Part of theSmall Axeanthology series from director and co-writerSteve McQueen, the deeply moving drama"Mangrove"tells the true story of The Mangrove Nine, a group of men and women who were wrongly arrested and charged with inciting a riot, after clashing with London police in 1970. While Frank Crichlow (ShaunParkes) was just trying to run his West Indian restaurant, the Metropolitan Police had other plans, with their relentless raids and blatant racial discrimination that led to a highly publicized trial.
During the virtual junket, Collider got the opportunity to chat 1-on-1 withMalachi Kirby(Black Mirror), who plays Trinidadian activist Darcus Howe and the member of the Mangrove Nine that represented himself in court, about why he wanted to be a part of telling this story, what got him excited about the script, how Steve McQueen helped to empower and strengthen everyone on set, what makes him a great collaborator, the challenge of getting the accent right, and writing his own scripts while auditioning for roles.
COLLIDER: When this came your way, what got you most excited about it? Was it how sharply written the script is, was it the opportunity to tell a story like this or was it simply to work with Steve McQueen?
MALACHI KIRBY: It was all of those things, if I’m honest with you. I was born in London but my heritage is Jamaican, and I’ve never actually gotten to play someone from the Caribbean. Darcus is Trinidadian but we’re islands away from each other. To be able to play those accents and hear those accents, and to play people that actually existed, let alone to play someone like Darcus, he was just so nuanced as a human being and he did so much in his lifetime. It was a joy. And then, I’ve been following Steve’s work since Hunger. Every project of his has hit me in different ways, so to be able to work with someone like him was definitely artist goals, for sure.
When you read this script could you just see it all there on the page?
KIRBY: Yeah. Usually, I read the script once, and then every other time it’s work, but I actually just wanted to read it again. I really actually enjoyed this one, every page of it. It was just exciting for me and a breath of fresh air. I had no idea how much it would resonate, in terms of we did it last year and we didn’t know everything that was gonna happen this year, with the Black Lives Matter marches and everything. But we still knew, or I still knew, that this would definitely be something that mattered. For me, that’s really important. You get jobs all the time, and you get to play, you get to have fun, you get to laugh, you get to shoot guns, or whatever it is. But to actually tell a story that I believe actually matters and is something that you really wanna promote, that comes across quite rarely for me. This was definitely a blessing.
It seems as though any one of these films that Steve McQueen made for theSmall Axeanthology would have been exceptional work on their own and he went and made five of them that he’s releasing. Having worked with him, how did he do it?
KIRBY: Well, he cares. I know that might seem like a silly thing to say but he actually cares. That is probably the thing that gave him the energy to get through every day. He actually cared. This wasn’t just work for him. He brought 110% every day. It was like, “Okay, how are you gonna come back tomorrow?” but he did because he cared. That’s what got him up in the morning, and it was infectious. His love poured out, not just onto the cast but with the whole crew. And so, what you had was this beautiful river of love floating around the set. We just empowered and strengthened each other. He’s a genius, and I don’t say that to flatter him. If you sit down with him for five minutes, you’ll realize that this guy is a true artist and a visionary and an intellectual. I have no idea how he does what he does. I just know that he really cares and that must’ve empowered him.
What sort of a director is McQueen for actors? Is he someone who really likes to collaborate with actors? Does he gently guide you into doing what he wants you to do? Does he make things very clear?
KIRBY: One of the things about me, whenever I’m on set, is that I never watch the takes back. I don’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing, but I do the scene, I trust that the director is happy, and I move on. With Steve, that had never been more easy to do. That always leaves me feeling a little bit anxious and going, “Are you sure we got it?” But with Steve, there was something about him, where you know that he knows what he’s doing. From the start, he has a vision and he’s intelligent enough to know what to do, but also, he’s humble enough to go, “I don’t know. I’m gonna have to see what you bring to this, and we’ll figure this out together.” He’s definitely a collaborator. One of the things that struck me the most about him was how much freedom he gave us, as artists. He’d create the environment, he’d create the set, he’d orchestrate the seats in a particular way, and he’d invite us into this room, and then he’d leave it and let us play. Once we’d start playing, he’d come in with the camera and just capture it. I loved working like that because he gave us ownership of our characters. Every now and then, he’d move us technically for camera work that he wanted to do, but in terms of the actual delivery of everything, he just let us be and it was beautiful.
You have a lot of dialogue in “Mangrove.” What’s it like to know that you have to deliver all of that dialogue and to do that on the day? Do you have tricks for yourself, to make sure you can remember all of that?
KIRBY: At heart, I’m definitely a theater actor, so I’m okay with dialogue. What I wasn’t okay with was dialogue with a Trinidadian accent. That’s a different thing. With every single word, I was like, “Is this the right intonation?” There’s Trinidadian, and then there’s Darcus, who has his own unique voice, so it was just trying to give that voice justice. He speaks a lot and his voice is so much a part of who he is, so to get that right was really important for me. I had a great voice coach, Hazel Holder, who helped me, every step of the way. Other than that, I was just listening to his voice in my ear, every second that I could, because he’s so musical as a person. It was hard but it’s the work. Hopefully, we got somewhere close to it.
