Upon its release in November of 2019, Queen & Slim was met with critical acclaim and commercial success, grossing more than $46 million worldwide, well over double its production budget. A bittersweet snapshot of black Americana, Queen & Slim follows a young black couple on the run from the law after they kill a belligerent police officer in a reflexive act of self defense. Together, they embark on something of an odyssey through different avenues of the black community as they search for a safe haven.
Along the way, the pair meets up with “Queen’s” Uncle Earl, played by Bokeem Woodbine. Best known for his recent turn in FX’s Fargo, Screen Rant readers will surely recognize Woodbine from his role as Shocker in Spider-Man: Homecoming. Uncle Earl is a tremendous character in the film, a military veteran-turned-low-rent-pimp with a combination of beaten down bitterness, military post traumatic stress. Woodbine shines in the role, breathing true humanity into a broken man who could easily be seen as a villain or a buffoon; instead, the audience gets to see Uncle Earl as a three-dimensional being, a victim trying to scrape a measure of control from a world that’s had its boot on his neck since the day he was born.
While promoting the home video release of Queen & Slim, Woodbine spoke to Screen Rant about his work on the film, from his first meetings with director Milena Matsoukas to his feelings of tremendous responsibility regarding the humanity and grief of the Uncle Earl character. He also shares his perspective on the strained relationship between law enforcement and the black community, as well as the United States’ deep-rooted racism, stretching back hundreds of years, which continues to impact the black American experience to this day.
Queen & Slim is out on Blu-ray, DVD, Digital, and On Demand now.
How did you come across this project, and what was the process of signing on to be part of it? Was it as simple as your agent calling you up and going, “I’ve got a script for you!”
Uncle Earl has really resonated with audiences. You don’t need me to tell you how much acclaim you’ve earned from this film, from the character. My read is that he’s seen so much stuff that no one guy should have to see, so he chooses to make his world so small so he can have control over his domain. Control he wouldn’t be able to have out in the real world, the outside world.
It was almost as simple as that. It wasn’t as simple as I would have liked it to have been, for sure (Laughs). My agent tracked down the screenplay in… I would say early Fall of 2018. After having read it, I said to him, “there’s one character in this whole screenplay who really speaks to me.” And we were on the same page. Before Christmas, a couple of months after that, we were able to line up a call with Melina Matsoukas. So we had a Skype call and shared out thoughts about the character of Uncle Earl and made sure we were on the same page. From that point, it wasn’t in the bag. There was someone else they were considering, who would have been pretty good at it, to be honest with you, but I was still in the running. After a few more months, in early 2019, my agent called and said, “We’re going to get the offer for the part.” It was very exciting. I was very glad to be part of this piece. It was a relatively long process. Normally, it’s either “yes” or “no,” pretty quickly, maybe some weeks of deliberation. In my own experience, I don’t know how it is for everybody else. But I usually know one way or the other pretty quickly. This one took time for them to come back to us.
Tell me about collaborating with Melina on the character, did you know what to expect on the set, what was the vibe? How did you get along?
That’s definitely a very astute observation. He definitely would like to have a situation where he knows all his corners, where he understands who is in his vicinity at all times, what’s going on every moment. He’s the kind of guy who can tell you what’s happening anywhere at any given time.
I’m thinking about how today’s racial tensions are going to be downplayed by history, but I’m glad this movie exists to show people in the future what things were like in 2019, in 2020.
It was different. I didn’t really have a lay of the land, as far as the architecture of the set until I got there. There just wasn’t time for me to check out Uncle Earl’s house, his environment, before we started filming. It was very different from how I imagined it. Other than that, we had talked extensively beforehand. Melina was very good at making herself available for conversation regarding any questions. As far as how I was going to approach the character, we discussed that and I was clear about that; the geography of the location meant that I had to shift some of my original ideas on how to approach certain things with the character. It wasn’t going to be exactly the way I had prepared, it wasn’t going to be exactly the way I had discussed with Melina because the house meant that certain things had to be done a little bit differently. But it wasn’t as much of an obstacle as it was an opportunity to jump in… Which I’m not crazy about doing, but every once in a while I have to, and just go out on a limb and experiment, for lack of a better word. It wasn’t as precarious as it could have been, because, like I said, we were in it together, all of us. Melina was very present for the actors. Even with so many things going on at once, she made herself available for questions, observations, notes, and stuff like that. I was lucky because I had been tracking the project for quite some time, so I had been subconsciously working on it before I even got the job. I had been thinking about it. I was able to roll with some of the differences in the way it had been changed to an extent. There were certain screen directions that, on the day, would have to be different than had been described, and things of that nature. The things that weren’t exactly what I imagined, those were hurdles that were possible to surmount, so it worked out.
I’m thinking about movies from the 1970s that are set in New York City, and it’s like, if you try to look at the history of New York now, there’s a willful ignorance, denial of the way things were back then.
