Exclusive Interview: Sleight’s Dulé Hill
You probably know Dulé Hill from his considerable work on television – think: “The West Wing,” “Psych,” “Ballers” – but in spite of his many turns on the tube and in film, he’s never played a character quite like Angelo, the psychotic drug-dealer in Blumhouse and the WWE’s latest genre film, Sleight. We sat down to talk with him about it, and here is what he had to tell us:
Dread Central: Standard-issue question, but the answer is usually anything but – what attracted you to take this role?
Dulé Hill: What attracted me to play Angelo was the fact that he was the exact opposite of most of the roles I’ve played, if not all of the roles. He has issues, he does not know how to respond in a proper way. The idea of playing this villain, somebody who doesn’t take any nonsense, I’d thought it’d be fun, it would be interesting and challenging for me, living outside of the world I’ve normally done, especially for the audience, I thought it would be an enjoyable experience seeing me coming at this project from a whole different angle. There is no denying I’m not a good guy in this one, I may be likeable in parts but I’m not a good guy, pretty much you’re going to love to hate the guy in this one. I thought it’d be fun and as actors that what we should be doing, we should be trying to find something new and different, a new world or space to explore, a new type of person to share and story to tell.
DC: Did anything surprise you, after having read the script and then stepping in front of the camera to bring Angelo to life?
DH: I think I was surprised at how much I enjoyed playing it. I think I was surprised at the charm the guy had, not necessarily written on the page, but working with JD [Justin Dillard, director and cowriter] we came up with this thing, he is a nice guy. When you first meet him it’s like I thought he was a good guy, real cool and welcoming, he’ll let you in. Once you cross a line with this guy, that’s where things start to unravel so I think it was surprised by that, because it would be very easy just to go in and play him as being serious, mean and hard from the beginning instead of having him flip flop back and forth, and how quickly he could flip flop back and forth, that surprised me too.
DC: Did you know JD before you took the role?
DH: I didn’t know JD before this script, I thought it was a very interesting script, a new and innovative way of approaching the whole superhero genre, making it a dramatic thriller, I thought it was very interesting. When I got a chance to read with him, I actually found out about this project through my agent, he’s the one who sent me the script, and then he set a meeting to sit down with JD and from the time we met we just hit it off. I could tell that this guy had a specific point of view, he had a very interesting point of view and way of telling a story and that as an actor, allows me to feel safe, so I said let’s go for it. I believe if you put talented people in a room together, as long as they respect each other, are willing to roll their sleeves up and have fun and do the work, you’re going to come up with something interesting, you’re going to have an enjoyable experience, anyway. For me at the time, that’s all it was about, it was ok, let’s go and do it and see what happens. Either way we’re going to have fun, you’re going to grow from this, I’m going to grow from it and maybe just maybe, lightning will strike in a bottle and we’ll come up with something really interesting that people will enjoy. So why not? You have a focus, you have a point of view in this whole thing and that’s attractive to me, I’d love to work with you, why not? That’s what myself and JD care about, that’s what came out sitting down with JD and having lunch, then we moved on. I really enjoyed working with him because for a first-time director, I was impressed that he knew what he wanted and got what he wanted. He was very specific in direction or if he wanted to talk about a certain moment we’d talk about it. I’d love to work with him again because it was a great experience.
DC: Low-budget films are often run-and-gun, without lots of time. Do you think being on so many weekly TV series helped you on this, or was the lower budget still an adjustment since you’ve been on all the major networks?
DH: I think coming from television, because we didn’t have a huge budget and didn’t have a lot of time, that helped me a little bit to do the work because on television you don’t have a lot of time at all, you’ve got to keep it moving, you don’t have time for take after take after take so when I came to work on Sleight it was almost second nature for me. I think it came out well and I hope audiences enjoy it, it was a fun journey making the film, it was a fabulous journey playing the character and I really hope it will be an entertaining journey for the audience when they sit down and watch it.
DC: Is Sleight a horror movie, or is it a sci-fi, in your opinion?
DH: From Angelo’s side of things, he taps more into the side of horror. The science fiction side, that’s all Bo, a young street magician out there, having to take care of his own troubles and develop his powers. He’s also a brilliant mind and able to connect the signs using sleight of hand to create, to expand himself I guess, to get out of the hole he dug for himself and that’s where the sci-fi part of it comes into it, it’s all through Bo, what he’s able to do, what he’s able to create with his mind and how to use our body with sleight of hand, to get himself out of the hole that he’s dug for himself. The of course, the dramatic thriller side of it is, he gets in too deep and has someone from the other side putting pressure on him, that’s Angelo, and it all comes to a head at one point and it’s going to be very entertaining for an audience.
Jacob Latimore, Storm Reid, Seychelle Gabriel, Dulé Hill, Sasheer Zamata, and Cameron Esposito star. J.D. Dillard directs.
Look for Sleight in theaters on April 28th.
Synopsis:
A young street magician (Jacob Latimore) is left to care for his little sister after their parents’ passing and turns to illegal activities to keep a roof over their heads. When he gets in too deep, his sister is kidnapped, and he is forced to use his magic and brilliant mind to save her.
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