What an amazing time I have had! Being in the same room with Andy Serkis (“Ulysses Klaue / Klaw”) & Winston Duke (“M’Baku”) has been downright amazing!
Let's talk characters! Andy Serkis is (“Ulysses Klaue / Klaw”)! Who is this character?
Ulysses Klaue is an illegal arms dealer, smuggler and gangster operating out of South Africa, whom we met in “Avengers: Age of Ultron.” He is after Wakanda’s vibranium and in the Black Panther’s crosshairs.Basically, his character is a bad ass villain!
Winston Duke plays (“M’Baku”) in The Black Panther!
M’Baku is the formidable leader of the Jabari tribe, a group of Wakandans who have shunned the use of vibranium and removed themselves from mainstream Wakandan life. In the wake of T’Chaka’s death, M’Baku is faced with the choice of challenging T’Challa for the throne in order to return Wakanda to its isolationist ways. His character is...DREAMY haha!
We kind of love you but we love to hate your character so much. Tell us what it's like to bring to life these crazy characters that people want to root against on screen?
Photo credit Natasha C. Nicholes / HousefulOfNicholes.com
Answer: "He's one of the world’s takers, he just grasps and pulls and brings it all to himself. But you kind of to make that character live and be human, I wanted to make him sort of strangely someone you might like to hang out with. And then- and that sort of tension for me is more interesting than playing him as a complete bad ass, you know, who’s just threatening and nasty and you don’t- and then he gets killed and then good. So it's, constantly as an actor you're wanting to challenge the perception of good and evil."
Photo credit Natasha C. Nicholes / HousefulOfNicholes.com
Fun fact: This is Winston's FIRST FILM! His proud mom was at the press junket!
How Winston feels after watching the film:
"Well for me a major thing especially after watching the film last night is an excitement, it's an excitement to know that people and not adults but children are going to be exposed to narratives like this before they're fully developed and before they've ingested and consumed placed narratives before they're fully formed, which is going to help them see their world differently. It's going to change their paradigm from a really young age and they're going to be consuming this in a way that they're not seeing, I hope a four-year-old isn’t watching this, even though they might be watching this with an awareness of race. But they might be and that's just the world And they're watching this and going man I could be like that and man T’Challa looks like my uncle, man T’Challa looks my cousin, Michael B. Jordan looks my dad, Winston looks my dad Winston looks like my cousin, Winston looks like me and they'ree getting to see that. And children in Tobago are getting to see that, people in Trinidad, people in Brazil, people in Latin America, people all over the diaspora are going to get to see this and develop agency."
Photo credit Natasha C. Nicholes / HousefulOfNicholes.com
Question:Tell us more about your character, M’Baku.
Answer "I feel what was a great opportunity for me with M’Baku was I was given the opportunity to create a new language within that world essentially. And the one thing that Marvel did great that really grounded and created a new world, a new life for M’Baku – it was a departure from the comics in a sense that it’s no longer this M’Baku being the leader of this religious minority.He’s not the leader of this religious cult, he’s now the leader of an established grounded tribe. So that gives you a lot more agency, it gives you a lot more presence, it gives you a lot more strength and ability within that world. And creating that society that lives outside of Wakanda proper was something that was really great."
Photo credit Natasha C. Nicholes / HousefulOfNicholes.com
I am stoked to have been in the same room with this talent!
Photo credit Natasha C. Nicholes / HousefulOfNicholes.com
Marvel Studios’ BLACK PANTHER opens in theaters everywhere on February 16th!
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