That’s interesting, man. That’s an interesting perspective. Kind of like a time capsule, a look at contemporary reality, at the police officers and the screening process that lets people slip through the cracks and get given a badge.
I definitely feel like there’s pressure to downplay tragedy. The police have killed a lot of young people, mostly black and latino, but especially black. And those young people, they could have grown up and… We’ll never know what we lost.
Yes. It’s interesting. I like how you put that. People shouldn’t try to make it seem as though the way things are, a film like this is a good indicator of the times.
You’re from New York City, you’re from Harlem. It’s a very different kind of place now than it was back then, and not necessarily for the better. In some ways, maybe, but it some ways, maybe not. I know Queen & Slim isn’t set in New York, but I want to know: as a black man from the city, especially a part of New York that’s been gentrified the way Harlem has, do you feel a responsibility to be part of a story of black Americana, a culture that many feel is slowly being erased?
Absolutely. Maybe people will bring this to the attention to the higher-ups in law enforcement. Their idea is to police themselves, which leads to some of the perpetrators of these assassinations being allowed to continue working in law enforcement, or just get away with a little slap on the wrist. That doesn’t work. The fraternity the exists in law enforcement establishment is such that there’s no transparency with the public, and they just have a challenging time being honest about who deserves punishment and what types of retribution are being doled out. A lot of us in the general public outside of law enforcement are being kept in the dark regarding how they go about deciding what punishment, if any, should be levied against somebody who shoots an unarmed person for whatever reason, whether they were frightened or if bigotry is involved somehow. Or if they were simply too tired to arrest them so it was easier to just shoot somebody.
That’s a very good question. I feel that responsibility with pretty much every role. With this one, I definitely felt like I owed it to everybody who had been through an experience… Black American interaction with police is on a different scale. In the worst case, it’s somebody like Philando Castile or Tamir Rice, or any of the nameless people who aren’t on camera. It just wasn’t necessary. And then the other side of the scale is people who go through something like being spoken to derogatorily, condescending, an unnecessarily unprofessional manner by law enforcement. It’s based upon their preconceived notion of black people. It’s hard to find a black American who hasn’t had a negative interaction with law enforcement that wasn’t prompted by anything they did, quote-unquote “wrong,” but by a policeman and their prejudice. We’ve all experienced something negative. Not necessarily on the scale of what happens in Queen & Slim, but some kind of negative interaction. So I really wanted to do my part by making Uncle Earl as real as possible. I did feel a responsibility to make this guy as real as possible, to be honest with the audience by not bending the truth at all. Uncle Earl is comedic in a way. He’s a funny man, but he’s mentally ill. His experiences in war were compounded by his experience being a black man in America. Every black man in America, whether they know it, has experienced some form of PTSD. It could be mild, close to unnoticeable, depending on his own strength, ingenuity, or pride, but there isn’t one of us who isn’t suffering from some type of PTSD. When we’re ingrained to the degree that we are unable to resist this notion that we are not as good, or not as worthy, of the best things life has to offer, compared to our quote-unquote “counterparts,” who are white cats. That’s obviously not true. And another truth is that not every white person is a bad guy. I grew up with friends from everywhere. There are wonderful and awful people in every race on the planet. But our experience is singular in that the power structures and institutions of this nation were built, predicated on the notion that the black man is inferior.
That’s incredible. It’s been a real treat to talk to you, hear your perspective, and share it with the Screen Rant reader.
The rhetoric that determines the course of this nation, whether it’s the Bill of Rights or the Constitution, it’s built into a lot of these written statements and charters. Like, for example, the black man is three fifths of a normal man. Or in the National Anthem, they don’t sing the third stanza, which clearly talks about how the author of the song, Francis Scott Key, believes in white superiority, is a White Nationalist. He was anti-abolition, he was a slave owner. It’s in the makeup of this country, the notion that the black man is inferior and is not worthy of justice, freedom, or equality. This is ingrained, consciously or subconsciously, in a man’s mind. He goes about his day, and in the back of his mind, no matter how he feels about himself, how confident, strong, or capable he… He or she – I shouldn’t just say men – he or she may be. There’s this notion that, no matter how I feel about myself, I feel less than. I feel inferior. I am not worthy of justice, opportunity, or equality. So you don’t realize it, but… You can feel a little mad. It’s not necessarily on the surface, and it doesn’t mean people become raving psychopaths or something like that, but… It’ll give you PTSD. It could be a mild case, or it could be something exasperated and people can lose their crap about it. Not to excuse people for their behaviors, but it’s the truth. Uncle Earl is someone with Black American Man PTSD, made worse by things that happened to him in the war. And he’s a bit mad. He’s mad. Uncle Earl is mentally ill. I wanted to honor Uncle Earl by being truthful about him; his flaws, his mistakes. And also, he gets up every day, every morning, and keeps going.
More: Director Melina Matsoukas Interview: Queen & Slim
Thanks, thanks for the support, and thanks for your really good questions.
Queen & Slim is out on Blu-ray, DVD, Digital, and On Demand now.
