Home is where the heart is for Delroy Lindo

Sitting in the director’s chair presented Delroy Lindo with a unique set of challenges as a debut filmmaker.

For the nearly month-long Jamaican shoot of Jabari’s People, the veteran actor trod new ground on the film set, having to juggle multiple hats all at once.

“As an actor, when I work, I tend to be very singular. I take the material and go off in a corner. I come on set and do the scene. When the director says ‘Cut’, I leave, and the reason I do so is in terms of my process. I need every ounce of my energy and focus to be on the next scene,” Lindo explained of his long-entrenched method.

This time around, the Academy Award- and Tony Award-nominated thespian had to retrain his mind.

“As a director and producer on the project, I did not have the luxury of leaving the set. I have to do the work, and I have to communicate with a whole set of colleagues, and that has been challenging,” he admitted of his multi-hyphenate experience that extends to a co-starring role in the inter-generational drama that wrapped local production last week.

Based on a script penned by Daoud Abeid and Dakhil Hausif — which Lindo first stumbled upon in 2015, and optioned the rights to in 2021 — the Hollywood mainstay, who was in contention for the Best Supporting Actor award at this year’s Oscars, portrays the estranged grandfather of a Brooklyn-resident teenager sent to live with him in Jamaica in the Blue Mountains.

British actress Marianne Jean-Baptiste, who is of Antiguan and St Lucian heritage, plays Lindo’s wife, while troubled teenager Seyi Andes-Pulumi, a United Kingdom national of Jamaican descent, is the titular character.

Trinidadian actor Winston Duke plays Jabari’s father, while the Jamaican cast is a roll call of names including Rolando Alberts, Sekai Smart-Macualay, Everaldo Creary, Jeff Crossley, Zoë-Daniele Ching Sang, Kadeem Wilson, Sule Thelwell and Kimberly Patterson.

With an acclaimed body of work spanning decades, Lindo has been in front of the camera for several of the industry’s most accomplished directors.

Asked if past collaborators such as Ryan Coogler, who helmed last year’s mammoth box-office hit Sinners (which led to Lindo’s first career Oscar nomination) or Spike Lee, who guided his performances on Malcolm X, Clockers, and Crooklyn, influenced his directing style, Lindo paused to consider their imprints on his psyche.

“This is de facto. It’s not like I am necessarily conscious of it,” he told Sunday Entertainment in a recent interview with fellow cast members at 10a West Kings Road on a break from filming.

“The most successful directors I have worked with have a sensitivity. They are very clear about what their vision is and have an equal clarity about how to compel the people they are working with to connect to that vision, and help tell that story,” the actor-turned-filmmaker analysed.

“That’s what I feel when I work with Spike. The analogy I always make when I talk about working with him is I always know the train I’m on,” he further detailed. “We are [on] the same train going in the same direction. It doesn’t mean there are not issues and challenges making the work, but I know where the train is headed, I know what station he needs to get to, and what his expectations of me are, helping him get there.”

In the case of Coogler, the man behind the lens of Black Panther and Creed, Lindo lauded him as a genius.

“When we did Sinners, the vast majority of people working on the film had worked with Ryan on three or four of his movies, so there is a certain kind of shorthand they have. He works hard but is essentially a chill personality, and that emanates down through the rest of the set.”

His director admiration club goes even wider.

“A cat like Ron Howard; I did the film Ransom with him. He also has a similar kind of chill personality and that kind of dynamic. All those guys have influenced me,” Lindo disclosed, speaking of positive encounters before speaking of the reverse.

“The directors I have worked with who don’t have that, their style results in a certain kind of chaos on set. I have learnt from them too. I know that’s not what I want to do.”

Bringing his passion project to The Rock — the birthplace of British-born Lindo’s late parents who migrated to London as part of the Windrush generation — was a process that kickstarted a year ago.

