Kelvin Har­ri­son Jr: ​‘Black peo­ple are beat­en down before we’re celebrated’

Kelvin Har­ri­son Jr had an out­stand­ing 2019. He kicked off the year with Luce, Julius Onah’s psy­chodra­ma about race rela­tions and priv­i­lege. The up-and-com­ing Amer­i­can star proves his worth in the title role, del­i­cate­ly walk­ing the line between pic­ture-per­fect teenag­er and down­right sociopath. Along with praise from peers and fans alike, the role has earned him a Spir­it Inde­pen­dent Awards nomination.

Hav­ing been raised in a fam­i­ly of artists, Har­ri­son Jr pos­sess­es a charis­ma that’s hard to resist. In Waves, Trey Edward Shultz’s melo­dra­mat­ic study of tox­ic mas­culin­i­ty, he plays Tyler, a con­fi­dent ath­lete deal­ing with mount­ing ten­sion from all fronts – his fam­i­ly, school, and girl­friend – until he reach­es a vio­lent break­ing point, leav­ing behind his fam­i­ly to pick up the pieces.

Seem­ing­ly the poster-boy for black mas­culin­i­ty in 2019, Har­ri­son man­ages to inter­minably sub­vert all expec­ta­tions in every role he takes, chal­leng­ing a world that is hell-bent on box­ing young black men into insen­si­tive, stereo­typ­i­cal constructs.

LWLies: How were you able to shift from such a focused, cun­ning per­for­mance in Luce to the unhinged, wild per­for­mance of Tyler in Waves?

Har­ri­son Jr: I mean, I guess it sounds like a bor­ing answer, but it’s just doing the job as an actor. Both roles were very dif­fer­ent in the way they were writ­ten. With Luce, it was very spe­cif­ic in terms of craft­ing a boy – we got a dialect coach to make sure his voice is very neu­tral and non-threat­en­ing. Luce always thinks before he speaks, so it’s nev­er just reac­tive. It’s always with inten­tion and pur­pose. But Tyler is the exact oppo­site. He leads with feel­ings first and I think even as an ath­lete, it’s about being phys­i­cal and doing the thing with­out nec­es­sar­i­ly try­ing to process what’s actu­al­ly happening.

So jump­ing into Waves, every moment was a feel­ing. I broke the script down into moods to pin­point moments Tyler was feel­ing sup­pressed and how that led to his depres­sion; and how his depres­sion led to anger, and that kind of helped me nav­i­gate where I was in the movie, what was on the fore­front of what Tyler was expe­ri­enc­ing, and then keep­ing those expe­ri­ences close to my chest in terms of the inter­nal self.

How were you able to sub­vert expec­ta­tions of what a black per­son can and should be?

With Tyler, it’s allow­ing us the per­mis­sion to be all and none of those things. In Waves we see a fam­i­ly that, on paper, is sup­posed to thrive: Tyler has a mon­ster truck, his mom’s a ther­a­pist, they have a great house, and every­thing is put togeth­er. But, inter­nal­ly, they’re still car­ry­ing this bur­den that stems from cen­turies of slav­ery. We live in a world – in Amer­i­ca, at least – where we are beat­en down before we are cel­e­brat­ed. So what does that look like when Tyler’s dad, Ronald, has that men­tal­i­ty of a man who maybe grew up see­ing Mar­tin Luther King thrive, to Oba­ma com­ing to pow­er and then sud­den­ly, Trump is president?

How does he per­ceive the world, and how is he going to raise his son to make sure he’s pro­tect­ing him at all cost because he loves him so much? And when that psy­chol­o­gy is passed down to his son, he starts to view the world from a place of fear. We’re exam­in­ing these boys for what their make­up con­sists of, in the world that they exist in, and how we can thrive with­in that and also still break down those boundaries.

Waves feels like a soft­er, more ten­der take on black mas­culin­i­ty than Luce.

Waves gives us the chance to be imper­fect and vul­ner­a­ble, and allows us to be all the things that no one says we are – but also all the things that they think we are because we’re human beings at the end of the day. As artists we can only try; Julius does it real­ly well with dia­logue, Trey does it with heart. It was a gift to be able to play both of those peo­ple; that taught me so much about my own expe­ri­ences as a black person.

But ulti­mate­ly Tyler leans into those stereo­types. So how were you able to bal­ance those stereo­types with Tyler’s uniqueness?

For me the big dif­fer­ence is, it’s not about judg­ing but under­stand­ing his expe­ri­ence; how a per­son gets to that point. Which I think is also some­thing that’s not hap­pen­ing a lot in our cul­ture per se. That’s what I believe does not make him a cliché, because even though he falls vic­tim to those stereo­types, he’s still a com­plex human being. We’re just try­ing to unpack what leads to the worst mis­take of his life, you know?

You have an orig­i­nal song per­formed in the film. Com­ing from a musi­cal back­ground, is there any future for you in music?

I love that you know that. But who’s to say… Hon­est­ly, that day on set I did not want to per­form at all. Wrestling is Tyler’s trig­ger, music is mine. But Trey made me do it, and Alexa [Demie] named it [‘La Lin­da Luna’]. It’s a gor­geous song, and I did a rom-com musi­cal [Nisha Ganatra’s upcom­ing Cov­ers] after­wards because I need­ed to light­en things up. So I guess you’re right. Maybe music is in my future. Maybe my dad’s been right all along.

Waves is released in cin­e­mas 17 Jan­u­ary. Read the LWLies Rec­om­mends review.