Delroy Lindo On ‘Sinners’, Making His Directing Debut And Writing A Memoir: “There’s So Much To Unpack, To Uncover And To Heal”

When the London Critics Circle shortlisted Delroy Lindo as one of their five nominees for Best Supporting Actor this year, for his part as Delta Slim in Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, it’s possible but unlikely that every last one of them knew that they were, essentially, voting for a local. It’s a measure of the actor’s versatility that many associate him with American cinema, notably a bunch of films with Spike Lee, but Lindo was born in Lewisham — like punk rocker Sid Vicious, actor Jude Law, fashion designer Alexander McQueen, or Matt Goss from Bros — and went to school at the nearby Woolwich Polytechnic.

Lindo has been acting on stage, screen and TV for 50 years now, but he remains a mercurial talent, endlessly capable of reinvention, his superpower being the ability to steal a scene without chewing the scenery or throwing shade on anyone else in the frame. If you want a monologue, this is your man, an actor who learned his trade at the American Conservatory Theater and brings a deep, lived-in, Shakespearean intellect to any role he takes. This all comes into play in Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, a vampire horror set in the Depression-era Mississippi Delta yet also very much about the world that we live in today.

DEADLINE: When did you first hear about Sinners?

DELROY LINDO: Ryan had sent me some communications, and then eventually he sent me the script. I read it and pretty much agreed to do it right then. It was relatively straightforward from that standpoint. Yeah, that was it in a nutshell.

DEADLINE: And what appealed to you about it?

LINDO: I recognized from the very beginning that this was a particular singular piece of material from the standpoint that it was, I thought — I still do think — a very contemporary story. I was really intrigued by the fact that even though it was set in 1932, it resonated so much contemporaneously. I mean, acutely. Acutely. And so, the juxtaposition of the historical, and then just the dynamism of the narrative itself, I thought was very, very singular. When I spoke with Ryan I said, “This is what I’m seeing here, man. Am I right?” And he confirmed that. So, pretty much in terms of my understanding of the material, I felt that I was in sync with Ryan as storyteller, and that made the prospect of doing this work that much more intriguing and compelling.

DEADLINE: I came to the film quite late, but what struck me is that it’s a film about music, about roots music, folk music, R&B, blues. I wonder, at what point did you realize that was the way the film was going?

LINDO: I’m going to disagree with you. I think the film is about a lot of things, music being central and fundamental, but the film is about history, it’s about culture, about Black culture, it’s about community, it’s about the saving of that community, the preserving of culture, the preserving of tradition. It’s about a lot of things. So, music is one component, a very important component, fundamental and even elemental. But the reason that I’m pushing back on you is because I think the strength of this film has to do with the fact that it has such a wide-ranging palette. It’s conveying these various narratives that I believe have then gone on to resonate for audiences. And that’s the reason I believe that audiences are going multiple times to see this film.

DEADLINE: To push back on you a little bit, I think music encapsulates all those things you’re talking about. So, when I say it’s about music, I’m not just saying it’s about the sound of music, it’s about the social aspect of music, which I’m very, very fascinated by in this film — if that makes sense.

LINDO: Right. But there’s another interesting point that’s raised with regard to your personal reaction, your response to the film and viewing it through the lens of music. It points up to me, once again, that audiences — and you, on some level, are a classic example — will take from this film what they will. I mean, any of us, we engage with the material through the lens of our own experience, and then we take from the experience, likewise, through the lens of who we are. I mean, it’s entirely fine, frankly. I guess I was wanting to be relatively sure that you were not — and you have every right to, actually — saying to me, “Hey, it’s just about music.” That’s your right as an audience. But I guess I wanted to ensure that the larger themes that I see in the narrative were not being lost on you.

DEADLINE: No! It made me think about artists like Leadbelly and the myth of…

LINDO: Robert Johnson?

DEADLINE: Yes, the impact that these musicians made, their power and their longevity — we’re still talking about them now.

LINDO: That’s right. That’s a great point. The vibrancy, the global reach of this music, which is connected to the vibrancy, the longevity. I mean, everything you’ve said, I agree with you.

DEADLINE: So, tell me about the research you did. You’re not a musician, are you?

LINDO: No. The research started with my reading two books that Ryan sent me, Deep Blues by Robert Palmer and Blues People by Amiri Baraka, who when he wrote the book was known as LeRoi Jones. It started there for me, reading those books, getting a sense of the history and the lifestyle that surrounds many of these musicians. Following my reading of those books, I just immersed myself in the music of artists such as Son House, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, a range of musicians specifically associated with Delta Blues.

