Premiering at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival was 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.
The film follows Eva (Pinto), who might be the only woman left on Earth. After a mysterious plague threatens to kill every female on the planet, the lives and relationship of a young couple, Eva and Will (Odom Jr.), are put to the ultimate test as they try to survive the disease and the dangerous people who want to hunt her down.
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, and a starring role in The Many Saints Of Newark, the prequel film to David Chase’s iconic HBO series The Sopranos.
During the festival, Blackfilm.com caught up with Odom Jr. and spoke exclusively with him about his role in Only.
What attracted you to the project?
Leslie Odom Jr.: The chance to explore that kind of intimacy and that kind of liven screen. I’ve never been given an opportunity like that and when Takashi sent over the script, I thought it was such a rich world that i could learn a lot from working with him and Freida. I’m also a huge horror fan and I loved anytime the move explored the horror genre and I was into it.
In the last decade or so, from films and TV shows, we’ve seen plenty of projects dealing with the apocalypse. To get into character, did you think about how you would deal with that?
Leslie Odom Jr.: Yes, I did. You see it so much because there’s something in our consciousness that ruminates on that a lot. We feel the heat getting turned up literally. As a father now obviously, I don’t wish the worst on us. I’m not trying to call that up, but as an artist you have to go to those places. Sometimes, we are actualizing the nightmare. It helps exorcise it and gets it out of us. I approached it as the reality. I used my real relationship, my real marriage to ask myself the questions to what I would really do in these situations. It was a tough world to live in for those weeks.
How would you best describe your character?
Leslie Odom Jr.: Will is two or three weeks away from asking his long time love to marry him. They’ve had a long distance relationship for the last few years and I know what that feeling was like. Feeling that you have lived your whole life and you’re feeling so lucky to have found the one who you can stand and can stand you. You feel like it might never happen again. When you’re about to walk over that marriage threshold, you feel like you’ve found the only one. Will is there and this horrible thing happens in the world and he could lose her. It’s his moment. The greatest mission on his life is to save Eva and to keep her alive and keep their love alive. That’s all he is focused on and to that end, he forgets about Eva’s choice in all that. I think the central question in the film is a woman’s right to choose. Who does her life belong to at the end of the day?
How was working with Freida? Was this the first time, it’s been just and one other person on the set for most of the film?
Leslie Odom Jr.: Yeah, it was. That’s what drew me to the project. The chance to work with an other like a relationship. For better or worse, we would be stuck together and figure it out. It actually ended up being a wonderful experience. We’ve done another film together since then. I loved working with Freida. She was so generous with me as a scene partner. She was the veteran. Only was my second movie after Hamilton so I was very much learning what this whole world is and what this film side of things looks like. Fried was a great scene, great teacher and a great friend.
Coming up for you is an “Untitled Leslie Odom Jr. project” for ABC. How does it feel to have your name as the tentative sell?
Leslie Odom Jr.: Thank you for asking. That’s a pilot we shot for ABC. I met Kerry Washington as a diversity seminar a few years ago. She has a deal with the studio and she has to create stuff and she said, “Let’s make something.” My one pre-requisite is that I wanted to make something joyful. I wanted to make something joyful in my life. I was going to create a TV show and hope to have Scandal type success, a seven to eight year run. It took us about a year to hone in on the idea and develop the script but we did it and I had a wonderful time. We’ll find out in the next three weeks or so if we get to do more of them. If we don’t, it was exactly what I wanted it to be and I had a ball.
You have the Sopranos film, The Many Saints of Newark coming up. Are you the only Black person in the film?
Leslie Odom Jr.: Nah, one of the central plot points is the Newark riots, which was about Black folks getting fed up. I’m not the only Black person in the film. There’s a very assailant plot point that has to do with the riots. I’m having a fantastic time. To get this type of writing in film, they take such great care of that brand. David Chase, HBO and the people that came from that show. Even down to Michael Gandofini, James’ son. He’s playing Tony and it’s more than a movie for a lot of those people. This is something that they gave their life and their life’s blood to for all those years. It feels borderline holy. It feels good. If you watched The Sopranos, you know it was high art, hight quality.
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