The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Daniel Kaluuya enjoying the ride
Following huge success with ‘Get Out,’ actor enters world of Marvel movies
Daniel Kaluuya still can’t believe what’s going on. Maybe that’s one of the reasons he was so effective as Chris Washington, who discovers monstrous goings-on at his girlfriend’s parents’ home in last year’s popular comic-horror-racial thriller “Get Out.” Now up for a best actor Academy Award, the British thesp, who also plays a key role in Marvel’s ” Black Panther” movie, is still trying to balance out his faith in Jordan Peele’s surprise hit with lingering amazement.
“You’d never think doing an indie horror movie will get you to the Oscars,” Kaluuya, who’ll turn 29 this month, says with astonished laughter. “This is not a decision you make. But it’s been very cool. I mean, it’s love, man. When ‘Get Out’ came out, we had love from people walking around the streets, saying how much they loved it. This is like a formal version of that love from your peers, from the industry, people that know cinema in America, saying, ‘Listen, we think this is a great piece of work.’ “
Raised in a London council estate (public housing) by his Ugandan mother, Kaluuya began writing plays and doing improvisational theater before he was 10. His big break came with a role on the controversial British TV series “Skins,” and it was his dynamite performance in the “Black Mirror” episode “Fifteen Million Merits” that brought him to the attention of “Get Out” writer-director-producer Peele.
When he got the role of Chris, an easygoing but psychologically haunted NYC photographer whose misgivings about meeting his girlfriend’s liberal folks prove woefully inadequate, Kaluuya feltlucky.
“I believed in ‘Get Out’ deeply as a piece of cinema, and especially as a piece of writing when I first interacted with it,” he says.
“Now, it’s just taken on a different life.”
“Black Panther,” aside from being a big-budget superhero movie, is alsothe vision of a black director/co-writer (“Creed’s” Ryan Coogler) and coscripter Joe Robert Cole (the O.J. Simpson “American Crime Story” season). Kaluuya plays W’Kabi, lifelong friend of the title hero, T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman), the new king of the advanced African nation of Wakanda. W’Kabi is in charge of guarding the country’s borders and finds his sympathies torn when a political crisis engulfs the throne.
“‘Black Panther’ has the vibrancy of Africa,” says Kaluuya. “It’s the can-do
energy. But also, it’s about family, it’s about grief, it’s about pain, it’s about love. It’s about universal themes, but it has the life of Africa within it. That’s what it feels like to me whenever I go to Zanzibar or Morocco or Durban in South Africa or Uganda.”
It’s no surprise that Kaluuya never thought he’d be making films like these when he was a kid in England. That might, however, be another key to his success.
“I don’t think off-the-wall about anything,” he says. “That’s the thing that’s liberated me. I just don’t think, so I have no limitations. Maybe if I thought about it, maybe I’d be thinking too small. But I was just kind of like, this is what I like to do, this is where I’m at now, how can I do it more?
“But doing something is huge,” Kaluuya says. “To do something and not be passive is a big decision.”