Currently playing in select theaters and On Demand from Vertical Entertainment is the apocalyptic film Only, written and directed by Takashi Doscher and starring Hamilton Tony winner Leslie Odom Jr., and Slumdog Millionaire’s Freida Pinto, The Walking Dead’s Chandler Riggs, Jayson Warner Smith, and Tia Hendricks.
After a comet releases a deadly virus that attacks all the women in the world, Eva (Freida Pinto) and Will (Leslie Odom Jr.) are forced into hiding from both the illness and the savages who hunt the few surviving women. Trapped inside their over-sterilized apartment, the couple’s relationship and sense of sanity begins to crumble. When Eva’s desperation for a normal life becomes as dangerous as the world outside, the couple escapes their self-imposed quarantine to fight for their lives.
Best known for his Tony Award-winning performance as Aaron Burr in the Broadway smash musical Hamilton, Odom Jr. was last seen on the big screen in the remake of Murder on the Orient Express. Coming up for him is a role in Sister, directed by Sia, a starring role in The Many Saints Of Newark, the prequel film to David Chase’s iconic HBO series The Sopranos, and playing singer Sam Cooke in Regina King’s directorial debut, One Night in Miami.
Blackfilm.com caught up with Odom Jr. and spoke exclusively with him about his role in Only and his upcoming projects.
When you have when you see what’s happening now in the world with CoronaVirus, does this film take a new life on its own?
Leslie Odom Jr.: Yes. It’s certainly become more topical. Talking to people right now and life is very precious
right now.
What was the attraction to doing this film?
Leslie Odom Jr.: The challenge of it. I was attracted to the challenge of a two hander. I’ve never been asked to do anything like that. thought it would be a most certainly emotionally challenging the sort of stress in the situation that Eva and Will are in so I just was attracted to the challenge of it. Rita and Takashi and all those things together made it a really attractive offer.
Whenever anyone takes a role, there’s a little bit of the character in themselves. What part of Will is you?
Leslie Odom Jr.: That well said and makes me think about some of those bad guys I played before. I remember really falling in love and giving myself over to that, for the first time in my life. For the first time I understood the classics. I felt like I understood Romeo and Juliet and Our Town and these these big love stories for the first time once I’ve been through it. Will and Eva moving in together, having been in this longest relationship, I think Will has decided to really give his his heart to this woman. When this virus happens and takes hold I think Will is a month away or six weeks away from proposing and asking this woman to spend his life with them. As a young man when I met when I met my wife and we got serious, it felt like it had taken my whole life to find her and it’s taken my whole life to to find someone that I really felt that way about; that I really wanted to take that next step with and and so there’s a lot of fear that comes along with that because it’s a vulnerable place.
I remember I started to have nightmares of my wife Nicolette dying in a plane crash and Nicola getting the car accident. Where’s this coming from? It’s taken me all these years to find you and I’m about to be vulnerable in this way. By God I hope nothing ever happens to you because I don’t know if I can handle that. It’s as simple as that. He’s found it as ordinary and completely wonderful and spectacular that a young man has fallen in love for the first time.
What did you What did you learn from working with Frida and the director that you can take onto your next project? Was this the first time you had worked with Freida?
Leslie Odom Jr.: That was the first time and I’ve worked with her once since then. With them, it was really asking for what I needed. That was only the second movie I had done only at the time. I’ve done a few since then. But on every set now, I asked for the things that I need. Because the end of the day, we’re trying to get as much truth on the screen as possible. If you need an extra take, if you need to watch a take, if you need 15 minutes before they start rolling, and whatever it is that you need to get as truth up on the screen as you can, you need to ask for those things and make them happen.
As you just mentioned, you’ve made more movies since then. How’s shooting your current project ‘One Night in Miami?’
Leslie Odom Jr.: I had a ball. You couldn’t ask for a better ally a better coach than Regina King. Truly, she understands what it’s like to be on my side of the camera. She was just there to support and give us everything we needed. She was there to challenge us and push us in ways that weren’t always comfortable, but always, always made us better. She made the movie better. So I really can’t wait for people to see the movie and to see her extraordinary work on it.
You’re playing the legendary singer Sam Cooke. Is the world ready to see a Sam Cooke film?
Leslie Odom Jr.: I certainly think so. I don’t want to say that is even better but this is just as good. We’re meeting Sam and Malcolm X and Jim Brown and Cassius Clay in a way that we’ve never seen them before. With Sam, I had to realize in preparing for this role that all the footage I’ve seen and I’ve seen a fair amount of footage on Sam Cooke and I listened to a lot of the recordings, that was always Sam at work. That was always Sam. He’s talking to Dick Clark, and he’s was talking to Ed Sullivan. That’s not him hanging out with his boys in a hotel room. And so, this was a leap. We had to we had to imagine these guys. We imagined who they might have been based on everything what had been written from conversations with their friends and on all the information that we have out there. We had to imagine who they might be when no one was watching. That was also a lot of fun.
Hamilton was done long time ago, and finally it’s going be released on screen. How excited are you that is finally going to be released for those who can’t afford to see it live and they get to see the stage performance with the original cast?
Leslie Odom Jr.: I’m am excited about that. It’ll be a great equalizer for the ticket price. A lot more people will get to see the work that went into this thing originally. It was work that we believed in so much. I’m excited to see you too. I never got to see the original company and I hear they were great. So I’m excited to see it for myself, to have my little box of popcorn, and sit back and enjoy the show. I’m excited for my kid to see it. She wasn’t even born when we were doing the show in New York, so I’m excited to take little Lucile. It’s going to be almost like the show’s opening all over again. So it’s a really wonderful and blessed thing that we get to buy into this apple. I feel really lucky about that.
Any thoughts on coming back to the stage?
Leslie Odom Jr.: Yeah, I would come back in a heartbeat. I’m always looking, I’m about to go out on this tour. I have the tour for my album, which scratches that live itch for me. It’s a live experience that we’re building and that hopefully is totally unique in every city and makes it worth getting off the couch. Putting down your phone for an hour to come to a live show. But as far as like a narrative stage thing, sure, if the right thing came along, I would do it in a heartbeat.
With so many platforms and options, what’s a good reason for people to catch only ‘Only’?
Leslie Odom Jr.: It’s a beautiful story made by a really talented filmmaker. We can look at a Picasso on the phone or we can travel to the booth and see it in person. This is a film that Takashi made to be experienced in the theater and I think it’s richer in that way and more impactful in that way. So I hope people go out in the afternoon, in the evening, go on a date night and see this movie and then have a conversation about it afterwards.
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