Film
Lakeith Stanfield: Your Favorite 'Atlanta' Actor Is Hollywood's Next Star
Known for stealing scenes in the hit TV series "Atlanta," actor Lakeith Stanfield is poised to break big with key roles in several buzzy indie films. And he's "not sugarcoating" his interviews.
Lakeith Stanfield
© Rachael Wright
Acting is a profession often surrounded with mentions of glitz and glamour. By definition, it’s often elevated to a kind of godlike status, and only accessible to a select few. But for Lakeith Stanfield, the standout young actor who's reinventing the Hollywood wheel, acting is not so different than just living your life. It’s a job, like any other, that ultimately comes down to transmitting a vibe.
“That’s what acting is: Acting is just vibrations and stuff,” he said over the phone. “It’s trying to get people to feel you, no matter what, however it may come.” That instinctual approach is something he’s been honing for years since his days growing up in Victorville, California, around 90 miles northeast of Los Angeles. It's a place that he says was “boring” and which he had to use his “imagination to step into different worlds.”
As we’re talking, Stanfield is zipping through the Wasatch Mountain range that runs through Park City, Utah, coming off a whirlwind trip to the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. He was there to promote two films, the Jessica Williams-starring dramedy “The Incredible Jessica James” and "Crown Heights," which ended up nabbing the festival’s Audience Award.
Yet if it seems that Stanfield is one of those actors who’s everywhere lately, that’s because he is. When asked how many projects he has coming out, he nonchalantly says “I don’t know, four?” His voice gets higher as he ventures a guess. He was wrong. This year alone, he has been a part of nine different film projects, ranging from the blockbuster horror hit “Get Out,” Netflix’s manga adaptation “Death Note,” and the indie film “Quest.” While he’s best known for portraying Darius — the philosophizing hype man to the rapper Paper Boi (Brian Tyree Henry) he plays on recent Emmy winner “Atlanta"— Stanfield’s talents hardly stop at comedic acting.
In the harrowing drama “Crown Heights,” released last month, he plays Colin Warner, a man who was wrongfully convicted of murder in the 1980s and spent 21 years in prison as a consequence. The film is quiet, allowing the viewer to sit within the silence that Warner lived with in prison. Stanfield brings a mature weight to the role, especially significant in today’s political climate. For the performance, he drew on the depths of human suffering and frustration in equal measure.
Three best pieces of advice
© Rachael Wright
Open it
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The choice is yours
© Rachael Wright
Eat your veggies
© Rachael Wright
Part of that preparation included spending time with the real Colin Warner, too — not just learning his mannerisms, but understanding where he came from. “I expected him to be a little bit more angry or something,” Stanfield said. “But there are definitely bits, instances where he would be irritated thinking about things again. And thinking how unfair stuff was. But overall he was just calm and cool. But I thought to myself, ‘What do you expect?’ This dude served 20 years in fuckin’ prison for something he didn’t do, and when he gets out, what else is he gonna but relieved and calm and cool and shit, comfortable in silence? He’s not going to come out here burning shit down, yo.”
Lakeith Stanfield
© Rachael Wright
Casual Lakeith
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Nap time.
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We're Out Here.
© Rachael Wright
"Crown Heights" is a game-changing role for Stanfield, who has aspirations to start working on his own short some time. Not that the high-profile appearances and jobs, are tempering his candidness and sense of humor, though. During our conversation, he mentions that he’s “exhausted with sugarcoating stuff” after an onslaught of interviews. “You want to try and keep it private and all that, but you get tired of just like, pussyfooting around with what’s actually going on. So I’m just like, ‘Fuck it.’” It’s also reflective in the way that he’s trying to take down the pedestal from acting, and bring back a humanity to it. “If I’m hanging out with someone else and they got some other thing, I start talking like them,” he said. “It’s a natural progression type of thing: I’m still saying what I’m saying. I’m just saying it in the way that people in my proximity can feel me.”
Stretching
© Rachael Wright
Three best pieces of advice Lakeith Stanfield got that he’s followed:
Every wall is a door.
"I read a passage from Ralph Waldo Emerson that said that 'Every wall is a door.' And I believe that."
Shut up or sit down.
"My momma always told me to 'shut up or sit down.'"
Eat your vegetables ... and stop smoking.
"My mom always said to eat my vegetables. That's a good one ... Oh! And someone told me to stop smoking. I'm working on that one."