Exclusive: Phylicia Rashad On Blumhouse’s Thriller ‘Black Box’ & Loving Foreign TV Shows

Now playing on Amazon Prime Video is the thriller Black Box, which is one of first four of eight films in the Welcome to the Blumhouse series. The film is directed by Emmanuel Osei-Kuffour Jr. (Born With It) and script by Osei-Kuffour Jr. and Stephen Herman.

Welcome to the Blumhouse is a program of eight unsettling, genre movies produced by Jason Blum’s Blumhouse Television and Amazon Studios. Sharing the spine-tingling suspense that’s a Blumhouse signature, each film presents a distinctive vision and unique perspective on common themes centered around family and love as redemptive or destructive forces.

Black Box (October 6 on Amazon Prime) stars Mamoudou Athie (Jurassic World 3, The Circle), Phylicia Rashad (Creed), Amanda Christine (Colony), Tosin Morohunfola (The Chi, The 24th), Charmaine Bingwa (Trees of Peace, Little Sista), and Troy James (The Flash, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark).

After losing his wife and his memory in a car accident, a single father undergoes an agonizing experimental treatment that causes him to question who he really is.

Rashad best  known for her role as Clair Huxtable on the NBC sitcom The Cosby Show and becoming the first black actress to win the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play, which she won for her role in the revival of A Raisin in the Sun. Lately, the gifted has been working hard, continuing to do theater from behind the scene as a director and working on TV, where she recently received an Emmy nomination for her work on NBC’s This Is Us. Earlier this year, she appeared in Tyler Perry’s A Fall from Grace and will next appear in David E. Talbert’s Jingle Jangle and in Pixar’s animated film Soul.

BlackFilmandTV.com exclusively spoke with Rashad on her role in Black Box and her love for horror films.

What led you to say yes to this project?

Phylicia Rashad: It's a good story. It's a great script. 

How would you best describe your character without giving too much away?

Phylicia Rashad: I like the complexity of the character, and the plausibility of those complexities. I like that she was a very well informed, well educated woman; that she was at the top of her game. That she was highly esteemed in her profession. She was a leader of the pack, so to speak. She's a neurophysicist who has developed a procedure and technology to address memory loss. It's cutting edge, it is breakthrough technology. And she is human. She has some personal issues.

Is there anything you picked up from Emmanuel that you probably haven’t seen from other directors?

Phylicia Rashad: His attention to detail. 

How was working with Mamoudou Athie?

Phylicia Rashad: Oh, that was wonderful. It was really great. He's a very sensitive actor. He's very warm. He too is detailed. He's deep in his thought process. He examines his work. It's like looking as if one were looking at a prism, turning it and constantly turning it in regarding every side of that prism. That's how he works.

This role is different from other roles in some ways. Was it exciting to play against type?

Phylicia Rashad: As an actor, you want all of the characters to be multifaceted. II like to think they are. I like to choose work that is written in that way. There's been a lot of talk in these interviews about genre. I think that that is what certainly opens the door for investigation of the, for lack of a better term, the other side of midnight.

What makes you say yes to the projects you're taking?

Phylicia Rashad: They're good. They're well written and the good people directing them, good people working on them, and good producers behind them. 

Was ‘Soul’ the first animated project you have done?

Phylicia Rashad: I had done some animated work for the Cleveland Show. But this is the first animated, full length feature. I've always wanted to do this. I really enjoyed it.

In going back to Black Box, why do you think people are doing more horror movies with not only black directors, but with a whole black cast?

Phylicia Rashad: These are human stories and they translate that way. And it works. I thought that film Blacula was pretty cool back in the day with William Marshall. I liked that. That was back in the days of blaxploitation films. William Marshall was a formidable actor. He was a very, very strong actor; very well developed actor. And you wonder why you didn't see more of him in all kinds of film. Yeah. When I look at it now. I fall out laughing because that's funny. And Eddie Murphy's Vampire in Brooklyn, that was some funny stuff to. Good entertainment. It was. It didn’t frightened me at all, but it was at least entertaining. But Get Out, Us, Lovecraft County and Black Box, this is another pie.

With a lot of time being spent at home, have you gone back to revisit films or programs?

Phylicia Rashad: I saw those films when they were released. I went to the theater with my son, and we sat there and saw Us. I saw them when they were released. During this time, what I've been watching is a lot of Chinese films and television. I like to watch different things.

Is there anything you would like to recommend?

Phylicia Rashad: There’s The Princess Weiyoung series. I just finished watching Eternal Love series with Mark Chao. There’s this Turkish series Yunus Emre. I couldn’t believe what I was watching. I couldn't believe that this was actually made for television. And if you look at it and you see it, you understand why.  I like foreign things. And I love Indian films. I love Bollywood. Shah Rukh Khan. I love his films. I watched another Indian film that had such beautiful filmmaking. I love period pieces. They take me away.