Melissa Harris-Perry: You're listening to The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry. Now, if you're familiar with the actor Winston Duke, there's a good chance you know him from his breakout role as M'Baku in Black Panther.

Winston Duke: We have watched and listened from the mountains. We have watched with disgust as your technological advancements have been overseen by a child, who scoffs a tradition. I know you want to hand the nation over to this prince who could not keep his own father safe.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Or maybe you remember him as the dorky dad fighting for his family survival in Jordan Peele's Us.

Winston Duke: I thought I already done told y'all to get off my property. Okay? If you all want to get crazy, we can get crazy. Now, the cop's already on the way.

Melissa Harris-Perry: You might not recognize Duke right away when you watch him starring in his latest film Nine Days. Written directed by Edson Oda. The movie is a surreal exploration of what it means to be human. Duke plays a character named Will, who was once alive, but now is tasked with interviewing and selecting a spirit to be born into the real world. Here's Duke in a scene from the film with Zazie Beetz who plays one of the spirits, name Emma.

Zazie Beetz: Do you get hungry?

Winston Duke: I'm like you. I don't get hungry, but I can eat.

Zazie Beetz: Why don't you eat?

Winston Duke: Because I don't get hungry.

Zazie Beetz: Oh, really, no point of eating?

Winston Duke: For me, it is.

Zazie Beetz: What's it like?

Winston Duke: What?

Zazie Beetz: To be alive?

Winston Duke: Maybe you'll find out.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Well, the film is abstract in its structure. It came from a deeply personal place for first-time director Oda. Winston Duke told me how the project came to be and what it was like collaborating on such a unique work.

Winston Duke: It was inspired by his uncle that committed suicide. His uncle committed suicide at 50 years old. The family pretty much just reduced this man's narrative to just that act. Edson was just told, growing up, "Don't be like your uncle, your uncle was weak," no other information. Just, "We don't talk about him. Don't be like your uncle. Your uncle was weak."

As he got older and dealt with his own depression, all mental health things. He researched this uncle because he knew something was up. He found out that this uncle was an artist that didn't get to practice his art. He lived the life of a translator. They're Japanese immigrants to Brazil and uncle didn't talk about his mental health stuff and his depression.

He really wrote this film as an opportunity to redefine the life of his uncle and give his uncle a different narrative re-imagining his life and then afterlife situation, and that's the intention of the film. Overall, it's something that came about with so much clarity, specificity, and intention that inviting us, inviting actors into it, it was already something that was really passion-filled that came out of that family, need for redefinition. It was already so full that it fed us sometimes more than we fed it.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I love this portrait that you've painted for us of the multiple steps of collaboration that for viewers, for audiences, we see final products, but often we experience all of this work, all of this genius, all of these revisions, all of the agonizing journey inward. We just experienced the final product of it as though it was created whole cloth. It's so valuable, right, to have you walk us through that.

I'm wondering, because you name check this just a bit when you talk about Edson Oda as a Japanese Brazilian first-gen immigrant, you yourself as first-gen immigrant here in the US from Trinidad Tobago, I'm wondering if there was a connection in part around that idea of literally journeying for the opportunity for life, for remaking what life might be, and the ways in which it is good and bad, hard and beautiful embedded in those immigrant stories.

Winston Duke: 100%. That's how we really connected and how I believe I got the role. Edson didn't write this with me in mind. It was to reflect the experience of his uncle who's a Japanese man. At first, he really was looking for an Asian actor to really reflect that, and whole a lot closer and exist a lot closer to his own personal story. When we met, we spoke for maybe two and a half to three hours and then spent 15 minutes talking about the movie.

What the bulk of that conversation was, was what it means to be this immigrant man and dealing with erasure and invisibility in a country that's like white-dominated and what it means to work and find our way through this industry, work and find our ways through academia, work and find a way all the way through all these different micro and macro aggressions.

We have such a beautiful conversation that he was like, "Oh wow, we're really similar. I really trust that you could really capture what this story is about because you understand it. You understand grief. You understand pain. You understand what this is, but from a really nuanced perspective point of view," and we found common ground and I'm hesitant to keep saying the word "universality" because none of our experience-- Our experiences are both universal, but also not like it's nuanced in that way. I think we did find a weird universality where he said, "I believe you can be a really great reflection of what my uncle was or could have aspired to be." Recently, I heard him say in an interview, "I was taught in school." That's what he said about himself.