I also looked at a lot of documentaries, just to not only get a sense of how those people talk, but how they move, how they are as human beings, what their relationship is to the world around them. All of which I felt was important for me to expose myself to, and, as much as I could, immerse myself in, in order to filter it through my own process, and hopefully come up with a man — Delta Slim — that would serve the story in the way that Ryan wished.

DEADLINE: Is there much footage of that time?

LINDO: Well, not necessarily of that time, but you can go on YouTube. There’s footage of people from various communities in the Mississippi Delta just living their lives. So, there’s footage that’s accessible, that’s attainable, for sure.

DEADLINE: Is there a particular reason why that Ryan set the film there?

LINDO: His uncle, who passed on, I believe, 10 years ago. Ryan was very close to his uncle, and his uncle would play this music a lot. His uncle was steeped in the music and in the culture. I mean, you’d have to ask Ryan, but from what I gleaned, he wanted to pay homage to his uncle and the music. And I think that that’s where the story was born.

DEADLINE: Obviously, you have an amazing monologue in the film. You always seem to have an amazing monologue in your movies. Tell me about this one. Was it scripted, or did you have to work on it?

LINDO: It was scripted. It was a three-page monologue. Much has been made of the end section, in which I improvised. I improvised throughout the monologue in small ways, but generally it was pretty much what Ryan had written. It was a three-page monologue because there were that many words. I had to commit those words to memory, which is not necessarily the ideal way for me to work, but there was just so much dialogue that I had to, just technically, commit it to memory. And then I started working on it in context of actually shooting the scene.

DEADLINE: And so is this where your theatrical experience comes in handy.

LINDO: I guess. It’s interesting — I’m not naturally compelled to deconstruct these things until I’m asked a question about them, so, it’s difficult for me to break it down and articulate it clearly. You mentioned my theater training. Absolutely. I’m sure that helped me in terms of structuring the monologue, in terms of identifying what I felt the shape was, the emotional shape, modulating it, all of those things. And yes, I’m sure that my training as a theater actor was extremely helpful.

DEADLINE: Because you’re moving at the same time. You’re in a moving car, you’re seeing things around you, and, obviously, you’re being distracted by real life.

LINDO: I’m seeing things and I’m dealing with human beings inside the car with me — but all of that helps. And again, I’m thinking about this now in the moment with you. All of that becomes part of the experience of reliving these experiences through the monologue. They’re not separate. They all become a piece. Being in the car, being in the countryside, conveying this story to the two men in the car with me, it’s all one dynamic.

DEADLINE: And you don’t overplay the emotion, which is what I like about that scene. You could be very dramatic, but it’s almost conversational. You’re telling a story just as you would to two guys in a car.

LINDO: And I consider that a compliment, so thank you for that. I’ll say this — and again, it’s not necessarily something I was conscious of when I was making the work — it’s beautiful, and it’s profound. And at the same time, it’s obvious. Any oppressed people find outlets in humor. There’s a direct connection between their oppression and their humor, their ability to laugh. And blues musicians, blues music, is absolutely no exception. I could be wrong, but there’s not an ounce of victimization in the culture. Even when somebody’s saying, “My woman left me for another man and I’m broke and I ain’t got a pot to p*ss in or a window to throw it out of,” even when that’s the sentiment, the melody, the lyricism of the sentiment that is infused in the music elevates it from the realm of, “Oh God, woe is me, woe is me, woe is me.” And that’s the artistry, right? That’s the artistry of the music. It’s the artistry inherent in the culture. And I would say that that is common to any oppressed people. It is certainly intrinsic to people of African descent.

DEADLINE: Well, by the end of the movie, the guitar has become a weapon. It may be broken, but…

LINDO: That’s right. It’s not only the representation of the survival of this young man, the survival of the culture, but it also becomes the instrument, literally and figuratively, of fighting back and repelling this evil force.

DEADLINE: What questions do people ask you about this movie?

LINDO: It’s almost like a gift that keeps on giving, emotionally, from the standpoint that the kinds of questions I get asked. I’m not talking about journalists. I’m talking about moviegoers. They talk about how the movie impacted them personally. I recently had a conversation in London. I had a conversation with a woman who said she thought that the film was about immigration. And I said, “Really? What do you mean?” Well, she was from the Dominican Republic, or she was at least of DR extraction, but I’m pretty certain she was born in the Dominican Republic. Again, it was a classic example of somebody filtering her response to the film through her own personal experience. She said to me that she’d been trying to make a film about the Dominican Republic and her own history. And when she saw the film, she related very strongly to these two African American men — Smoke and Stack — returning from Chicago to their home community, trying to uplift the community.

