LaKei­th Stan­field: ​‘There’s a big fear about peo­ple of colour being in power’

LaKei­th Stan­field is a rare kind of movie star, as unique and enig­mat­ic a pres­ence off the screen as on. He pos­sess­es a strik­ing authen­tic­i­ty that radi­ates through each one of wild­ly var­ied roles, from lack­adaisi­cal philoso­pher-poet Dar­ius in TV series Atlanta, to the sur­re­al tele­mar­keter Cash in Boots Riley’s work­place satire Sor­ry to Both­er You, to a vic­tim of a racist body pos­ses­sion in Jor­dan Peele’s hor­ror para­ble Get Out.

This year he reunites with his Get Out co-stars Daniel Kalu­uya and Lil Rel How­ery for Sha­ka King’s Judas and the Black Mes­si­ah, play­ing William O’Neal, an FBI infor­mant respon­si­ble for the assas­si­na­tion of promi­nent Black Pan­ther Fred Hampton.

LWLies: You’re such a chameleon of an actor. What do you look for in a role? 

Stan­field: It’s hard to say. What can peo­ple look for? I’d say keep your expec­ta­tions open. I don’t real­ly ever know what I’m going to do next or what might move me as I grow. I love to have fun – some­times too much fun – but that might be a prob­lem of mine. I love to tell sto­ries that are deeply entrenched in emo­tion­al exploration.

You’ve worked with a lot of Black film­mak­ers on the projects that launched them to the next lev­el: Ava DuVer­nay; Jor­dan Peele; Boots Riley; and now Sha­ka King. Are you par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in work­ing with up-and-com­ing filmmakers? 

Absolute­ly. We all start some­where and there’s a whole wealth of poten­tial out in the world. Ear­ly on in my career, I got to work with very tal­ent­ed peo­ple who allowed me to join them on their jour­ney. I’m real­ly inter­est­ed in new faces and bring­ing their unique style to the for­mat. It’s impor­tant to believe in what you’re doing, and I think all of those peo­ple you men­tioned, they believed in the sto­ry and they put all of their inten­tion behind it. So that’s why you get the results you get.

When you were mak­ing Get Out did you have a sense that you were cre­at­ing a classic?

Not at all! When you’re craft­ing a film, to have that kind of arro­gance would be scary. There are just so many unknowns when it comes to mak­ing it about how it will be edit­ed, how it will be received, where it will be received, if it’ll even ever come out, if we’re even going to fin­ish mak­ing the movie – because movies are hard to make and they’re expen­sive. I just couldn’t imag­ine mak­ing a movie at any time think­ing, ​‘this is going to be great.’ We put our best foot for­ward and we worked with integri­ty and con­fi­dence, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen any­one make a film that was worth watch­ing who believed hall­way through it was going to be the best, new, big thing.

A lot of peo­ple watch­ing this film will be shocked by what the FBI did to the Black Pan­thers. Was it shock­ing for you to discover?

That’s what they did to every­one that tried to rise up. If you were an organ­i­sa­tion that did things the way they didn’t see fit, they would infil­trate. Par­tic­u­lar­ly ones that rep­re­sent­ed a sort of upris­ing, because they were inse­cure about the rise of a Black Mes­si­ah. But if your gov­ern­ment is afraid of peo­ple col­lab­o­rat­ing and get­ting togeth­er, what might that indi­cate about them?

After the Con­fed­er­ate stat­ues come down, they need to get rid of the J Edgar Hoover build­ing. What he did to the Black com­mu­ni­ty is despicable.

I don’t think that we should glo­ri­fy and hold these peo­ple up with rev­er­ence. I take issue with idol wor­ship in gen­er­al, even with, like, celebri­ties and stuff. But espe­cial­ly these peo­ple that just check that record. They’re not good peo­ple! It’s irri­tat­ing. I say get them off the mon­ey too.

Andrew Jack­son is on the $20 and he lit­er­al­ly com­mit­ted genocide.

I am not a sup­port­er of that type of idol wor­ship, espe­cial­ly with politicians.