Key role

Prolific producer Robert Maylor, born in the Bronx, New York, to Jamaican parents, played a key role in shepherding Jabari’s People towards the ‘action’ being repeatedly called by Lindo in The Rock’s verdant hills.

Delroy and Robert were introduced through the team at Proximity Media, founded by Ryan Coogler, his wife Zinzi Coogler and Sev Ohanian.

“At some point after filming Sinners, Delroy must have mentioned Jabari’s People to members of the Proximity team. Over the course of a few days, I got calls and messages from them asking if I’d be willing to speak with Delroy about the project, and Sev ultimately set up a call in March last year,” divulged Maylor, who started at the University of Southern California (USC) School of Cinematic Arts in 2012, a year after the future Oscar-winning Coogler had graduated.

From that ice-breaker call with Lindo to going to camera, Maylor recounted that a substantial chunk of time was focused on shaping the screenplay “into something we could actually finance and shoot independently”.

“There were a lot of Zoom calls last summer, and as we moved into prep I was really fortunate to have fellow Jamaican creatives Mezan Ayoka and Isabella Issa become part of a kind of creative think tank around the film.”

He shared with Sunday Entertainment that Lindo had previously scouted locations on the island for the film in 2021. However, when Maylor came aboard, several places the star and director had initially identified were scrapped as last October’s Hurricane Melissa “took some of those locations off the table, so we did a full re-scout at the start of the summer”.

In his hired capacity, Maylor’s role was manifold.

“It meant I was wearing a lot of hats at different times: lawyer, story editor, human resources, marketing, working alongside post-production and generally making sure all the wheels kept turning so Delroy and other creatives had the safe space to bring the film to life.”

The producer who lent his considerable talents to such recent locally filmed productions as Get Millie Black and Bob Marley: One Love is particularly gratified by the overwhelming retention of Jamaicans as crew on Jabari’s People.

Jamaican crew

“We had approximately 92 crew members, and 88 of them were locals. This is a Jamaican crew from top to bottom. That runs across virtually every department: accounting, sound, grip and electric, hair and make-up, art, costume, transportation, camera and more.”

With his 22-day directorial debut now in the can, Lindo is ready to exhale.

The journey to the finish line inspires deep introspection.

“As a person of Jamaican extraction, my relationship to Jamaica is complicated. But there is no denying the beauty and plain talent that is here. This is a moment of channelling that energy into a piece of work that we are involved in, and I hope to share it with the world,” he assessed.

In the final analysis, according to him, the story crafted in Jabari’s People speaks a universal language.

“This is a small independent film with a big heart, big actors, and big talent,” he declared with obvious pride.

“Anybody who has experienced tragedy, or rifts in their family they are trying to heal, can relate to this story. Anybody who believes in angels, anybody who believes in God, anybody who believes in the forces other than [what] we are all seeing here can relate to this story.”

Lindo took another question as the broad-ranging interview wound down.

Is winning an Oscar on his wishlist?

“Getting nominated for an Academy Award from a business point of view, it has value. Winning has value, but I will say this to you. From the bottom of my heart, and my son’s head, I want to keep doing quality work, and if I focus on doing quality work, whatever happens as a result of that is going to happen,” he responded with his trademark deep voice.

“What I know for sure is I can’t wake up in the morning thinking I want to win an Oscar. I want to get nominated. I can wake up in the morning and say whatever my next project is, ‘let me give it everything, let me try and illuminate the human condition’, which we all as creative people want to do.”

He wholeheartedly welcomed the opportunity to film another project on the island.

But his top priority is zooming in on cinematic tales with a distinct perspective.

“I want to mine the human experience of human beings who happen to be black. I have said it countless times: the challenges of African-descended people are all rooted in the fact that there are others who consistently want to deny our humanity,” he opined to Sunday Entertainment.

“We, as people of colour, our humanity is just as large, just as complex, just as [expletive] up as any other human being on the planet. I want to tell those stories. I want to mine our humanity, our beauty, our brilliance; that’s what I want to do.”

entertainment@gleanerjm.com