He said, "I was taught in school when casting, you really want to cast for not who the character is simply, but who the character can be. I thought Will really could be Winston Duke. Will really could be Winston Duke in his light." I think that's where the film erupts into. I play Will in a lot of his shadow. I play a lot of the shadow personality of Will. Then he finds his light as we go through the film.

That's where that really big monologue really captures is that light. We really connected on the immigrant experience and the nuances of that immigrant experience. You know what I mean? That's really how I think I actually ended up with this job and I said to him, "Hey, you don't have to choose me. I just really loved your script, one. Whether you choose me or not, I just want your movie to be made. I just want your movie to be out there in the world because it deserves to be seen. If that's with me, you're going to get a whole bunch of stuff that comes with me."

You know what I mean? You're going to get a lot of free story that comes with me and it's going to be a lot more specific if it's Winston Duke's body, if it's a Black man that even a story about psychiatry and psychology and internal life and an internal work, you're going to have a different story when it's a 280-pound man, Black traditionally masculine appearing man on screen. You're going to get a whole different story than if it's a white man, than if it's an Asian man, than if it's a white woman. I say that because other than the fact that he's referred to as he, it's a very non-gendered experience in Nine Days.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I want to go right into that. I want to go into this representation of a 280 Black masculine man, in part, because I just, to be honest about what's going on backstage at The Takeaway when my production team came and said, "Hey, we have a chance to have this big fine man from Black Panther on the show. Don't we all want that?" Everyone wanted that the girls and the boys and queer folk and straight folk and everybody on the team was like, "Yes, we would definitely like to have him."

I have to say it was shallow. It was a shallow moment of just remembering the joy of the Black Panther

and the very particular representation of Black masculinity that you bring us there. Then this, I really was not ready for it. It's a real, entirely different, almost stage actor multiple versions of Black manhood, masculinity, femininity, interiority that you do. Is that just fun for you as an actor to move across that range?

Winston Duke: Yes, I think that's the real work. How do I answer that? Yes, it's exceptionally fun. That's the work I really want to do because I've never wanted to be trapped. During quarantine, I sat with myself and really redefined or-- not redefined, but articulated what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. I realized I've been doing it for a while but I never put it into words, and I did that. I said I want to live in my imagination. I want to live in imaginary circumstances. I got into acting to escape and play and play for the rest of my life. I wanted to engage people in really cool conversations, but also just offer them alternatives to how hard everyday life is already.

Sometimes my work should be able to do some of the grieving and painful work that they just can't do and allow them to enter into conversations after seeing me do that work, or is to just be so fun that they just laugh their faces off and it creates a doorway into some joy. You know what I mean? I really articulated that over the quarantine. That is the work, it's flexibility. It's a spectrum. It's openness. It's acceptance. It's all these different things. That's what Nine Days is, it's duality. It's accepting light. It's accepting dark. It's accepting the light and the shadow.

That's what Will is, he's a shadow character that has to embrace his light because the light is really vulnerable. The light is where most of us connect with each other. Most of us connect with each other in happiness. Most of us connect with each other in some version of honesty or perceived honesty. We're not all honest. [laughs] I'm sure we all know that. Cryptic, cryptic.

[laughter]

Melissa Harris-Perry: You're clearly sub-tweeting someone here.

Winston Duke: They know who they are. We usually connect with each other in light or perceived light, and this is a character that's running away from that perceived light because that perceived light comes with a lot of vulnerability. It comes with the vulnerability of pain, the vulnerability of loss, the vulnerability of grief and loss, because that light, you tend to accept things into you and have people or things get closer to you. That's what Will is running away from until he just can't run from it any longer. It's a circle, so you can run away as far as you can, but if it's a circle, you just run right back into the thing.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Right back into yourself.