You are play­ing a char­ac­ter who’s lying all the time. How do you approach per­form­ing both the truth and the deception?

It was a unique chal­lenge. I nev­er had to do some­thing before where I’m con­sid­er­ing so many dimen­sions at once. So it kind of feels like everything’s going at an accel­er­at­ed speed in the scenes. I mapped it out for a long time with the script in my head – how this would hap­pen, what this reac­tion looks like. And then a lot of it was also just let­ting go in the moment and let­ting things hap­pen. I had a whole plan, a whole map, and I kind of exe­cut­ed that plan. And then for the rest of it, I just was react­ing as if I was try­ing to keep a secret. Yeah. I think it worked.

Did you feel a par­tic­u­lar respon­si­bil­i­ty to change the per­cep­tion of the Black Panthers?

Yeah. Stu­pid media, always lying and cre­at­ing a fake ver­sion of what they fear about Black peo­ple in pow­er. I think that’s real­ly what it is. There’s a big fear about peo­ple of colour being in pow­er. So they make all these fake ver­sions and pro­pa­gan­da about who the Black Pan­thers were. They weren’t ter­ror­ists. They weren’t try­ing to burn down the city or the coun­try. They were activists. They were revolutionaries.

They were peo­ple that saw a new way for us and active­ly put in action to see about mak­ing that change. Some of their pro­grammes the gov­ern­ment even co-opt­ed. But they just couldn’t stand to see us ris­ing in that way. So I just want­ed to rep­re­sent the Pan­thers. I always knew that Pan­thers weren’t what was large­ly rep­re­sent­ed, even though they don’t even real­ly talk about them in school, which sucks. So I just want­ed to rep­re­sent them and any way I could be of ser­vice to that, I want­ed to be.

It must have been tough to play some­one who worked to bring down the Pan­thers then?

It was hard to play William O’Neal because I care so much about the Pan­thers and their mes­sage. Some­times I was real­ly at odds with what he was doing and what the char­ac­ter was doing. But I guess that was part of what it meant to dive into this char­ac­ter. It meant me being in con­flict a lit­tle inter­nal­ly. I came out the end of it with a pro­found understanding.

It’s hard to say I under­stand O’Neal and his rela­tion­ship to the Pan­thers more now than I did before. I under­stand Fred now more in a way. I think that’s invalu­able, you know? I know movies can’t do every­thing, but if we can help peo­ple learn about Fred Hamp­ton, to learn about the Black Pan­thers, to learn about William O’Neal, who rep­re­sents an inte­gral idea of what it means to be human. What it means to betray. What it means to be afraid. These are impor­tant things. So I’m glad to help tell their story.

You have played real peo­ple in the past, Snoop in Straight Out of Comp­ton and Jim­my Lee Jack­son in Sel­ma. Did you do a lot of research for those roles or just approach it – as with this – as a reg­u­lar role, some­thing that doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly need to be root­ed in reality?

When you’re play­ing some­one real, you want to try and do your due dili­gence – to have integri­ty with how you inter­pret them. Even if it’s some­one like William O’Neal that you may be at odds with, you have to respect the human­i­ty of the per­son at the end of the day. So I want­ed to make sure that I am not mak­ing him seem like some spooky vil­lain no one can relate to because I don’t think those types of peo­ple actu­al­ly exist. There may be peo­ple who you real­ly dis­agree with, but they’re still human. They still have a sto­ry. And it’s my per­cep­tion that we’re all hav­ing one big sto­ry togeth­er. We’re just expe­ri­enc­ing it at dif­fer­ent times.

So if we can try and under­stand the oth­er person’s per­spec­tive, then I think we can actu­al­ly begin to have con­ver­sa­tions. If we cast peo­ple out as just bad or just a vil­lain then you can’t talk to them. I might be going a bit deep here, but that’s what I think about when it comes to sto­ries and char­ac­ters. I want to try and find the beau­ty in them. We all start off as babies and we’re just beau­ti­ful blank can­vas­es and then the infor­ma­tion we’re giv­en builds us up into who we become. And we can’t for­get that even if some­one has become what seems like a mon­ster to us, they were a baby at one point and that baby’s still inside.

