kept coming up was this old Charles Gordone play called No Place to Be Somebody. You know what I mean?

11:56It's like this is a thing that people have been saying over and over in a variety of different ways for a long time. Like, where do we get to just carve our space to be, to live, to exist? You know what I mean? And so I wanted this project to be one in which we could explore that. Yeah. And also I should say, too, that the community aspect of the way in which the movie was made, I think, is an important thing to point out as well. I literally, man, picked up the phone and called these brilliant people and said, man, would y 'all come and work on this project? And everybody said they would. When it came down to us trying to find locations, it was, let me call this person that owns this coffee shop in Brooklyn on Tompkins Avenue.

12:29She said, OK, come on through. Let's call the cat at Walters. He said, come on through. We'll help you out. When I tell you, we had very, very little money and even less time, you know, but it was just us calling in favors and everybody showed up. Roy, man, you came in, you know, and showed up on day one and knocked it out of the park, man. And so in a way, there's like the narrative of the movie. And then there's also the like meta narrative of like what we as a community are trying to build together, you know. And I think that's an important thing to point to as well. I think so, too, because as you were talking about, Nicole, I mean, that building is an heirloom.

13:01And it's also it's a signifier of what that neighborhood was at one point when it was thronging with black businesses. And there could have been a blackout there 60 years ago. It's also a global and a story for everyone, though, because there are people who might think of Brooklyn in terms of the Italians that were there even before. We can go further back. Overlapping histories. Yeah, there's so many different histories and we're seeing landscapes change throughout the world in a way. So I feel like in a way, even though we're talking about this very specific time that we're living in, there's also these things are happening in Brazil.

13:37These things are happening in so many different countries right now where we're seeing change. And I think that's the thing about the film that is like applicable and just I think it's going to connect to a lot of different audiences because of that, because it's happening all over the world. It's happening all over the country. Yeah, it's like a tide. To your point about it, you're kind of dropping into the lives of these characters and their worlds are changing, right? Around them, kind of, they're caught in this wave. Yeah. And it's up to them. And aren't we caught in the wave? And aren't we all caught in the wave?

14:10And it's up to them to, you know, either respond truthfully and honestly to what is happening and what's happening in real time or to continue to live in the past or live in the future. You know, it's really such a beautiful meditation on what it means to be radically honest and super present, which I think if there is a moment for such a movie to exist, it would be right now. It's the treatment. and you're listening to a conversation with the stars of the film Love, Brooklyn, Nicole Bahari, Dewanda Wise, Roy Wood Jr., and Andre Holland. It's The Treatment. I'm Elvis Mitchell, continuing my conversation with the cast, the romantic comedy Love, Brooklyn, Nicole Bahari, Dewanda Wise, Roy Wood Jr., and Andre Holland, who also co-produced.

15:01I think this movie is so much about, again, it's a really interesting dilemma to see played out in this way because it asks how complicated a life do you want to lead? And then these are all characters who have complicated lives and they're choosing to distract themselves from the complications. Your character, and there's a beat in it that really sends a chill through me when he's not answering the phone when his editor is calling him the piece. He says, well, if I exceed to this, then I'm a f*** up. But there is such a thing as a block, and rather than own it, as Roy cared, you go out and buy something new.

15:35You go buy a bicycle. which means you get to revert to being a kid because grown up is riding around a bicycle. I mean... Hang on now. As an artist, man, there's something about... Sometimes there's an idea that art and life are two separate and distinct things, but often I find that the two are so commingled that the things I'm struggling with in my personal life are often the exact same things that are showing up in my work, right? That's just me speaking personally. And I think in the case of Roger, the blocks that he's having in his professional life, right, are so connected to the blocks that he's having in his romantic life.

16:15Like that part of it was really interesting to me. And I don't think he's not aware of that. He's not conscious that that's what's happening. But there's this like internal... I was trying to ask you if he was conscious of it or not. I don't think so. What did you think? Did you sense it? I was wondering about that too, because at a certain point, if you're riding your bike around all times of the day or night, and you know you have something else to do, you can say, well, I'm doing this to stay fit, and I'm fighting the scourge of unwanted emissions. But in fact, it's easier to do that than to sit down in front of your computer and just type.

