Corey Hawkins is known for films like Straight Outta Compton, In the Heights, and The Color Purple, along with his Tony-nominated work in plays like Six Degrees of Separation and Topdog/Underdog. But Hawkins says his new film, The Man in My Basement, made him go deeper than he ever had before—and not just because he’s in almost every frame of the film.
The thriller, directed by Nadia Latif in her feature debut, is an adaptation of Walter Mosley’s novel, following a man (Hawkins) living in Sag Harbor who is put in a tricky situation when a white stranger (Willem Dafoe) asks to rent his basement for the summer. Hawkins plays Charles Blakey, who is grappling with the loss of his mother and fighting to keep their ancestral home.
Hawkins and Latif, an accomplished theater director, brought the film to the Toronto International Film Festival for its world premiere ahead of its release to select theaters on September 12 (and to Hulu later this fall). There, they talked to Vanity Fair about how it felt to see the film with an audience, what it was like to work with Dafoe, and why Hawkins decided to train for a marathon while also filming this marathon of a movie.
Vanity Fair: How did it feel to watch this film with an audience?
Nadia Latif: I’m a theater director by trade, and in my first ever professional show, I watched the opening night. The first sound cue fired three seconds late, and I sat through the whole show kind of weeping. I have never watched one of my opening nights since. That’s partly because in that moment, you realize you have to relinquish control of it, and you have to accept a certain level of chaos into your life. Loads of people asked me if I was nervous about the premiere, and I was like, “I have watched my work die on its ass in front of an audience too many times.”
The film is a finished thing; it’s now going to begin a conversation. I enjoyed it. I also sat between my family and the drunkest man who ever existed. He was there guzzling beers and eating popcorn.
That’s a pretty trippy movie to see drunk.
Latif: I think by the end he was really like, “This is not what I fucking signed up for.”
Corey Hawkins: My first opening night on Broadway, someone went to the hospital because they were on the wrong side of the stage, and we had to finish the show. [Laughs] I also just feel sometimes, like you said, once the film is finished, if I’ve seen it and I’ve been able to enjoy everybody’s work already, sometimes it’s a bit of torture to sit through. So I just listened to it last night.
This seems like a film where you can feel the audience members tensing up as they watch.
