Jay Will on What Makes 'Rob Peace' Relatable (Exclusive)

Doing research on Rob Peace, the brilliant Yale mind who was gunned down at the age of 30 amid a reported drug-related robbery, will generate two different perspectives. One was of his brilliant mind, while the other posed a question of why he turned to a life of crime. The film Rob Peace , based on the book The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark for the Ivy League by his college roommate and friend Jeff Hobbs, explores his duality.

Initially debuting at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, the movie will be released in theaters on August 16. Jay Will portrays the title character. Directed by Chiwetel Ejiofor , viewers will leave the theater understanding how Peace's dedication to family had him caught between two works. It's a world Will understands from his own experience. Ahead of the film's release, Will spoke with PopCutture about his personal resonance with Peace.

PC: Were you familiar with the Peace's story before? Getting the role?

JW: Personally, no, I wasn't aware of it. I was coming from down south. So think his story never really circulated too far down south. But once I started doing more research and got back up north, asking around, I became very aware of his life, the impact that he had met, people that he went to school with, and met people that were from his neighborhood. My awareness wasn't that much until I got up north and decided to do my own personal detective work.

What about his life resonated with you that made you want to participate in this project?

I resonated with his connection to family and his desire to make life a better place. Also, I went to Julliard and got a Bachelor's in fine arts, and I was completely a fish out of water out there coming from down south. I know Rob dealt with the same thing but on a whole other level for sure. I could pull my own experience from that. But it was primarily his connection to this dad, his mom, and his connection to his community.

There was a duality, of Rob's life, obviously, as we learned in the book and in the film. How did you go about trying to portray that, in the film? And what did you learn from his two different worlds?

I tapped into my own life. My imagination took its course and I was able to personalize it with things that I went through in my own life helped lend me the choices that I made with portraying the essence of this character. So it just became a whole cipher of that. I had to speak with his mom to get a level of understanding of who he was. Speaking with his family gave me a lot of breakthroughs with alleviating the pressure of feeling like, 'Okay, I want to make sure they can be fine with this and get the blessing from them.' And secondly, I have to justify this guy's life. There's been no justice from his life or his father's life. So I just took on that burden and I took it seriously.

What are the takeaways from Rob's life that you feel like viewers can learn from?

The central thing is family. For Robert, everything was about his family, to the point where you have to ask yourself when does it get to a point where my sacrifices for somebody else in my family and people that I care about are jeopardizing me and my own safety?