Get ready for Lee’s ‘BlacKkKlansman’
racism.
“I still at times can’t catch a cab,” says Lee, pointing to headlines made when cops were called on innocent AfricanAmericans. Washington nods, saying he was followed by a suspicious sales clerk in a big-box store in New York.
“I’ve had friends on a bus going to school in Kansas, and people get on the bus and say, ‘White power!’ now,” says Willmott, who has taken extra security measures as he teaches. Thanks to Kansas’ concealed carry laws, “I teach in a bulletproof vest,” he says.
“BlacKkKlansman” began with a call from producer Jordan Peele, who “called me out of the blue,” says Lee. “He said, ‘Well, a black man joins the KKK ...’ Automatically, I thought of the Dave Chappelle skit.”
“The black white supremacist!” Washington says, referencing a sketch in which Chappelle plays a blind black man who joins the KKK, unaware that he isn’t white.
In the film, Washington and Adam Driver play undercover cops who infiltrate a Klan chapter. By phone, the KKK unknowingly interfaces with Stallworth’s rookie cop.
“If anything, I was more aware of it as a kid growing up in Indiana, because there were always Klan rallies, like, every summer,” says Driver.
To find his star, Lee turned to Washington (son of Denzel), whom he has known since the actor was a baby.
The director gave Washington a small background role in 1992’s “Malcolm X.” “I’ve since matured as an artist,” says Washington with a grin.
“The Washingtons and the Lees, we’re tight,” Lee says. “But if he couldn’t act – it comes down to ‘Is he going to be able to carry this film onscreen?’ ”