This year’s unconventional Virginia Film Festival opened with two drive-in screenings of the new film “One Night in Miami,” directed by Regina King. Based on Kemp Powers’s play of the same name, the film follows boxer Cassius Clay, singer Sam Cooke, activist Malcolm X and football player Jim Brown as they celebrate Clay’s major boxing win — a massive upset — over the course of one night in 1964. Accompanying the film was a virtual interview between Soraya Nadia McDonald, culture critic for The Undefeated, and “Hamilton” star Leslie Odom Jr., who plays Cooke in the film.
The video interview opened with especially kind introductions, during which Odom sincerely complimented McDonald’s work and expressed his respect for it, a favor which McDonald quickly returned. One of the first questions McDonald asked Odom was about what it was like to work with actress Regina King on her directorial debut, to which Odom smartly replied, “she’s an actor’s director.”
“There were times where Regina … we’re deep into shooting, we’re an hour into shooting at midnight, and the scene isn’t working,” Odom said. “And Regina’s like, ‘We gotta stop. We gotta look at this again. It’s not right, it’s not working, I’m not feeling it.’ That was radical and exacting, but focusing, you know. Nobody does that!”
The conversation then veered toward how Odom was able to build chemistry with the cast — essential for a film centered entirely around the interactions between four historical figures. Odom described the process of creating the necessary chemistry between these four as “top down” and became especially animated in describing the importance of Kingsley Ben-Adir, who plays Malcom X, and whose talent evidently bolstered the other cast members by setting a high bar.
“Kingsley set the pace,” Odom said. “He really let us know what kind of movie we were making with his incredible preparation and his characterization … day one of shooting, Kingsley just laid down the gauntlet.”
Odom also broadened the topic of conversation somewhat when McDonald asked about the process of transitioning the play of “One Night in Miami” into the film. In response, Odom tied in the rest of his career, especially his own transition from theater to film, which included obvious and welcome mentions of his most famous role to date — Odom played Aaron Burr in the original Broadway cast of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Hamilton.”
“I have been trying to make the leap from stage to film since I left the ‘Hamilton’ stage,” Odom said. “People were asking me what I wanted to do … I said, ‘I want to do all the things that no one would let me do before ‘Hamilton,’ and that includes film.’”
Odom went on to explain that he had needed the fame of “Hamilton” to be able to make this transition because his theater and television background had previously prevented him from even obtaining auditions for films.
“The thing that I loved about this,” Odom continued, “is that ‘One Night in Miami,’ too, is trying its hardest to make the leap from the stage to the screen and so it felt sympatico.”
While a virtual platform is certainly a much less personal medium for an interview than in person, McDonald and Odom nevertheless remained engaged throughout the interview. Odom maintained a passion in his responses that was accentuated by his emphatic hand gesturing and intonation, and came across as especially sincere when discussing his respect for so many others. At various points in the interview, Odom wholeheartedly gushed over the importance of McDonald’s work, King’s talent as a director, Ben-Adir’s acting prowess and his immense gratitude for his dialect coach, Trey Patten. He also went on to profess his love for his character, Cooke, and explained how this love influenced his portrayal of Cooke.
“The biggest service that I could do Sam was to play him as a human being,” Odom said. “To play him as flawed and beautiful and ridiculous and petty and hot-headed as he was … I remember going back and forth with Aldis [Hodge] about, you know, a certain thing like, ‘I can’t allow you to say that to him. That has to change because Sam wouldn’t tolerate that.’”
One of Odom’s final comments in the interview, as well as one of his most insightful, was extending his love for Cooke into an explanation of how seriously Odom took his responsibility in portraying him.
“I have a real stake in his legacy and what people think about him,” Odom said. “I cannot be a part of slander. I cannot be a part of letting something go down that’s against my guy.”
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