One of the final onscreen performances from Michael K. Williams — who died in September due to an accidental overdose — premieres at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival.
892, which is screening in the fest’s U.S. Dramatic Competition section, sees the late actor appear onscreen opposite John Boyega, who talked to The Hollywood Reporter about the experience of working with the actor whom he had long admired.
892 tells the real-life story of Brian Easley, a Marine veteran who was shot and killed by police after he threatened to bomb a Wells Fargo in an Atlanta suburb in 2017. “Michael was somebody that I personally requested to be in the movie,” says Boyega. When first meeting with director Abi Damaris Corbin, the Star Wars and Small Axe star recalls asking that Williams be cast in the movie as the films’ hostage negotiator, Eli Bernard. “If we can get Michael, I’ll be happy— just use that as my Christmas present,” the actors recalls saying.
“The film’s core,” reads THR review of the film, “rests in the dynamic between Brian and Williams’ tempered Eli.”
Boyega is a longtime Williams fan, saying, “I watched The Wire at a time when I didn’t understand how to make moves to get into the industry. I didn’t have any real guidance. I was in a cycle of procrastinating and I was trying to figure it out. You know how entertainment is from the outside in, if you don’t know the details, it just looks like it’s impossible to get in. [The show] gave me that motivation.” While watching the acclaimed HBO series, Boyega paid particular attention to Willams’ Omar Little, the Baltimore stick-up robber with a strong moral code. “These actors were brought out of obscurity, in a sense. They were brought out of nowhere. I felt like I related to that. And Michael was, for me, one of the biggest standouts in that.”
Williams signed on to 892, with Boyega first meeting the actor after he accidentally walked into Boyega’s trailer on his first day of filming: “And then I discovered he was the best smelling man in Hollywood.” Smelling? “Yeah. I remember he told me, ‘I’m gonna get you a bottle of this smell I got.’” The actor continues: “He brought it in the next day like it was scheduled.”
Corbin, who remembers Williams calling his co-star “the young Boyega” in meetings, says the five-time Emmy nominee would take selfies with background extras on the film’s Los Angeles set and ate breakfast with the crew most mornings. “The story was important to him to tell. He took it personally,” says the director. “He told me, at one point, ‘Don’t tell me when it’s good, tell me how to make it better.’”
Source: Hollywood
