Veteran theatre director Nadia Latif, who makes her feature directorial debut with the adaptation of 2004 Walter Mosley novel “The Man in my Basement,” tells TheWrap that production delays due to the pandemic and the double strikes actually improved the final film.
“We were stopped by the pandemic. We were stopped by the strikes,” Latif said. “But actually that in itself was, I think, a blessing, because we got to just spend more time with the material, with music, with art, with films, with books.”
In “The Man in My Basement,” Nadia Latif’s adaptation of Walter Mosley’s novel, when a mysterious man (Willem Dafoe) approaches Charles Blakey (Corey Hawkins) to rent his basement for a generous sum, Blakey is drawn into a chilling reality involving his own family’s hidden history.
The extra preparation time allowed Latif to send research materials to her cast. Dafoe praised the approach as crucial for understanding his character’s perspective.
“All the stuff that you sent me in that period when I knew I was going to do it was beautiful,” Dafoe said. “It was like an education for me to approximate what my character’s point of view might be, which is not from my experience. I’m not sure I would have known how to get the proper point of view.”
For Hawkins, the extended prep helped him connect with the character’s stillness and internal struggles. “His stillness was really challenging to me,” Hawkins added. “She definitely gave me the confidence to go forth and be uncomfortable. Be comfortable with being uncomfortable.”
By the time production finally commences, Dafoe and Hawkins were ready to go.
“When we turned up, I felt like you guys all knew those characters really well,” Latif. “You were just like, ‘Yeah, I’ve been sitting with this for a minute.’”
