Corey Hawkins is known for films like Straight Outta Compton, In the Heights, and The Color Purple, along with his Tony-nominated work in plays like Six Degrees of Separation and Topdog/Underdog. But Hawkins says his new film, The Man in My Basement, made him go deeper than he ever had before—and not just because he’s in almost every frame of the film.
The thriller, directed by Nadia Latif in her feature debut, is an adaptation of Walter Mosley’s novel, following a man (Hawkins) living in Sag Harbor who is put in a tricky situation when a white stranger (Willem Dafoe) asks to rent his basement for the summer. Hawkins plays Charles Blakey, who is grappling with the loss of his mother and fighting to keep their ancestral home.
Hawkins and Latif, an accomplished theater director, brought the film to the Toronto International Film Festival for its world premiere ahead of its release to select theaters on September 12 (and to Hulu later this fall). There, they talked to Vanity Fair about how it felt to see the film with an audience, what it was like to work with Dafoe, and why Hawkins decided to train for a marathon while also filming this marathon of a movie.
Vanity Fair: How did it feel to watch this film with an audience?
Nadia Latif: I’m a theater director by trade, and in my first ever professional show, I watched the opening night. The first sound cue fired three seconds late, and I sat through the whole show kind of weeping. I have never watched one of my opening nights since. That’s partly because in that moment, you realize you have to relinquish control of it, and you have to accept a certain level of chaos into your life. Loads of people asked me if I was nervous about the premiere, and I was like, “I have watched my work die on its ass in front of an audience too many times.”
The film is a finished thing; it’s now going to begin a conversation. I enjoyed it. I also sat between my family and the drunkest man who ever existed. He was there guzzling beers and eating popcorn.
That’s a pretty trippy movie to see drunk.
Latif: I think by the end he was really like, “This is not what I fucking signed up for.”
Corey Hawkins: My first opening night on Broadway, someone went to the hospital because they were on the wrong side of the stage, and we had to finish the show. [Laughs] I also just feel sometimes, like you said, once the film is finished, if I’ve seen it and I’ve been able to enjoy everybody’s work already, sometimes it’s a bit of torture to sit through. So I just listened to it last night.
This seems like a film where you can feel the audience members tensing up as they watch.
Latif: There’s an interesting kind of symphony that happens, a physical tension and an ideological tension. When Charles walks into the basement, he has no idea what’s going to be down there day-to-day. I love genre, and what I love about this film is that it feels like it’s sort of borrowing from lots of things. But it sort of never lets you quite settle into “I know what the genre is; I know what my expectations are.”
Hawkins: It’s fascinating listening to the audience’s responses.
Latif: It sort of sneaks in some big ideological ideas, about land possession and colonialism and the notion of taking someone’s home. I’m mindful of the difference in the makeup of an audience. These are ideas that are incredibly alive for Black and brown people in a way that they are not as alive for white people. So in a way I enjoy watching the audience divide itself.
Corey, what did you anticipate to be most difficult about getting this character right?
Hawkins: I was familiar with the book. I read it 20 years ago. It’s just so rare that Black people get to exist in a full three-dimensionality onscreen. And it’s sad that we still say this—but it’s the truth. Ultimately, the adaptation and what you’re wrestling with is, how do you activate someone who is rudderless and someone who’s adrift? How do you, as an actor, be comfortable with stillness? I found that to be an interesting challenge.
Filming was delayed first by the pandemic, and then by the strikes. How hard was that?
Latif: I started working on it in 2019. Honestly, one of the best things that ever happened—because originally Walter was writing it, and I was not a screenwriter at the time. I had just been to the Sundance lab as a director on a different film, and it was the first time I’ve ever written anything. It sort of gave me the nerve in the pandemic to be like, “I think I need to start writing this film. I think I have things inside me that need to come through my fingers rather than through Walter’s.” It really helped me learn how personal film had to be.
I think I’d actually been quite scared of things being biographical. I was like, as a Black person I shouldn’t have to pick my scabs for people to see me bleed. But I think what Man in My Basement has taught me is that it’s possible for a film to not be your story and to be deeply personal at the same time.
Hawkins: It gave me some valuable time to really just go back to the well and dig in with Willem. We started doing the pen pal thing.
Latif: I tell you, that man will always email you back within 12 hours. It’s amazing.
Corey, you’ve said this role made you go deeper than any other role. How so?
Hawkins: Well, first of all, I was in every scene. I come from the theater, so theatrically, I think Topdog/Underdog gave me that will to go there. And then the flip side of that, giving voice to men who we see but we don’t acknowledge [their] pain. They’re not victims, but they are full human beings. I just remember talking to people who are going through grief, who are going through trauma, [or] psychosis, and being comfortable to diagnose that or sort of reckon with that is an uncomfortable thing.
Latif: [Charles] is such a deeply lonely person, but it’s loneliness by choice. And then I think sometimes when we were filming, it is quite a lonely job for you. Everybody else gets to go away, and you’re like, “All I do is fucking film.”
Hawkins: That was the good part about training for the marathon too. I would go home from work and then go for my five miles, running in the middle of the freezing cold to sort of clear and center.
You were training for a marathon while making this movie?
Hawkins: Yes.
Latif: Was I the happiest director in the world thinking about him maybe breaking his ankle either on my set or on a run? I had many sleepless nights.
Hawkins: I flew to Seville and ran the next day, after we wrapped.
Latif: It felt interesting to put Corey through this intense marathon of a role, and then to take Willem Dafoe, the world’s most physical actor, and take away that power. Everybody is sort of doing the hardest thing imaginable.
Did running the marathon right after help you shed the character, or did he stick around?
Hawkins: Charles is still kind of in there. But strangely, I think there was a bit of a decompression around mile 15.
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The post For Corey Hawkins, Making ‘The Man in My Basement’ Was a Marathon in More Ways Than One appeared first on Vanity Fair.