Do you ever get to a point where you get comfortable with the accent, or do you not want to get comfortable with it so that you’re always working on it?
KIRBY: There are definitely times where I get comfortable with the accent and that’s when I’m not paying attention to it, which is probably not the best time to get comfortable. For me, with Darcus, there were particular phrases that I would find harder than others. I actually found the long speeches easier than the few lines, here and there. With the long speeches, I got to ride the musicality of it and just play my tune, as opposed to hearing other people’s voices and being influenced by them. Because I’m Jamaican by heritage, born in London, naturally my voice wanted to tune into the Jamaican, as opposed to Trinidadian. I just enjoy the accent so much. One of the hardest things was not speaking Jamaican.
Even though the specifics of the accent are not something that the average viewer would even know about, are you a perfectionist, in that sense? Is that a quality that you bring to every role?
KIRBY: Yeah, for sure. Especially when it’s someone who actually existed, I’m thinking about the person whose story I’m telling. I want them to watch it and go, “Yes, this is accurate. This is true. I respect this. I’m good with this,” as opposed to the wider audience that I guess it may not matter to as much. With something like this, it mattered to me to get it right. I’m quite meticulous, in that sense. I’m trying not to be as much of a perfectionist, as that’s not always healthy, but there is definitely that side of me.
You talked about not watching the takes as you are filming, but how hard is it then for you to watch the final product when it’s done?
KIRBY: Thank you for appreciating that. It’s terrible. I’m like, “What did you do? Why did you do that?” For this project, it was actually quite encouraging. When I watched it, I definitely was scrutinizing myself for a lot of it, but not as much of it as I thought I would, and I think that’s a lot to do with Steve. He was carrying me along the way, quite a lot. I had to trust him because I was putting myself out and not knowing what the effect was in. I had to go off of not just him saying, “Yeah, we got it,” but how he said it. There’s a way of something where you could either be like, “Are you sure?,” or “Okay, cool, I can move on.”
Was there a scene or a day that was most challenging, during the shoot?
KIRBY: With Steve, there aren’t any small scenes. You’d have the big scenes where you’d have lots of dialogue for pages and pages, and then you’d have montage scenes where you’d be like, “This is gonna be an easy day. That’ll be a quick five minutes scene.” But it’s Steve, so no. One-line montages would easily turn into a 20-minute improvisation, and suddenly I’d be saying lines that I didn’t prep in the accent and I was like, “Oh, this is fun.” Those were hard, in their own right. Outside of that, definitely the closing speech. Playing Darcus, that speech was something I was quite scared of for awhile. It was three pages long, and it wasn’t just random words. Every single one of those lines had so much substance, so to deliver that was definitely something that I was anxious about. We were shooting on film and, by that point, I’d had a lot of experiences with Steve, so I’d already adopted this idea of, “Just leave it in the room, 110%. Just pull it out. We’re here today and gone tomorrow, so just pull it out.” That mentality and the way that he works really removed a lot of the anxiety of trying to perfect the way that you did it and to be so precise. It was about just pouring it out and trusting the work, and that everything will be enough.
After you have an experience like this, where you’re working with a great director and you’re tackling some really important and great material, how do you find the next project? Is it easy to find things that interest you, or is that part of the struggle?
KIRBY: With something like Mangrove, we all knew that this was something special. This kind of story and this kind of collaboration doesn’t come along very often, and we all knew that. It’s important for me to know, “Okay, the next project doesn’t have to be this again. It’s okay that it’s something else.” I’ve been on my writing journey, for the first time. Last year, I started writing and that has been really exciting for me because I’ve got all of this fuel right now. There are a wealth of stories that I wanna share and I wanna tell, and I haven’t had the opportunity to. That’s where I’m looking to go with things, at the moment. I just wanna create more. I’m still auditioning and there are some projects that I have in mind to film next year and that I’m looking forward to filming. They probably won’t have the same weight that this one does, in the way that it does, but they will still matter. So, what I’m really excited about is the stories that I’m writing at the moment and that I wanna share with people.
Are you writing to direct those scripts?
KIRBY: I’m gonna stay away from that one, especially after working with Steve. I respect the craft enough to not do that for now. I definitely wanna write, I definitely wanna produce, and I definitely wanna work with a director and shadow whoever I end up working with and just learn. I could probably do the actor-y stuff, in terms of working with artists, but it’s the technical side that I have to step back and respect and go, “I don’t know what I’m doing.” But yeah, one day.
It seems hard to write a script and then hand it over to someone else to bring to life.
KIRBY: It’s gonna be hard. I know that, for sure. I’m gonna have to trust in them and hold my mouth a lot, but hopefully not too much.
“Mangrove,” the first installment in theSmall Axeanthology, is now available to stream on Amazon Prime Video. New installments of theSmall Axeanthology will be released every Friday through December 18. For more, find outwhat’s coming to Prime Videothrough the end of November.