I genuinely had not thought about that in those terms. She articulated it as being a film about immigration. People talk to me about the vibrancy of community in the film, the fact that Chinese Americans were part of this community. I didn’t know that. Getting back to the monologue in the car, they talk about my monologue encapsulating for them what the birth of the blues is, directly connecting the seeds of the music and the pain where the music comes from. The two sets of relationships, Smoke and Stack and Annie and Mary, Hailee Steinfeld’s character. It’s about love. Love being impacted and battled by external forces but surviving and flourishing against those odds. They’re the kinds of things that people have spoken to me about. And then they talk about me personally, how my contribution in the film has impacted them as audience members.

DEADLINE: What’s next for you?

LINDO: The next thing will be a film that comes out in March. The working title was Zeus. It’s a Godzilla/Kong extravaganza. And I’m also working on a film that I’m going to direct, co-produce and act in. It’s set in Jamaica, in a particular community in Jamaica, and it has to do with the power, and the spirituality, and the healing power of community. That’s a film that I’m very, very committed to.

DEADLINE: Did you write it?

LINDO: No, but I’ve done rewrites on it. It was originally sent to me back in 2015. The filmmakers at the time wanted me to act in it, but they then were not able to get it off the ground. I got the rights in 2021, and I’ve been attempting to raise the money for this film ever since. The story is about a young man who has lost his mother. His parents are both doctors. And we meet him on the day that we discover that his mother has been tragically killed. We then jump forward six years, and he and his father have not mourned the loss of the mother and the wife, respectively. The child then gets sent to his maternal homeland in Jamaica, and he’s highly resistant to going, but he goes and is eventually embraced by this community and begins to be able to heal. And as he begins to be able to heal, he and his father can start to heal. There’s a magic realism element. There’s a very strong spiritual element, which is very much in keeping with the area in Jamaica where the story is set, in the Blue Mountains. I resist referring to it as a coming-of-age story, but on some level it is. But it’s also, again, about community and the power of community to heal and connect.

DEADLINE: Where will you shoot it?

LINDO: We’re shooting in Jamaica. I’m of Jamaican extraction, and the story is set during the time that my mom was living in England, which is how I came to be born in England. So, from that standpoint, I had a kind of a personal connection.

DEADLINE: To bring us back to Sinners, you’ve probably heard how things have all gone horribly wrong for the Windrush generation. People thought they were coming to the UK for good, and they’ve had successive governments slamming the door in their faces.

LINDO: Yes. It’s very, very British in my opinion. I’m actually writing a book about it. You asked me what I’m working on. Well, it’s a memoir that encompasses, in part, my mom’s time in England, and my own time in England, as seen through the prism of the Windrush experience. And it’s interesting that you mentioned that. One of the books that I read is a book called With Hope in Their Eyes. It’s a presentation of various individuals and their experiences coming to England. And I remember one of the things that the editor says is, “They came with these dreams of being a part of the motherland and the dreams in so many instances became nightmares.” For so many Caribbean people, the experience got turned on its head.

There’s so much to investigate, to unpack, to uncover and to heal. That’s what my writing of my book is doing for me, in terms of reassessing my mom, and, by extension, reassessing the whole cultural experience of Caribbean people coming to England and how they have integrated into the society. And on some level — to your point — have continued, not right across the board but in significant measure, to be rejected and what that dynamic then manifests itself into. And it creates this, and you can tell me better than I can tell you, it creates this ongoing tension, does it not? This cultural and sociopolitical tension. And frankly, if I might say, one of the things that’s very much missing in that narrative is… Why are there no feature films that have addressed that? Major feature films?

So, one of my objectives in writing my memoir has to do with illuminating the experience of somebody like my mom who came from Jamaica as a relatively young person. And even though she left, thank God she left after a few years and went to Canada, I want to very much illuminate that experience, those sets of experiences, and by extension — hopefully — shine a light, both socio-politically and culturally, on what those sets of experiences were. Hopefully to the extent that it can be healing for myself and healing for anybody who reads the book, and at the very least illuminates some things.

DEADLINE: Do you have a title for it?

LINDO: I do, and I can’t tell you. I have a working title. The working title will quite possibly not be the title when it is released, but I can tell you that — knock on wood — it’s on schedule to be released in 2027. And my name will be attached to it, so you will know that it’s the material that I’m discussing with you right now!