16:46Right. And then we get home and you say, well, I'm too tired to type. So I'll take a hit and then I'll have a drink. Then I'll sit down and write. And then I, yeah. But see, I think the thing about this cat is that like, it's not just that he needs to work. Like what the editor is saying to him, which I think is really pivotal, is that she's saying, look, man, you know, you've written this thing before. People know you as this. We want you to produce another piece of work exactly like the one you did the last time. And what Roger is saying is like, I can't do that. That's not where I am right now.

17:14I need I got something else to say. And she's saying, but yeah, we don't want to hear that. The world doesn't want to hear that from you. We just want you. And I think we all as actors can relate to that. The world wants you to do the thing that we know you can do. Right. And so I think that the thing that he's struggling with is not just like to work or not to work. It's like to confront like the truth of who I actually am. Am I going to let that come forward? Right. Am I going to speak my truth or am I going to continue to do the things that the industry wants me to do? And that part of it, I think, is really interesting.

17:46He strikes you as being the kind of guy who if you really want to do it or write the piece and subvert it, like give them what they think they want, but in fact, have it be something else. Yeah. But again, the movie has so many undercurrents in it that it doesn't give you an easy out for any of these characters. And I'm wondering if that's what you all responded to in it, that there's nothing simple about any of that. Yeah, I think that the idea of that underlying battle for Andre's character within the film was a battle that we all, I think we all won as performers and being cast in this film and being allowed to do things that were different from what everybody else would have wanted or what people were used to seeing from us.

18:33And so to me, that issue that that he was fighting with within the script was something that was actually triumphed and supported through the casting and the choices that they made, you know, between. And I don't know how much you and Rachel talked about, you know, allowing people to do this thing. okay, well, can Roy be this character or will we allow Roy to come in and tweak it a little bit into what he wants it to be? But just to have the freedom to be able to be trusted with doing something different from what you were was just, just the themes of the film were echoed and how the film itself was produced.

19:10Did you guys get rehearsal time with it? No, we were enormously, I mean, I kind of came in, I think I was like last cast. And we were very, very, very, very much well, I think, served by this scaffolding, the community that already existed between us by knowing each other's like not only knowing each other as human beings, but also, honestly, for my part, being mega fans. Like I know Andre's work. I know Nicole's work. I know Roy's work. You know what I mean? And there's, there's nothing like kind of walking into an environment and having an instant chemistry and an instant sense of safety. So yeah, rehearsal, definitely on the day, it was certainly a luxury.

19:56And there were things that we were able to kind of work out and work through, but we were enormously kind of blessed to really know each other well. And Rachel created that environment as well. She was very much like encouraging of, I think, safety and freedom in our choices. And then you and I got into a studio, it was like a week before, and just kind of played around. We've known each other for a while and had done something similar back in the day. And it was actually an interesting sort of meta nostalgic thing that we did where we got in the space. And we went through maybe what some of their dynamic was.

20:35Not necessarily acting out any of the scenes, but we had a little bit of time to just like talk things through and like listen to music to create, I think, whatever that. History. That history and firmament is between us. That's like that unknowable thing. so that's what we had but we didn't have time to necessarily work on you know scenes yeah because he was also producing and running around like crazy get making this thing happen and just so calm about it too just whatever andre was dealing with never made its way into the scene and the ability to partition that brother i i don't know how you do that but like that was pivotal in us having you know great performances and then it would be a week later you'd find out from it yeah you know that we got it done four of the cameras broke but we thankfully we shot it on the iPhone that I got a friend around the corner had two cameras and so but we got it done it's just like when were you going to tell us that and so like the ability to wear the hat of not just a producer but an indie producer with all of the hurdles that come with filmmaking naturally on top of all the additional curveballs that the production got hit with the fact that it got to the finish line is just a testament to his commitment to the project and the level of belief that he had in and our producers and our producers yeah let me say something too that i've found because there's an interesting thing that i realized i was girding myself for that didn't happen there's a commodification of black anger and these kinds of things and there's at some point where somebody gets after the scene where they get to scream about something just for no reason, because it's always Black anger.

