Sam iinterview actor Stephan James on Barry Jenkins' radical empathy, James Baldwin, black love stories and British slang!
Sam and Ava will be back in a new studio and with fantastic new guests in April!
IF BEALE STREET COULD is out in UK cinemas on 8th Feb
'Like James Baldwin’s Best Work, If Beale Street Could Talk Contains Multitudes
Barry Jenkins’s follow-up to Moonlight, starring KiKi Layne and Stephan James as a pair of lovers torn asunder, is a triumph.'
'Barry Jenkins makes movies about black love. His 2008 debut, Medicine for Melancholy, chronicled a one-night stand turned burgeoning romance in a maddeningly gentrifying San Francisco. Moonlight, his wonderful follow-up and 2016 best-picture winner, is a coming-of-age story about a fatherless queer boy set among the impoverished Miami neighborhoods that were once home to Jenkins himself. Its endgame isn’t sex, or even necessarily sexuality, but something even more rare in movies: pure, loving intimacy between black men, sexual and not.
Now comes If Beale Street Could Talk, Jenkins’s extraordinary adaptation of James Baldwin’s soulful 1974 novel. It’s a lush, courageous black melodrama set in 1970s New York, a story about love defying injustice—or trying its damndest to. Tish (newcomer KiKi Layne), 19, and Fonny (Stephan James), 22, were once childhood playmates—chubby, laughing babes taking baths together, being raised alongside one another, despite yawning differences between their families’ social and religious beliefs. Fonny’s mother is extremely devout, as are his sisters. Tish and her sister, Ernestine (Teyonah Parris), are more modern: well-raised, hard-working women who nevertheless curse in front of their parents.' Vanity Fair
SPONSOR
WAX PRINT FILM is the story of one fabric and how it came to symbolise a continent, it’s people and their struggle for freedom. A feature documentary directed by Aiwan Obinyan
www.waxprintfilm.com
BIOS
Ava Vidal is a British comedian. She became more widely known after taking part in E4's Kings of Comedy. Her career in comedy began on the BBC's Urban Sketch Show. Before her television career, Vidal worked as a prison officer for five years in London's Pentonville Prison.
Samantha Asumadu is a former documentary filmmaker and journalist. She is the founder of Media Diversified, the co-founder of Bare Lit Festival and CEO of Edmalia Limoted: TV., Talent and Crisis Management
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit samanthaasumadu.substack.com
