In TILL, Jalyn Hall plays Emmett Till, the young Black man who was brutally murdered in 1955 for the crime of interacting with a white woman. Danielle Deadwyler stars as his mother, Marnie Till, who fought for justice for her son, and who became a civil rights activist whose voice helped propel the cause forward.
We spoke to Deadwyler and Hall, co-star Whoopi Goldberg, and their director, Chinonye Chukwu, to learn about their experience making this movie and stepping so close to an awful event.
Deadwyler said that, yes, the movie looks at aspects of the crime and trial that people probably don't know. "We dig into certain qualities of the event that actually happened that people don't deliver to you when they talk about this case. When we talk about the trial — what that actually was like. We've seen so many images; we see this lone black woman in amongst a couple of other black people and then this sea of white folks. What was that experience like for her?"
But TILL does not focus exclusively on the crime against Emmet Till — nor does it linger on the act itself. It spends far more time with Marnie Till, allowing us to see who she was. Accordingly, Danielle Deadwyler says that she "[learned] along the way what it meant to be the kind of mother and loving figure that she was."
Jalyn Hill says that "you can only feel and understand so much from what you read or see, so it was my personal duty to show that, and portray it, in all its authentic glory."
Watch our full interview with the cast and director of TILL:
TILL opens wide on October 28.
All images courtesy of United Artists Releasing.