Movie Nickel Boys, interview with actor Daveed Diggs

Cinema / Interview - 08 December 2024

Check out the interview with Daveed Diggs, actor in the movie Nickel Boys

Daveed Diggs is an American actor, rapper, and singer-songwriter. In the movie Nickel Boys - based on Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name - he plays the older Elwood.

Hey Daveed, Jake Fraczek with the Daily Bloid.

Hey, Jake.

There are scenes of you in the movie as the older Elwood. This is where we see how the impressions of his afflictions have shaped, how things may have taken form down the line. What was your method to portraying how those experiences would manifest years later?

Yeah, well, I mean, because of the particular way that it was shot, and that everything's behind my head mostly, it was just really trying to watch as much footage of Elwood as possible, stuff they had shot already so I could pick up on any sort of mannerism that was useful. And then also, I just realize that life is long, and we've been surviving this whole time. It was a very technical experience for me, right? Because, on my part, it's a lot of just trying to keep my scene partners in the shot and doing, you know, making sure we catch all the things we needed to catch. So, hoping to get as much physicality for free as we could. And then for the most part, just get the shot.

That leads kind of right into my next question. I imagine the manner in which the film was made, that the cast would have to off build and react off others' expressions. Did you feel you had to be a little more in tune with the other performances more than usual, and not just in like a flow state for your character?

Yeah, well, I think for me, you know, wanting to just not be totally out of the box with what they were doing in the past, right? But also, aware that time has passed. Yeah, it was an interesting challenge. I guess it's that way anyway. Anytime you play the older version of someone. But there's a lot of story trying to be told in a short amount of time. And so, yeah, it was a particular challenge, I guess, the approach of it.

Did that pose more of a challenge for you to keep things paced for the character and not get out of a loop with the rest of the overall story?

Yeah, I mean, I think that's kind of the challenge for every actor of TV and film, right? Because you shoot out of order anyway, so how they put it together is a little bit negligible for us. But that is part of the gig, getting a clear sense of where you are in time every time they're rolling, which yeah, as a theater kid, that's one of the harder things for me, right? I'm used to telling the whole story at once, so yeah.

Major themes in the picture are camaraderie, friendship, and for the boys, those ideals serve as survival mechanisms amongst other things. There is also tribute, honor, and holding onto memories, good and bad, perhaps. While filming, did any of that conjure up notions from your personal life about relationships or memories?

Yeah, I mean, the friendship theme in this… it's also a coming of age story, it's a really rough coming of age story in some ways. And, I think, yeah, I was blessed to have really great friends to go through hard times with. And so, I saw a lot of that in the performances of the phenomenal young cast of this movie. So yeah, it was. It's been incredible to watch it, to see it all put together after the sort of wild and piecemeal way it was shot, it's all done and just to really get to appreciate it is unbelievable.

The film's gotten a lot of praise for many aspects, but specifically for the POV shot style. During filming, were you aware that it was gonna be something so unique or significant that was going garner that much attention?

I knew it was gonna be really unique. I didn't know if it was gonna work. So even while we were doing it, I just, I was not able to see it until they finished it. And that's really like RaMell (Ross) and Jomo (Fray, cinematographer) and the whole creative team behind it. Once I saw it put together, it was the first time I really understood like, “oh my God, you guys made something that is unprecedented”. I've never seen anything like it. So yeah, it's really powerful. But yeah, I was pretty skeptical. But excited, that's why I wanted to do it. I was excited to try something new.