Between the Lenses

The Klan member. The bigoted politician. The slur-spouting athlete. A staple of cinematic evil, roles steeped in racism have never been a simple undertaking for the performers tasked with playing them. While audiences have always loved a good villain, the on-screen depiction of racism carries perhaps more weight today than in previous eras. After all, this is a time when President Donald Trump’s vitriol is an accepted presence on Twitter feeds; when NPR publicly defends its labeling of that same president’s rhetoric as racist; when we’re just two years removed from the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia; and when mass shootings perpetrated on any given day instill persistent fear and anguish. Does art inform how we identify prejudice in our own lives, and do the stories we tell on-screen exacerbate or salve the pain? PLAYBOY spoke with seven actors about their racist roles to examine how we represent hatred in art, the risks and nuances of understanding such mind-sets and the power in reflecting the current state of America. - David Dennis Jr.

“Duke rebranded racism. He made it more palatable- that’s true evil.”

Topher Grace

Real-life KKK leader David Duke in Spike Lee’s 2019 Oscar winner BlacKkKlansman

On confronting Duke’s charm: “Duke rebranded racism. He’s very charming and disarming, so he made racism more palatable—that’s true evil. The night before I went in to read for Spike, I was rehearsing alone, and I still couldn’t say half the words. I told Spike, ‘I’m really uncomfortable speaking like this.’ If you do that with the wrong director, and you don’t pay it off the right way, it’s very dangerous to make someone look charismatic. But Duke’s charisma is what makes him so powerful.”

Alan Tudyk

Baseball manager Ben Chapman in 42, the 2013 Jackie Robinson biopic

On using the N word: “While rehearsing those words, I would get tears in my eyes, which wasn’t good for the scene. So I would watch these violent street-fight videos, and I’d get a knot in my stomach and I’d just get angry. And then I wouldn’t cry anymore when I said the word. It was like I got dipped in hate.”

Catherine Kellner

Fannie Taylor in John Singleton’s 1997 movie Rosewood, based on a true story of a white woman who falsely accuses a black man of rape in the 1920s

On the film’s most intense scenes: “I’d go into my trailer and breathe into a paper bag because I was so nervous. But the cast and John Singleton kept saying, ‘Do it, because people need to know.’ In scenes where I cry over and over, part of me honestly wept because of my own ignorance, because the subject matter was so real. But it became one of the best experiences of my life.”

William Sadler

Detective Michael Sheehan in Ava DuVernay’s 2019 Emmy-winning Netflix miniseries When They See Us

On Sheehan intimidating the Central Park Five into confessing: “During a scene with my co-star Asante Blackk, Ava DuVernay took me aside and said, ‘I want you to scare him.’ So I unleashed this character, and when I finished, I asked Asante, ‘Are you okay?’ and gave him a hug. I’m not comfortable playing those people, but the better I do it, the more impact the story has. It’s more important than ever before that we tell stories like these.”

William Fichtner

District attorney flack Jake Flanagan in 2006’s best picture winner Crash

On whether Flanagan’s racial button-pushing makes him racist: “Under his breath, my character says, ‘Fucking black people.’ The point of the scene is about choices we make in life and how we can end up in uncool circumstances. I didn’t look at him as just racially motivated, but I saw that piece of him when he pulled that card out.”

Garrett Hedlund

Mike Burden in the 2020 film Burden, the real-life story of a Klansman who inherits a KKK memorabilia shop before finding redemption

On filming in the KKK shop: “As the crew was setting up, a father and son were walking around. A crew member asked if they worked on set, and the father said, ‘Hell no, we’re shopping. About time a goddamn place like this opened up.’ That allowed us to see how real this is. It made our commitment to the project stronger.”

Burgess Jenkins

Ray Budds, one of the villains in 2000’s fact-based Remember the Titans

On his approach to the persistently racist football star: “The guy is angry and frustrated and feels betrayed, and everybody has felt angry, frustrated and betrayed. The key is to figure out the emotional value and connect to it, rather than judge them and say, ‘Okay, this guy’s a racist jerk.’ Well, they don’t see themselves as racist jerks.”