In praise of Maher­sha­la Ali – 2016’s stand­out performer

In Feb­ru­ary, 2016, actress Diane Ladd chid­ed the ​“greed and cor­rup­tion” of the stu­dios who strate­gi­cal­ly placed Car­ol​’s Rooney Mara and The Dan­ish Girl​’s Ali­cia Vikan­der in sup­port­ing cat­e­gories in order to secure them nom­i­na­tions amid a high­ly-com­pet­i­tive lead actress field. Her frus­tra­tion is under­stand­able. How are true-blue sup­port­ing actors like Ladd, a three-time Oscar nom­i­nee and ver­i­ta­ble patron saint of char­ac­ter actors, sup­posed to gain wider recog­ni­tion when more and more stars are being shoe­horned into a cat­e­go­ry cre­at­ed for those who tra­di­tion­al­ly go unno­ticed? What does it even look like today when an actor offers real sup­port to a movie or TV series, espe­cial­ly in an indus­try that posits obvi­ous lead per­for­mances as canon­i­cal­ly sup­port­ing turns?

In light of this frus­trat­ing trend, it is telling that one of the year’s stand­out per­form­ers has forged a dis­tinc­tive career as an expert sup­port­ing actor. This year alone Maher­sha­la Ali has lent his con­sid­er­able tal­ents to a stag­ger­ing eight projects across film and tele­vi­sion, includ­ing the Oscar-tipped Moon­light, the upcom­ing bio­graph­i­cal dra­ma Hid­den Fig­ures, the fourth sea­son of House of Cards and Marvel’s hit Net­flix show Luke Cage. If you weren’t already famil­iar with his supreme act­ing abil­i­ty, you should be by now.

Not that Ali has pre­vi­ous­ly been invis­i­ble. In 2001 as a fresh-faced Tisch grad­u­ate – still going by his full name Maher­sha­lal­hash­baz Ali – he made his break­through in Cross­ing Jor­dan before lat­er land­ing meati­er parts in the likes of Alphas and Treme. But it’s prob­a­bly fair to say that Ali has flown under the radar for much of his film career, even when qui­et­ly impress­ing as sto­ic one-man sup­port sys­tems to Eva Mendes in The Place Beyond the Pines, Jen­nifer Lawrence in the final Hunger Games chap­ters, and Tara­ji P Hen­son in The Curi­ous Case of Ben­jamin But­ton. David Fincher’s era-span­ning epic afford­ed Ali an espe­cial­ly fruit­ful onscreen part­ner­ship so ear­ly in his film career, as he and Hen­son were able to cre­ate a lived-in mar­ried cou­ple with­out hav­ing a full scene to themselves.

It’s a plea­sure, then, to see Ali and Hen­son pick up right where they left off in Hid­den Fig­ures, a rous­ing his­tor­i­cal crowd­pleas­er in which Hen­son plays genius math­e­mati­cian Kather­ine John­son, one of the long-unrecog­nised black female pio­neers who aid­ed NASA in the Space Race dur­ing the 1960s. As her long­time hus­band, Lt Colonel James ​“Jim” A John­son, Ali is once again giv­en only a hand­ful of scenes in which to con­vinc­ing­ly inhab­it a char­ac­ter who serves as the less­er-seen half of a fat­ed cou­ple. The part may have been writ­ten as a stan­dard knight in shin­ing armour, but cru­cial­ly Ali only ever plays the man inside the suit.

Ali is even more impres­sive in Luke Cage, where he man­ages to carve out plen­ty of space in which to bring the show’s cen­tral vil­lain to life. As Cor­nell ​“Cot­ton­mouth” Stokes, a deeply cor­rupt mover and shak­er who comes to blows with Mike Colter’s tit­u­lar super­hero on the streets of mod­ern-day Harlem, Ali crafts a mul­ti­lay­ered antag­o­nist with­in a genre whose mam­moth com­mer­cial suc­cess rarely hinges on in-depth char­ac­ter work. Luke Cage is that rare thing: an uncom­mon­ly expres­sive and cul­tur­al­ly-spe­cif­ic entry into the com­ic book genre, a thrilling adap­ta­tion whose cre­ator Cheo Hodari Cok­er active­ly seeks out moral com­pli­ca­tion and polit­i­cal insight rather than paint­ing over any such the­mat­ic nuance with high-gloss spe­cial effects.

