Exclusive: Danielle Deadwyler on playing Mamie Till Mobley in director Chinonye Chukwu’s Till
Hitting theaters everywhere on October 28th from Orion Pictures is director Chinonye Chukwu’s Till, starring Danielle Deadwyler as Mamie Till Mobley and Jalyn Hall as Emmett Till. The film had its World Premiere at the 60th New York Film Festival.
Till tells the story of Mamie Till-Mobley (Deadwyler), whose pursuit of justice for her 14-year-old son Emmett Louis Till (Hall) became a galvanizing moment that helped lead to the creation of the civil rights movement. As Time Magazine reported, “…thanks to a mother’s determination to expose the barbarousness of the crime, the public could no longer pretend to ignore what they couldn’t see.” Mamie’s decision to have an open casket at Emmett’s funeral, and to have Jet magazine publish David Jackson’s funeral photos, was driven by her motivation to ensure people everywhere knew what had happened to her son.
Till stars Danielle Deadwyler (Mamie Till Mobley), Jalyn Hall (Emmett Till), Frankie Faison (John Carthan), Haley Bennett (Carolyn Bryant), Sean Patrick Thomas (Gene Mobley), John Douglas Thompson (Moses Wright), Jayme Lawson (Myrlie Evers), Tosin Cole (Medgar Evers) and Whoopi Goldberg (Alma Carthan).
Produced by Keith Beauchamp, Barbara Broccoli, Whoopi Goldberg, Thomas Levine, Michael Reilly and Frederick Zollo, the film is written by Michael Reilly, Keith Beauchamp and Chinonye Chukwu.
For Deadwyler, this is her biggest role to date. Previously Deadwyler was seen in the HBO Emmy winning series Watchmen as well as HBO Max’s Station Eleven, Spectrum’s Paradise Lost and OWN’s Tyler Perry’s The Haves and the Have Nots. On the big screen, she starred in the indie films Jane and Emma and The Devil Must Pay. In 2021, she appeared in Netflix’s western film The Harder They Fall, opposite Idris Elba and Regina King. Besides Till, Deadwyler can also be seen opposite Zoe Saldana in the Netflix miniseries From Scratch.
Blackfilmandtv.com’s Wilson Morales caught up with Deadwyler as she spoke on her experience playing Mamie Till Mobley.