Is God Is New York Premiere, Tessa Thompson Interview

"It feels incredible. First of all, BAM is a place that I saw so many films in as a kid, as a teenager. It was one of the places that I would come to and understand eventually that I wanted to be a filmmaker. So it feels very surreal to be here with the second film that my company, Viva Maude, has produced. The first film that I’ve been able to produce that I’m not in at all, which is my biggest dream, to get to really build out my professorial career and support artists, particularly Black women, that I believe in. I think this film really exemplifies why I started the company in the first place, which is to present protagonists that upend and upset our ideas about what’s possible, particularly for Black women. So this just feels like a really and truly a dream come true.

First of all, they brought their extraordinary gifts and talent. I can’t think of a more incredible cast to support Alicia’s vision. This script was so singular, you know? And what felt so exciting is with each of them, to get to call them. I remember having the first conversation with Janelle and saying, 'Janelle, I have this script, you are our dream person for this part, I feel like it’s going to blow you away, please, please read it, I hope you love it as much as I assume that you will.' And then to get the call back and be like, 'This is one of the best scripts, if not the best script I’ve ever read.' And to have that across the board, you know? I think, producerially, there’s so many wonderful people in my world, past collaborators, people that I see across a room and think, 'I want to produce for you one day,' and then the challenge is to find material that’s worthy of their talent. And so to get to find material that’s worthy of a Vivica A. Fox, that’s worthy of a Sterling K. Brown, that’s worthy of an Erika Alexander, and then also to get to really introduce audiences that might not know Kara and Mallory yet in these extraordinary performances is like. I cannot tell you what it means to me. It just means the world to me.

It really is one of one in terms of what it’s doing with genre. I think of what it’s the fact that it’s led by two young Black women, which still. I mean, we’ve seen film grow so much and change in terms of who we can see centered in a frame, but that is still like extraordinarily rare. A film that wants to talk about really heavy things, like generational trauma, but do it in a way that also is like wildly entertaining and surprising and funny in a way that is so unique to Alicia’s voice is just like it’s pretty rare. It’s a pretty rare film.

Because it’s made for the cinema and also I think what we what we have seen recently when we talk about a film like Cohners, for example, is also just that it is so dazzling to get to go see films together in community. It just is like one of the amazing offerings of film in general is to help us understand more about our own humanity, to say like, 'Hey, you’re not alone. This feeling that you’ve had, this experience that you’ve had, you’re not alone.' And so why do it alone in your house? You should do it surrounded by people. It’s just I remember going to see Cohners myself the first time, not at a fancy premiere, just in a cinema, and like, how fun that was. And you just get to go out and go into the lobby after and feel the energy and the buzz and overhear conversations and talk about it with your friends and fight about it with your friends. And that’s a part of the joy of doing this. And so I’m really so grateful to MGM, Orion, Amazon, that we’re going to release this in theaters. And I really hope that audiences show up because it’s the only way that we continue to say that original stories matter. Because those are always the things that perform and that we’re talking about for generations, but we have to be able to show up and show out when those stories come along."