Ali imbues his character’s arc with a melan­choly under­tow that inevitably refo­cus­es this por­trait of remorse­less crim­i­nal­i­ty into a sto­ry about unful­filled promise and rup­tur­ing famil­ial bonds. The indomitable Alfre Woodard arrives ear­ly on in the show’s first sea­son as Cottonmouth’s moral­ly-murky con­gress­woman cousin, Mari­ah, and imme­di­ate­ly con­ducts a nervy pas de deux with Ali. Watch­ing these two char­ac­ters cir­cle and pro­voke each oth­er, it’s hard to tell what’s more impres­sive: watch­ing an unde­ni­able heavy­weight like Woodard bite into this prime-cut of a part with­out sac­ri­fic­ing a sin­gle ounce of human­i­ty, or real­is­ing that Ali is every bit her act­ing equal.

And then there’s Moon­light, Bar­ry Jenk­ins’ mirac­u­lous new film which charts the evo­lu­tion of young gay black man named Chi­ron as he comes of age over the course of three decades in and around Mia­mi, Flori­da. Praise has already been heaped on just about every­one in the film’s stel­lar ensem­ble, from the fierce­ly-com­mit­ted Naomie Har­ris as Chiron’s junkie moth­er to Tre­vante Rhodes and André Hol­land, who metic­u­lous­ly tele­graph a pro­found and heart-stop­ping romance as adult ver­sions of Chi­ron and his estranged friend/​lost love, Kevin. But it’s Ali as local drug deal­er Juan, who takes a nine-year-old Chi­ron under his wing, who deliv­ers arguably the film’s best performance.

Appear­ing only in the first of three vignettes, Ali is tasked with cre­at­ing a com­plex and com­pelling father fig­ure who casts a shad­ow over the rest of film, inspir­ing our young pro­tag­o­nist to grad­u­al­ly mould him­self in his image. Ali’s per­for­mance is one of immac­u­late tech­nique, cul­mi­nat­ing in a moment of raw heart­break in which Alex R Hibbert’s ​“Lit­tle” Chi­ron con­fronts Juan about the truth of his occu­pa­tion. An entire movie of self-dis­cov­ery is pro­ject­ed from Juan’s gaze when­ev­er he looks at ​“Lit­tle”, and his char­ac­ter reflects one of the foun­da­tion­al truths of Moon­light – that iden­ti­ty is not a point of arrival, but a journey.

As his rela­tion­ship with Lit­tle esca­lates, Juan’s speech, at first almost lyri­cal in its low-pitched con­fi­dence, becomes slow­er, more hes­i­tant, cul­mi­nat­ing in Ali’s last scene, a moment of raw heart­break in which Lit­tle con­fronts Juan about the truth of his occu­pa­tion. The equa­nim­i­ty dis­ap­pears from Ali’s face, reveal­ing the creased con­cern of an increas­ing­ly-invest­ed father fig­ure, unpre­pared but doing his best to impro­vise dur­ing an awk­ward sit­u­a­tion. There is an entire movie of self-dis­cov­ery pro­ject­ing from Juan’s gaze when­ev­er he looks at Lit­tle in this and every scene. Juan’s char­ac­ter reflects one of the foun­da­tion­al truths of Moon­light — that iden­ti­ty is not a con­clu­sion, but a jour­ney — and Ali’s per­for­mance ensures that we per­ceive Juan’s more guard­ed but no less enthralling jour­ney in addi­tion to Chiron’s.

Thank­ful­ly Jenk­ins is not inter­est­ed in lay­ing out the clear-cut rea­sons why Juan takes such a trans­for­ma­tive inter­est in Chi­ron, and nei­ther is Ali. There are cer­tain­ly blank spaces with­in our knowl­edge of Juan, but Ali nev­er tries to fill them in or com­pen­sate with any bold emo­tion­al affec­ta­tions that would cer­tain­ly betray the char­ac­ter. In fact, the per­for­mance is bold­er pre­cise­ly because Ali works with­in such a restrained reg­is­ter that feels absolute­ly true to Juan, pre­serv­ing an air of mys­tery around this man that pays rich­er div­i­dends lat­er on in the film, in the moments when his mem­o­ry rush­es back like a strong sea breeze. When he departs, we miss him not just for Chiron’s sake, but because there is still so much we long to know.

Through­out all of these turns, Ali exhibits so much tal­ent, resource­ful­ness and dash­ing, mega-watt charis­ma that it’s some­thing of an embar­rass­ment that no one in Hol­ly­wood has made him a mat­inée idol yet. He has tri­umphed as a sup­port­ing actor this year not by resign­ing him­self to sec­ond-fid­dle sta­tus or self-serv­ing­ly steal­ing the show, but by fos­ter­ing deep-root­ed con­nec­tions with the actors in his com­pa­ny and mak­ing every sin­gle moment pulse with res­o­nance, no mat­ter the size or stakes. That is what real sup­port looks like. That is the Maher­sha­la Ali way.