22:19And you expect it. And you guys have all done these things. And maybe about half hour in, I realized, no, because these are decent people trying to figure out who they are. They're not trying to inflict their traumas on others, which is a shorthand trope for saying Black people have no inner lives, that everything has to be expressed at almost an infantile level. And I was so moved by that, deeply moved by it in a way that was thrilling to me. Well, anger is often a cover for grief. Like, I just think about that, like, beautiful moment on the balcony where you think like, oh, is Nicole going to go off on, you know what I mean?

23:03Is she going to go off on Roger? And it's like, no, because what she's actually feeling is a simultaneous compassion, you know, for where he is, for where she is, for what she wants, for what he wants. And for where her daughter is too. Absolutely. Yeah. But I mean, that moment, that's one of my favorites. But also too, when you see your friend in the park and we expect there's going to be an explosion after that. And there's not. After you leave, almost leave your coffee cup behind, you think he's going to run into somebody and just vent because he didn't do what he would think he's going to do but he doesn't there's a instead of romantic gesture again that's why i said this is about people who realize they have to take the step forward themselves and there's generosity in this film that we often see extended to black characters we all just took that goal we all just took that in big time yeah i know it's your show but i want to ask you a question i got an old-fashioned so i'm gonna ask you a question.

24:05No, man, for real. Like, your work has meant so much to me, man. As you know, I've told you that to your face. The movie you made that you and Steven did that we talked about, I'm still to this day working through all of the black movies that you all went through on that show. Like, I'm still watching them, right? I'm curious to know from your perspective, movies like these that center romance and love in, like, black communities, it feels to me that there was a time in which these were, like, popular and fairly common that they were being What do you think happened? My movie's about that. The fact that there was this de facto underground black economy that saved the movie business.

24:43And as soon as it was identified, the parts that saved the movie business were extracted. Heroism that turned up in those movies. Films like Claudine that were about stepping up instead of like making more of these kinds of movies. or Car Wash, which is an opera about capitalism versus freedom set to Motown music. That to me is one of the most subversive films in the history of motion pictures. And once that bubble kind of burst because other kinds of films weren't being made, then people got to say, we've talked about this before. Well, you know, we tried those black movies. Okay. Okay. And then you get the thing where, for example, with black film soundtracks, it was purely by accident that the Superfly soundtrack was released two months before the movie came out because Curtis Mayfield owned the rights.

25:38It was his record label, a studio who didn't release it. the guy who ran warners who ran then was running columbia when i've ever said if i'd known superfly was going to make that kind of money i'd have bought it and released it myself he said it made 25 million dollars in a time when people paid a dollar fifty to go see the movies wow and then the superfly soundtrack because it stayed on the charts for a year every month there's another single that was a constant promotion for the movie and the same thing happened i'm not the same thing because Shaft was kind of a success, but not every single song from the album being released is a single, which happened with Superfly.

26:16And so then you get Saturday Night Fever, which takes all those lessons. What happens in the 1980s? The movie business is kept alive by soundtracks. Where did that start? With black culture. I was going to say that, like music and like Spike and music, that was like always in such lockstep. Like that's something he knew, you know what I mean? When I even think about his like inclusion of like DC Go-Go, you know? Oh my God, I mean, that soundtrack for school days is like a primer on DC Go-Go. But all those lessons were learned and then subsumed into the mainstream culture. Then you could say, well, we tried with black films.

26:52Well, let's just take these things. It's appropriation of black culture, writ small and large, that happens all the time. That's why I was so cheered by seeing this movie because it's finally a movie about generosity. Why is everybody so quiet all of a sudden? We're wrapped. Come on. Thank you for sharing that. Well, it's late on Sunday, and rather than talk anymore myself, I want to thank these guys for being here. This is such a remarkable movie. You know how much I love you. I can't thank you guys enough. Thank you all so much. Thank you. It was a gift. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.