Rising screen star brings new sass to Shaft
Multi-generational story blends millenial flair with a retro character
Jessie T. Usher is the new cat who won’t cop out, when there’s danger all about.
Yes, I’m talking about Shaft, that bad mother (shut your mouth!) of a private dick. Title anti-hero of the 1971 Blaxploitation classic starring Richard Roundtree, reprised in 2000 with Samuel L. Jackson in the role.
Shaft’s back in the chamber for the multi-generational action-comedy also titled Shaft, directed by Barbershop’s Tim Story and in theatres now. The film will have fans of the franchise thinking they’re seeing triple: son, dad and grandad, relative versions of the complicated man who no one understands but his woman.
How did the genial Usher, 27, best known for playing sports heroes ( When the Game Stands Tall, TV’s Survivor’s Remorse) and a planetary saviour ( Independence Day: Resurgence), stand up to be the new John Shaft? His curse-averse millennial take, JJ for short, is an MIT grad working for the FBI as a cyber security expert, who is so anti-gun “he could easily be Canadian!” Usher jokes.
JJ finds himself working with, but also in opposition to, the retro- Shaft ways of Jackson, 70, and Roundtree, 76, who previously wore the shades and rocked the Glock.
Usher began his daunting assignment by observing how his two predecessors moved.
“They kind of both walk in and just start giving it,” Usher says in an interview during a recent Toronto visit. “Even if it’s not verbal, even if it’s just a demeanour or how they carry themselves, or it’s just like little things here and there that they’ll say or do, you just start paying attention, you start picking up on things.”
Jackson and Roundtree were also checking him out — especially Jackson.
“Sam would do something intentionally, seeing if I’m watching, and then when I caught it, we’d have this unspoken moment. That kind of just happened through the whole shoot.”
As for Roundtree, “he’s100 per cent Shaft, still to this day,” Usher says. “The way he carries himself, the jewelry he wears and the way he just walks around with a cigar in his hand. The way he talks to people is very Shaft-y. So it was nice to see that — and to have that. It felt like I was in a Shaft movie the moment he stepped on set.”
Roundtree returns the compliment. “This film gives new life to a character who’s been around for a very long time, and it’s fun to watch Sam now passing the baton to Jessie, who more than holds his own,” he says in the film’s production notes.
“Having the three of us join together to fight the bad guys ... it’s all come full circle.”
Usher had to work to earn those kudos, but he enjoyed it: Jackson and Roundtree both seem very generous with how they share the screen with you, the new guy. They were very generous. It was nice that Richard was still playing his same character, Sam was playing his same character, and they kind of took the pressure off of me from being that same type of Shaft. I was able to do something of my very own, and they just played with that relationship with me.
Both of them are what I consider to be actors’ actors, where you can walk on set and bring something to the table and they’ll receive it, and then they’ll give you something to work off of. Regardless of whose coverage it is, it doesn’t matter, they’re both there to make a good project, and you can tell that they care, and they’re involved and enveloped in that role and that moment. So it was nice to play across from that. I’ve never before seen a fellow actor sass Samuel L. Jackson the way you do here. Ha-ha, oh, man, I think that’s why he likes me! I think that played a huge part in why I got this role.
From the very moment that I met him, my audition with him, he kind of just goes off book and starts riffing on me. He brings in things from my personal life to the audition, while we’re in the middle of the scene, and I just wasn’t having it.
I’m like, “All right, if you’re gonna bring it, I’m gonna bring some, too!” And from there, he kind of just looked at me, and he’s like: “Who does this kid think he is?” And after that, we were cool. Was there much room for improv in the script? It seems like there was, especially Jackson’s line about JJ’s taste in music being worse than white people’s. There’s a lot. Don’t get me wrong, the script was pretty solid.
But we combed through each and every page and found things to make it feel like it was each of our own personalities and our characteristics, to just naturally come out.
Once we were there on the day, we knew the lines back and forth, and we were just able to take that and run with it.
And that line (about JJ’s musical taste) is 100 per cent Samuel L. Jackson improv right there, yeah! This version of Shaft retains the hard edges and thrills of the franchise, but it’s also a lot more comic than previous tellings. How hard was getting the balance right, and could there have been more comedic or more dramatic versions of this movie? There definitely could have been, absolutely. The thing that’s nice about working with Sam is that he’s got it down to a science. We’ll come in and we’ll do a take that reads off the page the way that it should, and then we’ll do a take where it’s a little more serious.
And then we’ll come in and do a take where we’re just joking around, trying some different things, we’re not really sure if it’s going to work. We’re there to do it. And we know we have a solid one in the can already, so, there’s easily three different versions of this movie. It almost sounds as if Jackson was acting as Tim Story’s co-director. Not necessarily. Don’t get me wrong: Tim is very vocal about what he wants, and he knows the movie that he’s making. From the very beginning, the first day that I was shooting on set, I came in and I think that my first take was a little more serious than what Tim wanted the movie to be. He comes over to me and he says, “I love the take that you’re doing, and I see where we’re going with this, but that’s not the movie that we’re making.” And I understood right away. I’m like, “OK, great. So let’s lighten it up, let’s pick up the pace, whatever it is that makes this movie feel the way that you want it to feel.” And then we then we just went from there.” You’re the first millennial actor to play John Shaft. Do you think your generation will dig this character, who shoots first and doesn’t bother to ask questions later? I think they will. I think they will because the one thing that I wanted to make sure that didn’t happen was that my character didn’t come in and was like so leaning on the millennial thing that it kind of became annoying for millennials.
There’s one thing that millennials don’t really like, is always being called “millennials.” You don’t need to remind us — we know! I felt like they have a nice balance there. Sam jokes about it enough, and I get to poke fun back at him, the same way that, you know, parents and kids do. I’ve heard you aspire to play legendary tennis star Arthur Ashe in a future biopic. I do. A lot of people ask me if I were to do a biopic or something, who would I want to play? And I think playing Arthur Ashe would be just a story I want to tell. I feel like his outlook on life and a lot of the principles that he stood for in the time that he was on top of his game is just something that would be nice to be well-received in this time. Any other famous person you’d like to play? Maybe some time down the road, I’d want to play Will Smith. I’ve loved his career trajectory; he’s like my career idol. I loved a lot of the things he’s done and just who he is as a person. So that would be cool, too.