Premiering on April 17 on Amazon Prime Video is the Sundance hit Selah and the Spades, written and directed by Tayarisha Poe. The film had world premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival to critical acclaim.
The film stars Lovie Simone, Celeste O’Connor, Jharrel Jerome, Gina Torres, Jesse Williams, Ana Mulvoy Ten, Henry Hunter Hall, Evan Roe, and Francesca Noel.
In the closed world of an elite Pennsylvania boarding school, Haldwell, the student body is run by five factions. Seventeen-year-old Selah Summers (Lovie Simone) runs the most dominant group, the Spades, with unshakable poise, as they cater to the most classic of vices and supply students with coveted, illegal alcohol and pills. Tensions between the factions escalate, and when Selah’s best friend/right hand Maxxie (Emmy Award winner Jharrel Jerome) becomes distracted by a new love, Selah takes on a protégée, enamored sophomore Paloma (Celeste O’Connor), to whom she imparts her wisdom on ruling the school. But with graduation looming and Paloma proving an impressively quick study, Selah’s fears turn sinister as she grapples with losing the control by which she defines herself.
Poe was chosen as one of the 25 New Faces by Filmmaker Magazine in 2015, and in 2016 she received the Sundance Institute’s Knight Foundation Fellowship. In 2017, she was selected for the Sundance Screenwriters and Directors Labs. Poe is a 2017 Pew Fellow and was named one of Variety’s 10 Directors to Watch in 2019.
Amazon is also developing the feature as an original series. Poe will write, direct and produce the series with Lauren McBride who also produced the film.
Blackfilm.com recently spoke exclusively with Poe about her debut film.
How happy are you that’s finally here and it’s going be screen for a lot more people to see during these times.
Tayarisha Poe: I’m very happy that it’s finally coming out. Yes, really excited that there’s going to be eyes on it. I wish it wasn’t because of a pandemic, but I’m working with what I got and so I’m pretty excited.
How did the inspiration for this story come about?
Tayarisha Poe: I went to boarding school for high school and it felt like such a specific and unusual experience as a teenager. The atmosphere and environment of boarding school led to us creating, for lack of a better phrase, our own way of life and our own way of being when we were on campus. We would do somethings you just would never do when you were in the real world or things you would never say in the real world. It felt like the school had its own rules, and it had its own logic. I wanted to capture that feeling in film because I felt it was just something that I didn’t typically see particularly with people who look like me starring in it. It was important to me to add to the teenage coming of age film.
Which group did you belong to in school?
Tayarisha Poe: In high school I’m pretty sure I was a Bobby. I spent a lot of my time doing theater and we spent a shitload of time in theater acting and writing plays, I just really liked the experience of performing and putting on a show. So I feel like that really speaks to the Bobby’s I was never cool enough to be one of the Spades unfortunately. I’ve also was never quite detailed enough to help people cheat. So all I did was go to the theater and hang out there.
How long did it take you to put this story together?
Tayarisha Poe: I definitely wrote at least 25 drafts and I only know that because of the way I remembered my drafts with the letters. I would get into the AA or BB territory. But I really love to write a lot of drafts. I love to not treat the work like it’s precious. I like to just take a draft and cut out all of my favorite scenes, cut out all my least favorite scenes, and make a draft. I don’t mind rewriting. My stories tend to become clearer to me in that process of rewriting and editing and making new drafts as opposed to that first draft of just getting as many ideas onto the page as I can. I like that I take time when I’m writing.
The story is dark. Was that always your intention?
Tayarisha Poe: Yeah, totally. It used to be like a lot darker. I like the process of writing and figuring out what these characters are about in their lives and in their story. It was definitely a story driven by the characters as creating.
Is the audience supposed to root for Selah or not?
Tayarisha Poe: I can tell you what I would do, which is I always root for her. I have a lot of compassion for Selah but I also really purposely wanted to make a film that wasn’t judging her for you. It’s important to me that audiences decide for themselves how much empathy they’re willing to have for this young girl. And for me, it’s just a ton of empathy. I have a lot of compassion for it, and I really feel for her but I also understand that that’s informed by my own experience. Growing up as a teenage black girl, it’s hard people are really trying to break you down every single day of your life and you’re just are trying to rise up above it.
What kind of challenges do you face directing?
Tayarisha Poe: In the middle of chaotic moments and stuff, I tend to feel very calm. I think it’s because I grew up in a really large, loud family. I’m just used to a lot of stuff going around me. And with directing I really enjoy it. I think it’s thrilling. Also, because I trust my collaborators so early, it never felt like I was doing this alone. I felt really supported. But it’s hard. It’s the taxing job, but it’s one that I find to be very thrilling.
Can you talk about the casting process?
Tayarisha Poe: I worked with a great casting director named Jessica Daniel, who is just really truly brilliant. Not only is she great at finding and bringing out the best in people’s audition, but also because she knows how to help you make the right choices. She knows how to guide your hand to help the story be the best version of the story that it can be. So I really enjoyed working with her. But honestly, a lot of actors who came out to read for this film were trying to figure out if they were going to be a part of this project. A lot of them were just excited to have the chance to work a story where the blackness of the characters wasn’t the plot point. It was pretty exciting to talk about that with the actors when they got set and to use that excitement in my direction.
What did you learn in the process of directing?
Tayarisha Poe: I learned a lot when I was writing initially back alone in 2013. When I was just writing the stories, the vignettes about these characters and their world and just trying to figure out who they were. It really made the process of directing movies incredibly unique because as you mentioned earlier, There are all these eyes on me. That’s really true. They’re usually eyes who have questions for you and those questions are things that they need answers for immediately. When you’re faced with a crap ton of questions coming at you from about different aspects of the story, and they all need answers right away. I find that you will not feel or at least for me, I felt I trusted myself, I trusted my gut. I trusted that I’ve done the work so that my gut reaction to those questions that I was asking. were correct. They were logical in the world of the story. So I think that’s the biggest thing that I learned is just over right and over prepare, because then when you’re on set, you’re just going to be spitfire answering questions that people have for you.
What do you want people to get out from seeing this movie?
Tayarisha Poe: It sounds simple but I think for me, the biggest, or the most important thing that somebody can take from this film is just empathy for somebody who you’ve written off as being a “bad person.” I think in writing this movie, in writing the story in these characters, I really changed my mind about the way we talk about morality and people. I hope that people think of people as just people who do good things, who do bad things, who try their best or don’t, and who fail. Try again, restart. I just I want us to have a little bit more patience with people. Because I think that if we’re patient with others, in their failings, we will be more patient with ourselves and kinder to ourselves.
What do you make of it coming out during this time period? And there was some talk about a series. Is that still happening?
Tayarisha Poe: Yeah, that’s still in development, writing all that stuff for the series. So yes, that is moving. In terms of this question of streaming, and theatrical and whatnot, honestly from the beginning, I wanted this movie to be seen by as many people who wanted to see it as possible. And that was it. So when Amazon approached us about working together to distribute it, it just felt appropriate because I remember growing up in West Philly as a teenager and wanting to see all of these cool hit arthouse films, and not really being able to see most of them because they would only play in New York and LA. Now obviously Philly is better. But I think that my goal was always trying to reach those young kids living in the middle of nowhere who just want to see a cool film film somebody who looks like them. I’m trying to reach those kids. It’s so exciting to think about how many people are going to be able to access this so on Friday.
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