{"id":23285,"date":"2021-05-17T21:39:47","date_gmt":"2021-05-17T21:39:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/?post_type=articles&p=23285"},"modified":"2021-05-17T22:04:33","modified_gmt":"2021-05-17T22:04:33","slug":"barry-jenkins-underground-railroad","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/barry-jenkins-underground-railroad\/","title":{"rendered":"How The ‘Underground Railroad’ Cast Prepared For The Show’s Trauma"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo courtesy Kyle Kaplan\/Amazon Studios<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Premiering this Friday on Amazon<\/a>, The <\/em><\/a><\/span>Underground Railroad <\/span><\/i><\/a>is the latest in a slew of shows and films slated to tackle the oppressive history of African Americans<\/a> in this country with powerfully evocative imagery.\u00a0 The limited series based on Colson Whitehead\u2019s Pulitzer Prize-winning historical novel The Underground Railroad<\/em><\/a> is set to submerge its viewers into a hellish journey through the antebellum South through the story of Cora (played by Thuso Mbedu), an enslaved woman who has fled from bondage. In an era where the discourse around cinematic Black trauma is never ending, director Barry Jenkins took it one step further in bracing his cast for the heartrending tasks they undertook in their portrayals and brought in an onset therapist.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI told them, \u2018We\u2019re not going to levitate but we are going to find a way to make magic, the same way our ancestors did,\u2019\u201d Jenkins recalled telling the cast in his interview with <\/span>LA Times<\/span><\/i><\/a>. With an environment fraught with the lofty emotional weight of ancestral trauma, Jenkins recruited Kim Whyte, a mental health therapist based in Georgia, to counsel the cast as they endured scenes of lynchings<\/a>, suicides, and historically-based violence. The Oscar-winning Moonlight<\/em> director continued, \u201cI didn\u2019t want these images, even as we were unpacking them, to unpack us.\u201d In the interview, Whyte also discussed the contentious mental space of some of the actors who portrayed racist characters. \u201cPeople would come up to me and say, \u2018I have to portray this. How do I explain this to my mom? I don\u2019t like this character.\u2019 Sometimes they would have to unpack those feelings they would have to portray,\u201d she said. <\/span><\/p>\n

The relevancy of cinematic depictions of Black trauma has been called into question following the premiere of Amazon\u2019s anthology series, Them<\/i>, and the live-action Oscar-winning short films Two Distant Strangers<\/i>; both movies feature realistically unsettling scenes of brutal violence against Black characters at the hands of police and white supremacists. <\/span>Aside from safeguarding his cast from the emotional duress that arose during filming, the filmmaker is also preparing for similar pushback after the show’s release in spite of early reviews that are seemingly positive. He said,<\/span>\u00a0\u201cI know that people are going to encounter these images of my ancestors. This has been the work of the last 4\u00bd years of my life. That responsibility, that weight is still with me. I don\u2019t know how to process that. I used to think that creating the work exorcised those demons or that weight. With this one, it\u2019s not the case. It\u2019s just too much.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29094,"featured_media":23309,"template":"","format":"standard","categories":[38],"yoast_head":"\nHow The 'Underground Railroad' Cast Prepared For The Show's Trauma<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In an era where the discourse around cinematic Black trauma is never-ending, 'Underground Railroad' director Barry Jenkins took it one step further in bracing his cast for the heart-rending tasks they undertook in their portrayals.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/barry-jenkins-underground-railroad\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How The 'Underground Railroad' Cast Prepared For The Show's Trauma\" \/>\n<meta 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