ALT A REVIEW exclusively joined a roundtable discussion with Academy winning actor Halle Berry (MOMMA), Anthony B. Jenkins (Samuel) and Percy Daggs IV (Nolan) who are the lead cast of the new psychological thriller “Never Let Go.”
The actors share how the film’s themes and setting resonated with them, with Halle tapping into how she used the isolation and uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic to get into role.
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Berry also connected with the character of the protective, yet troubled mother, drawing from her own experiences as a parent. Berry speaks on the young actors, Percy and Anthony, praising them for their professionalism and skill in portraying the complex dynamics between the two brothers. As a producer for the film Halle Berry discussed the extensive search to find the right child actors, as they were crucial to the film’s success. She also shared her personal affinity for darker, more psychological films and talks on as a child finding the fairy tale stories like Alice in Wonderland dark, which again influenced her approach to the film.
ALT A:
How much did the lockdown influence you in resonating with the story?
Halle:
Probably subconsciously. I do remember having the feeling once we started to work on this movie that it was oddly not unlike the two years that we had just spent in quarantine and lockdown and in one location all the time. We didn’t leave our house and my family for almost six months, really. So I did use that sort of sense memory of what that felt like to feel sort of trapped and kind of isolated from the world and what that would really feel like. There were certain moments that, yeah, I did try to tap into that sense memory.
ALT A :
Most might say the most traumatizing moment to watch was anything to do with the dog. But what was the most traumatizing moment for you to film?
Halle:
I would say that, and the thing that happened after that for me, but certainly the dog, I think we all have, sometimes we have more compassion for dogs and animals than we do humans, right? That’s sort of a knee jerk reaction. A lot of people feel that way, but that was really, I didn’t know how we would even do that really, that sort of came to life when it came to life. That’s not something you practice, you sort of, in my mind, it was always like, oh, I know that scene is coming. I know it’s coming. I know it’s coming. I know it’s coming because you really don’t want to go down that lane. So I don’t think any of us really enjoyed that. But we knew that it was a pivotal moment in the movie and we had to do it
Percy:
Doing it and watching it was doing it because I didn’t really see it on face to face. But then when I watched it, I actually almost cried. It was just the face of Coda that made me, yeah, yeah.
ALT A::
What was it about this character that you really wanted to play and also to produce as well.
Halle Berry:
Well, as a producer, I love this genre. I love psychological thrillers, slash horror movies. I love that this was a family, I’d never seen an all-black family in the middle of the woods tied to the house. There were so many undertones of spirituality and religion and family and love, and there was this darkness to it too.
I felt like I understood Momma’s undying love and protection for these children, but I also understood her generational trauma and the darkness that was surrounding her. And so my job in this movie, which attracted me to this, was I love playing mothers, strong mothers. I’m fiercely protective of my own children. I like to portray that on film. I know where that lives inside of me, but this was a dark version of a mother for me, and this was the fine line for me to walk. Was Momma schizophrenic? Was she struggling from mental health issues or was this evil really real? Was she really protecting them from the harmful world or was she sort of torturing them because her own mental illness was forcing her to keep them close to her? So what was it really? And that was always the balance that I had to walk as a performer to try to walk that line so that the audience wouldn’t always know until they know.
ALT A :
How did you identify with MOMMA’s fears?
Halle:
I can absolutely relate to a mother’s fear for the safety of her children. A mother’s love the feeling of believing and knowing you would do anything to save your children. And I think this Momma, this version of Momma in this movie clearly will do anything to save her children. And maybe that means also doing away with one of them to save the other. She had some hard choices to make. Maybe you’ll have to eat some things that you don’t want to eat because you have to save the life of your children. There were some hard realities that Momma had to face, and I think in my life and my real life, I’ve had hard realities that I’ve had to face in order to protect my children. I’ve had to do things I haven’t necessarily wanted to do, but I’ve had to do. I do relate. I did relate to that part of this Momma.
ALT A: Anthony and Percy what is like working with Halle?