Winston Duke: You're just running right back into it. That's one of my explanations why I'm always late is that I say I'm from the Caribbean. One of the reasons I think Caribbean people are always late or slow-moving is because they know they're on an island. It's a big circle. If you go left long enough, you're going to end up right where you started, so why be in a hurry, you know? [laughs]

Melissa Harris-Perry: There's so much there. On this question of loss and grief and pain, I just have to ask about the other film you're working on. Black Panther 2 without Chadwick Boseman, the light that went out for all of us, but so much so more for those of you who knew and worked with and loved him. I'm just wondering what it's been like there on that set without Boseman.

Winston Duke: It's a visible and tangible hole. He's no longer there, and he's no longer there in so many ways. He was the linchpin that held everything together in a very particular way. Narratives continue, but you still feel that hole, and you still feel his presence not being there on set because on Black Panther 1, he was the one that's always weekly being like, people need to blow off some steam. I'm going to have people over to my house. All the cast and the stunt people and all those folks, they're going to come over. I'm going to have my buddy who was a drummer drum. We're going to have some food. I'm going to order some drinks and we're all just going to hang out and just de-stress.

That was a regular occasion and he had incredible emotional sensitivity. How do people describe that again? Emotional intelligence. That's the word. He had great emotional intelligence to know when people needed a break, when people needed to connect, and when people really need to just rally and continue doing the work, so you could always feel him on set. You could always feel the days when he wasn't on set and a space where you become so interconnected, it's a giant hole.

It's a giant hole, but we're being incredibly respectful with his narrative. We're being incredibly respectful about the loss and that's what Wakanda Forever is about. It's an exceptional, beautiful piece of work and we're really excited. I'm doing my best to not give any spoilers. [crosstalk]

Melissa Harris-Perry: We won't ask for the--

Winston Duke: -sniffing around, like don't say nothing.

Melissa Harris-Perry: [laughs] We won't ask. We won't ask. The last question though, you are also going to be the voice of Bruce Wayne on what will be an audio project. Since I've been hanging out in the land of audio and radio now for a few months, I'm fascinated by this and I'm wondering how you've been preparing for that role.

Winston Duke: I just dove right into it. I'm happy to say that we finished it already. We've finished it already. We did that at the beginning of working on Black Panther, I was actually working on this podcast. It was a great feeling. I actually believe I got that role because of Nine Days after they saw Nine Days and they were like, we love that kind of internal work.

It's a story of more of a cerebral internal look at Bruce Wayne and that really specific circumstance that he's very vulnerable. It's a really big shift from how we usually see Bruce Wayne. It's a bit of a re-imagination of Bruce Wayne in this circumstance and it's exceptionally fun. It's more really cool acting work. It's really great guy and cool circumstance that is pushing him and he's very emotionally available, which is not the case for Bruce Wayne in most other circumstances. He's the guy who needs a lot of therapy.

Melissa Harris-Perry: All the therapy. It's what makes the Lego version of him so funny. Yes. He has lot of emotional [crosstalk]

Winston Duke: He needs a lot of therapy. It's a really cool piece. As a Black man in this country, I've always loved superheroes for maybe a different reason than most of the dominant culture in this country usually loves them,, which is I've always felt like we needed our own superhero. Sometimes, historically it feels like the history of what we've gone through, the history of what we've had to deal with has been so almost insurmountable and sometimes the future of how much work there still to do, it's like we need a Superman. We need an alien to come down here and just put it all together and make it right.

This idea of there were these super people that were willing to take on all the pains of the world and put it on themselves always felt right because it felt so insurmountable to me. I've always been in love with superheroes for that reason. I've always been like, how is it that Indigenous people were supposed to not be destroyed by these Europeans if they didn't have superpowers? You know what I mean?

Melissa Harris-Perry: Well, it's why Wakanda needed to share the vibranium a little sooner.

Winston Duke: They needed to do it sooner. Help the folks. I've always just been attached to superheroes, just being like, that's what everybody needed for the longest time. They just needed some superheroes. They just needed some superheroes to attack the conquistadores and stop that whole shit from happening. I love superheroes for that specific reason. It's really good to just continue working in that kind of genre.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Winston Duke, we so appreciate you having the range to both be our butt-kicking superhero and our interior life focused around all the work that we all have to do inside as well. Winston Duke is the star of Nine Days. It is currently in theaters. Winston, thank you so much.

Winston Duke: Thank you for having me. So good.

[00:20:45] [END OF AUDIO]

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