“Your CV is actually insane,” Top Boy actor Ashley Walters told Daniel Kaluuya as a short clip from Judas and the Black Messiah wrapped on screen 1 at Picturehouse Central in London.
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The pair were on stage together this morning as part of the London Film Festival’s popular screen talk session. Kaluuya’s career was the subject of the session. Walters was a surprise addition as moderator, and the Judas and the Black Messiah actor spent an early portion of the session praising Walters and his 2004 breakout hit Bullet Boy , which he identified as an early inspiration.
“It was Bullet Boy . That was a big one for me,” Kaluuya said. “Obviously, I knew you from So Solid and one day I was in Sainsbury’s and I looked at the Times Magazine and you were on the front cover. I thought he looked like me. I can do this.”
Kaluuya added on Walters career: “They’ve not really taken in your craft and your work and how hard it is to do what you’ve done. You make mistakes in your life and you get defined by your mistakes, especially if you’re Black. You never get defined by your work if you’ve made a mistake.”
Throughout the session Kaluuya and Walters discussed clips from across the Get Out actor’s career, including his start as a writer on the popular British teen show Skins up to his work with Jordan Peele and his Oscar-winning turn in Judas and the Black Messiah. The session was heavy on acting craft with the pair sharing how they approach roles, including performing with American accents.
“I did accent classes and then I realized a lot of them teach you a white American accent,” Kaluuya told Walters of his American accent. “They don’t even realize it. But I said I wanted a Black one because I’m Black.”
Kaluuya said he then realized that he had to approach American accents with a regional tint.
“If I was born in America, I would have been from New York or Philly, so I built a general accent from there,” Kaluuya said.
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The pair swiftly moved onto Kaluuya’s international breakout in Jordan Peele’s debut Get Out , which he described as a “tough shoot” but joyous because of Peele’s enthusiasm for directing.
“We did it in 23 days. It was a tough shoot. We had to stay very focused. Jordan knew how to work with actors and he was smart to cast people with improv experience” Kaluuya said.
“Jordan Peele is Jordan Peele now but he was Key and Peele, the sketch show guy then. I knew he’d made an amazing script and on set he was just happy doing what he’s supposed to be doing. It felt like someone who was supposed to direct. He was jumping for joy.”
Kaluuya, however, said the biggest influence on his approach to acting came from his time working on Denis Villeneuve’s Sicario , and more specifically, Benicio del Toro’s enthusiasm for nonverbal acting.
“At that time I always wanted more lines but this I saw this guy and he was just cutting lines. He’d always say I can show you that instead.” Kaluuya said of del Toro. “I was just so in awe of what he did.”
Kaluuya was the first of this year’s screen talk participants. Other sessions will feature Steve McQueen, Lupita Nyong’o, Zoe Saldaña, Denis Villeneuve, and Mike Leigh. This festival opens this evening with Steve McQueen ’s latest feature Blitz , an exploration of London during World War 2, on opening night at this year’s London Film Festival . The pic will screen as a world premiere.
London Film Festival runs until October 25.
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