My window on culture: Rachael Abigail Holder on “Love, Brooklyn” | Interviews

“Love, Brooklyn” is the story of three people who are stuck like the community they like changed around them. Roger (André Holland) is a journalist who cannot start his story on gentrification. Casey (Nicole Beharie) is the owner of a gallery and her ex, although they cannot be understood if they want to recover together. Nicole (Dewanda Wise) is a recent widow and the mother of a young girl, who has an intimate relationship with Roger but who always cries her husband and insists that she is not Roger’s girlfriend.

In an interview Rogerebert.comDirector Rachael Abigail Holder discussed the casting, places and her deeply personal link with Brooklyn.

You have three of my favorite actors in this film, so I would like to hear about the casting process.

It started six years ago. They were released with another actor when they took me as a director. And this actor read the script, and he transmitted the project. And I said to myself: “Isn’t that cool if we were doing it black?”

And André Holland has been one of my favorite actors for so long. This moment in “Moonlight” made me think: “We have to see this guy falling in love, as from the start.” And I thought it would be fun to see him being funny and a little softer than in the other roles in which he was. So it was fundamentally my pitch. He had always wanted to work with Nicole, and me too. But we didn’t know each other. We started pre-production in 2022, and she was running “The Morning Show”.

There was a world where we could have simply rebuilt its share and continue. And we just didn’t want to do it. The way I describe Nicole’s talent is that she creates more than a small show; She writes several chapters of a story in her eyes. She is incredible.

Dewanda and I have known since 2006. I threw him into one of my first New York pieces. And we were just like in the worlds of the other without really connecting ourselves. She plays a very different role from what we normally see her. She had a juxtaposition to be a confident, frank and honest woman, but also incredibly soft. I love her so much.

We often talk about a place being a character in a film. However, in this case, the location is the title character and a parallel for what happens to the characters. You really made it beautiful. What does Brooklyn mean for you, and what did his place do the right place for this story?

Brooklyn is and has always been one of the coolest places on the earth, and it has always been in a constant state of change. The best way to describe the role of Brooklyn as a character in our film is the beginning of the history of all this production. Paul Zimmerman wrote the script on the twenties and Paul is now in the 70s. I read it in 2019 and I felt that he was writing on me and my friends. This particular change that we explore in our history has occurred before. I just thought it was wild, that it was so timeless.

Personally, Brooklyn is the place where I lived by studying for my MFA. When I grew up, I lived on Long Island in a white predominance district and I attended a completely white school. I was going to Brooklyn every Sunday to go to the church with my family. And the way that my family of the West Indies of my family, and Brooklyn are in a way the place of landing for so many Caribbean, the West Indians who went there every Sunday, even if we did not go to the church, even if we were, as, picking up roti and curry, I felt like I was visiting the family all the time. So Brooklyn, for me personally, was like my window on my culture.

I want to ask you questions about a particularly striking scene, where Roger and Casey are at a dinner with a rich artistic patron named Lorna, and Casey does a lot of pressure to welcome him so that she buys more art.

It was one of the funniest and most funny scenes we have shot. Cassandra Freeman is another actor who did not have the chance to do their thing. She is so hilarious, but she only played for most very dramatic roles. I really wanted Lorna to be a black woman because gentrification is not only a color. And we must all look at our relationship with power. I fought hard so that she was a black woman. And I wanted her to be funny too. I wanted it to be light, and I didn’t want it to feel like a comment in front.

In terms of moving the story, it’s a moment when Casey is vulnerable, and Roger resumes. She is softened and upset in a way that only someone who knows her really can know. I think that women, black women, above all, we have in this way when we are upset, sometimes our upheaval may seem angry or tired. Nicole has this beautiful way to show her sweetness and vulnerability.

How is the theme of gentrification linked to past and possible romantic scenarios?

This is what Roger says at the end of the film. You can spend your time being crazy in the past and keep what the current should be, or what the future should be. And you might be right. But I think life is to try as much as possible to be attentive to what you stay in the present.

The houses and other interior spaces of the film reveal a lot about the characters.

Lili Teplan is a genius. She worked so hard without anything and realized all my dreams. I have been building decks for each film space since 2019, and I have been updated and to draw images. It looked like the small version of me that would spend hours with my stuffed animals, playing, creating and building. Meet Lily and her artistic talent and her ability to do so much nothing, it was like our interior children met together. It was so magical and incredible.

Our location manager George Marro has compiled a list of houses and spaces to visit in Brooklyn that we explored in depth. We did not have to make an entire construction.

What was the best part to show the film at festivals?

The American Black Film Festival was really fun, and I think it was the first time I watched him with a black predominance audience, a large group of blacks all together. I said to myself: “Oh, it’s a different film.” I felt like I was looking at it for the first time, because many public members reacted and spoke on the screen. And at the Black Star Film Festival, I felt like I was watching with my cousins.