Anthony:
It was great working with Ms. Hallie. She’s so kind and so helpful. She’s a wonderful person to be around. She was always there to protect us. She was our on set Momma, but she was also our off set Momma. She was always there to help us out and always there for our needs, always asking what we needed. And I’m so proud to have her by my side.
Percy:
Ms. Hallie, she’s such a very nice person to work with and a great actress. One of the best. And also she teaches me a lot on set. And like Percy said, she’s a mom on set and even off set, she’s just like a second mom to me. And she also told me that this superpower that I have on screen is my eyes and how I use it in front of the camera.
Halle:
True. They are. I wish I had those eyes.
ALT A:
As a producer what was it about Anthony and Percy that you thought they were right for the roles?
Halle:
First of all, you’ve seen the movie now. So the movie hinges on the strength of these two boys. So I knew that right away that I had to get formidable actors to play the parts. And it was a long search. We even delayed the movie at one point because I knew we didn’t have it right, and I knew that it had to be right. So we found Percy first, which was a wonder when he showed I started to lose a little bit of faith. I started to think, we’re never going to find the boys that can really carry, who can pull this off. When we found Percy, he was a revelation. He was seamless in his acting, sincere in his acting, and totally, he totally embodied what was in all of our minds, right? It’s like think a little angel showed up and we were like, yes, okay, we’ve got one boy.
We’ve got one boy. That was, I remember the day we all celebrated, but then we thought, oh, now we have to find another one. Because that one was hard enough. Now we have to find a brother that could look like he was his brother, but also had the skill set, but also had to be very different from Percy because these brothers are like Cain and Abel. They’re very different, but they had to feel like brothers. So then he went on another, search to find AJ, and that was even harder because we had, now we had to match him to Percy. But the minute we found Anthony, we did an audition and we were all there doing a screen test together, reading all together, and to see how we felt as a family. And we knew. Then when we got Anthony with Percy and we all read together, we had that moment at the end of the screen test and we thought, wow, we’ve actually did what I started to think was impossible to do, but we actually did it.
I can’t tell you what a joy it was to work with them. They’re so professional, they’re so imaginative. They worked so hard, they took it seriously. Sometimes I’ve worked with kids and they’re not this professional, they’re not as focused, and that’s to be expected. They’re children and these guys are children, but when it was go time when it was camera rolling, they were right there with me and I couldn’t have asked for, I don’t have grownup actors that are as professional acting as these two are, and that’s a credit to their growing their parents. They’re really raised good, responsible, respectful young men who are phenomenal actors at the same time. Thank you. I was so lucky to have worked with them.
ALT A :
No, that’s fine. I’ll let someone else go.
Anthony and Percy, what was it about your characters that you both enjoyed and what would you say was maybe the difficult parts of engaging with the role?
Anthony:
I’d say that what I liked about my character was that he loves his family and that he wants to protect them. And what was difficult for me was that he wasn’t the favorite to the dog. So that’s what made me a bit, I wanted the dog sleeping on my bed. I wanted, so
Percy:
The thing I liked about my character was his confidence. I loved how he was always ready to go and ready to do anything and everything for his family. And then the difficult thing about my character was I had the dog. I don’t have a dog at home and I’m not the best with dogs, but it was great to have it right there next to me to help me get better with dogs and to give me some experience.
ALT A :
What was your own favorite classic fairytale growing up? Dark or classic, whichever one it is and why?
Halle:
Well, I thought all the fairytales as a child were very dark. Even Cinderella and Snow White and Billy Goats Gruff, Alice in Wonderland. They were all dark. And I connected to the darkness of them even as a child. And I think I remember having conversations with my mother at a young age and asking her, was the real world really like this? When I grow up, will this be what I will experience in the real world? They were latent with loss and envy and deceit and death, but these were stories that I was read that were being read to me to go to sleep. And I often had a hard time going to sleep after I would have these fairytales read to me. And I knew that as a child that there was something not quite comforting about this, but I had confusion as to why I would be read these stories at nighttime. So jumping to this movie is to me like a dark fairytale. It’s got all the elements of those childhood fairytales that I was told as a little girl.
NEVER LET GO is in cinemas from September 27, courtesy of Lionsgate UK.
