Yahoo News Being a Mom Helped Danielle Deadwyler Channel Emmett Till's Mother, but the Story 'Is Bigger Than Me'
Nolwen Cifuentes/@nolwencif
Danielle Deadwyler admits she hesitated when it came to taking on the role of Emmett Till's mom Mamie Till-Mobley in Till.
"I'll be honest, it was the most scary thing I could think of, role-wise, to do," Deadwyler, 40, tells PEOPLE in this week's issue. "I neglected to read it. And I say that to show a kind of parallel to the experience of Mamie, to show that we don't always boldly walk into things."
Till-Mobley joined the fight for civil rights after her 14-year-old son was lynched for allegedly whistling at white woman Carolyn Bryant in Mississippi in 1955. Authorities arrested Bryant's husband Roy and her brother-in-law J.W. Milam for murdering Emmett, but the men were acquitted in court. They later admitted to killing Emmett, yet charges were never pressed.
Roy and Milam have since died, but Carolyn remains alive and has not been charged with any involvement in Emmett's death.
Deadwyler, who grew up working with civil rights organizations in Atlanta, felt a sense of responsibility for Emmett and his mother's story "to be told right, and for it to be told truthfully and historically accurate," she says. "All that was going into the feeling of saying 'yes.' "
Orion Pictures
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Being a mom to a 13-year-old son allowed the Station Eleven star to connect with Mamie as a parent.
"I think that it did," she agrees. "But I think the weight of everything is bigger than me and my experience. I've known this story since I was a kid and I've had proximity to this story and the people who knew Mamie well into her later years, and the people who were impacted by her choices have had an impact and influence on my life. So it's been a part of me for a long time."
Upon learning about Emmett's murder, Till-Mobley fought to have her son's body returned to Chicago, where she held an open casket funeral for the boy. She wanted the world to see the brutality that resulted from racism in the Jim Crow South.
"She's bringing you into the utter and complete drudgery of what it means to be a mother who sees something happen to a loved one, a person seeing the ramifications of terrorism on her child," Deadwyler says.
Lynsey Weatherspoon / Orion Pictures
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Before Emmett left for Mississippi from his home in Chicago, his mother talked to him about how he should act around white people in the South and what to expect. Deadwyler has had similar discussion with her own son and admits it can be a difficult conversation to have.
"I feel f---ed up about having to have that conversation, but I still did have to have a conversation," she says. "I have this responsibility to inform him how to navigate the world. His social environment is very white at this time, in his school milieu. And I've made a point to have a certain kind of cultural upbringing for him. He's privileged. I tell him he's privileged in a certain way, and everyone is not."
Deadwyler continues, "He's very aware of the social dynamics that are happening. He's having the conversation with me about Uvalde and how his peers are reacting. He's having the conversation about Buffalo and not sitting into him and his body. There's this attention in the Black experience that I know he's understanding now. Innocence is shifting."
Nolwen Cifuentes/@nolwencif
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The fact that Deadwyler spoke about these topics with her son, though, proves "the relevance of this film," she says. "The expectation is to continuously rage against the machine, to continuously fight, to continuously tell these stories with a particular care and precision."
Deadwyler hopes the Till family obtains justice for Emmett.
"That's what they deserve," she says. "I don't know what it wholly looks like, but I know that it is a continuous effort on their behalf; it'll be a continuous effort on the Black community's behalf. It is not right to commit an egregious act against a child and suffer no consequence. Accountability has to be had. Justice comes in a number of ways, and it is yet to be seen."
Till is in theaters now.