I felt sor­ry for William O’Neal a lot of times, what the FBI was doing to him, putting him in these impos­si­ble sit­u­a­tions but then you see the oth­er side of the coin with Fred Hamp­ton, who would rather sac­ri­fice him­self than betray everyone. 

There were moments, for sure, where I think he felt he had no option and he had to go along with the game. Fear became stronger than love. The coin that you speak of is also the coin of fear and love, right? There’s a fine line between run­ning and fight­ing. It’s real­ly hard to quan­ti­fy what the right deci­sion to make in a sit­u­a­tion like that would have been. Some peo­ple are ter­ri­fied of jail and the prospect that they might not see their fam­i­ly and loved ones for years or be locked in a cage. The most insane pun­ish­ment you can give a per­son is to put them in a cage.

So I did empathise with cer­tain things. Although I found myself frus­trat­ed by some of his deci­sions. He got some­one very impor­tant killed, some­one that was fight­ing for him, fight­ing for his kind. It’s just a real­ly chal­leng­ing and con­flict­ing sto­ry at the end of the day. It’s all trag­ic. Although I left the film feel­ing inspired by Fred’s sto­ry. I said, if he can do that, I should be doing more. When you’re at a cross­roads now you might think about whether you want to take the O’Neal route or the Hamp­ton route.

Was your per­for­mance informed by the actu­al Judas?

It’s an age old sto­ry, right? Jesus and Judas to me are rep­re­sen­ta­tions of anthro­po­mor­phised spir­i­tu­al things. Through the course of human­i­ty, there always have been Jesus­es and Judas­es. There’s a lot of essence and, yeah, these two peo­ple in this sto­ry rep­re­sent arche­types. To all intents and pur­pos­es, O’Neal is Judas and Fred Hamp­ton was Jesus.

Your scenes with Jesse Ple­mons where he’s talk­ing about this false equiv­a­lence of the Black Pan­thers being as bad as the KKK, that could be on Fox News today and is a bit like Don­ald Trump say­ing ​“very fine peo­ple on both sides”. Did it feel modern?

Of course. Yeah, unfor­tu­nate­ly not much has changed and I think a part of the rea­son why is because, like I was say­ing ear­li­er, we’re not able to engage in hon­est dis­course. I’m not able to real­ly find you answers to these prob­lems because peo­ple don’t speak, they just want to fight. A lot of these news chan­nels are very biased and they stand on one side and it’s ​‘fuck the oth­er side’. It’s all divi­sive­ness at the end of the day. Very rarely do we see peo­ple com­ing togeth­er on those pub­lic plat­forms and, like Fred was try­ing to do, with the Rain­bow Coali­tion. We need peo­ple to come togeth­er and under­stand we all have the same fight. That’s why they want­ed to stamp it out because divi­sion makes for bet­ter con­trol. We have to find some bridge that brings us all together.

I’m glad that the film is com­ing out now; it’s going to make an impact. But at the same time I wish it wasn’t so relevant.

Yeah [sighs]. It is. I real­ly love that it can help, if noth­ing else, dri­ve the dia­logue for­ward. That’s what we want to do. We just want to con­tin­ue to have the dis­cus­sions. I feel hope­ful for human­i­ty in spite of every­thing. I think that we sur­vive and we push through and we’re best when we work togeth­er. I think films like this help reit­er­ate that idea.

What is in the pipeline that we can look for­ward to?

I’ve got an ani­mé com­ing out with Net­flix called Yasuke, which I’m exec­u­tive pro­duc­ing and star­ring in. I’ve got a movie called The Hard­er They Fall com­ing out, star­ring Idris Elba, Regi­na King, myself, Jonathan Majors and Zazie Beetz that is a Black west­ern. My album is com­ing out soon – my debut rap album, my first musi­cal attempt, which shall be fun and very fun­ny, and very sad actu­al­ly, too.