Naomi Harris stars in Black and Blue, but she's backed up by an incredible ensemble cast that includes Mike Colter (Luke Cage) Nafessa Williams (Black Lightning), and Frank Grillo (Captain America: The Winter Soldier). Colter plays a ruthless criminal kingpin, while Grillo plays his opposite number in the police force, a crooked cop who uses the plight of post-Katrina New Orleans to line his own pockets with blood money. Meanwhile, Williams plays a gangster's moll who quietly laments the righteous path she was too scared to take when she was but a young girl.
Black and Blue could have been a fairly standard cop movie, but it's elevated by its approach to racial and gender dynamics; it's the first-ever studio film to feature an African-American woman playing a cop in a leading role, and Naomi Harris delivers an excellent performance as a woman who tries to exist as a human being in a world that is so divided by racial tensions and the animosity between the police force and the community they're supposed to serve.
At a press day for Black and Blue, Screen Rant sat down with Mike Colter, Nafessa Williams, and Frank Grillo to discuss their roles in the film, and the themes embodied by their characters. They discuss their approach to playing three-dimensional villains who could be easily defined by their cruelty but who instead carry a surprising amount of depth and humanity, despite their status as "bad guys." They also talk about how refreshing it is to see an action movie carried by a woman, which remains rare in Hollywood, even in 2019. Black and Blue is out now in theaters nationwide.
This group, I feel, represents the movie. You have an amazing woman at the center of these two titans of masculinity, for better or worse. Can you talk a little about the gender dynamics of this movie and how it's so atypical for the cop genre.
Frank Grillo: It's female-centric, it really is. The heroes in the movie are females. It is a breath of fresh air. And I've gotta tell ya, I don't even think I realized it when I was doing it, like, what it was. You know? But now, it's certainly a unicorn in the world we're in right now, especially in the film business, to have this. So, it's interesting.
Mike Colter: I alluded to this earlier, going back to female-centric, but, to me, believable as a protagonist. You're not asking her to do superhuman things that we don't believe women her size and stature can do, because we're looking at a woman who's struggling, who's vulnerable, who's getting her butt kicked a little bit, but then ends up kicking butt later. Like, she's resourceful. She's a veteran that comes out of the force that has some savvy. And she's fearless! She could have just peed her pants and said, "Here, here's the footage. I don't want any part of this." No. It was like, they crossed her, she made her choice, and she stuck with it. She never veered off that course. It's a testament to the writing, a testament to her performance, but I really love the message that it sends.
It's so easy to give in.
Mike Colter: To conform.
Frank Grillo: It's easier.
Nafessa Williams: For sure.
Mike Colter: To be liked and to be one of the pack. Because everybody's saying the same thing, everybody's doing the same thing. Why go against the grain?
Frank Grillo: It's a lot of work.
In a lot of these hero/villain movies, they say the actor always envisions their character as if they are the hero, and I feel like that is so applicable to this movie, because your characters are never outright evil, even when you're doing these heinous things. You have a modicum of power and you realize the bad things you can do with it for your own self gain. Can you talk about those power dynamics?
Frank Grillo: It's interesting, because just approaching roles like this, you have to see the world like that. I can't say, "Oh, I'm gonna play the bad guy." Right? You can't! You've got to understand your circumstances. You've got to understand why you're there. And what motivates this guy from day to day. Listen, being the bad guy in the movie, and what he does every day, is not easy. It's hard. It's hard to do that. It's hard to live that life, to be that cop who walks this line in that world and in my world. And that's what we all kind of do. And what Deon has done brilliantly is, I think he's balanced it all so we believe all these characters.
So, I'm in a room with Crossbones, Thunder, and Luke Cage. That's nuts. Because the superhero genre is so prolific right now, do you ever have any moments where you're on set and you're like, "I was in that superhero thing," "oh, I was in that superhero thing," and you're like, "Oh, I was the villain..."
Frank Grillo: I often just say that to myself.
