Just the idea of playing Mamie Till-Mobley, the mother of Emmett Till, was enough to make Danielle Deadwyler pause to consider the toll such a role might take.
“You go: What’s going to happen to me?” Deadwyler says. “What are the steps that you need to take to make sure you can do this to the best of your ability and come out on the other side where you still got all your ABCs and your chemical dynamics together?”
Playing Till-Mobley meant immersing herself in one of the ugliest chapters of American history, when the 14-year-old Till was lynched in 1955 Mississippi. Just the scene Deadwyler would audition with — when Mamie first sees her son’s brutalized corpse — was wrenching. On Deadwyler’s shoulders would lie the responsibility of history, of honoring Till-Mobley and of reflecting a grief known to generations of Black mothers. Deadwyler gathered her resolve.
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