Oscar, SAG, BAFTA nominee and Moonlight star Mahershala Ali has something else to look forward to
AS the race for Academy Awards begins in earnest, Moonlight star Mahershala Ali reveals he has his mind on something else entirely.
Entertainment
Don't miss out on the headlines from Entertainment. Followed categories will be added to My News.
AN Oscar nomination would usually be the biggest thing going on in someone’s life.
For Mahershala Ali, who only learnt on Wednesday that he had been nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the Academy Awards, the Oscar thing has a bit of competition — the impending birth of his first child.
“My wife is due in about a month. You gotta check in with me around March to see how I am,” Ali says with a chuckle. “I’m hanging in there right now. But that’s when I hear you get tired, is when they’re actually born.”
FEATURE: Naomie Harris bit off more than she could chew with Moonlight
REVIEW: Moonlight may be the best movie of the year
Previously best known for his role as smooth lobbyist Remy Danton in Netflix series House of Cards, Ali’s whirlwind awards season — he’s also nominated at this weekend’s SAG Awards and next month’s BAFTAs — has come off the back of his tender, haunting and preconception-busting performance in Moonlight.
The independent drama follows three stages in the life of an African American boy living in a poor Florida neighbourhood. Chiron’s mother is succumbing to a full-blown crack addiction while he’s struggling with his sexuality and is being bullied at school.
Ali plays Juan, top dog among local drug dealers, who sees the kid known as “Little” being beat up and steps in to get him home safely.
“Then over the course of him making sure that kid’s OK,” Ali says, “they open up to each other and Juan ends up turning into a mentor and father figure.”
Juan is role rich with contradictions. He’s not the bad guy we’re pre-programmed to think drug dealers are. And though he makes money selling drugs, he gets angry at Chiron’s mother (played by Naomie Harris) for doing them.
Ali, 42, who was born in Oakland, California and grew up in a community he describes as “not a stretch” from that depicted in Moonlight, says he tried to see Juan “the way Juan sees himself”.
“People who come from those environments are not looking at what they do as being problematic in the same way that people who come from opportunity look at the actions or the occupations of those people,” he explains.
“When you have opportunity, there’s little to no excuse to be a drug dealer; there’s little to no excuse to end up stealing to put food on your table. But when you come from communities where only 30 per cent of the student population ends up graduating, kids are sharing books and there’s 50 kids in a classroom — that leads to a certain type of life and leaves you with very few choices.
“So I looked at him as a good guy, who understood right from wrong coming from his circumstances, who was kind and loving, but also had to have the armour of a person who sold drugs as a living.”
Even before the awards recognition began rolling in, Ali was more passionate about Moonlightthan any other project in his 20-plus years of acting.
That passion began the moment he picked up the script and “recognised characters that I’d seen growing up, but hadn’t seen on screen before,” he says. He was determined to see Juan “come to life properly”.
Ali’s way out of his tough community first came through sport — winning a place in university via a basketball scholarship. It was there he discovered theatre, an interest he pursued further in postgraduate studies at NYU. The fact he’d seen his father carve out a career in musical theatre in New York gave the young Ali some assurance that a life in acting wasn’t an impossible dream.
His first screen role came in the TV medical drama Crossing Jordan and was followed by guest roles on all the usual Law & Order type series. His first standout film opportunity came in David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button in 2008 and his career continued a steady build until House of Cards broke out.
That led to roles in the final two Hunger Games films, Marvel series Luke Cage and, next, James Cameron’s sci-fi passion project, Alita: Battle Angel.
And Moonlight isn’t Ali’s only film in Oscar contention: Hidden Figures, which tells the true story of the unheralded African-American women whose brilliant mathematical minds helped NASA send man into space, also has several nominations and spent two weeks atop the US box office.
Ali plays a supporting role in the film, which he calls “a story that really needed to be shared”.
The power in both films appears to be in giving under-represented communities a voice.
“When people say things like, ‘I just saw my life up there on that screen’ — what can you do?” Ali asks. “Thank you — I can’t do more than that. I’m happy that we’ve been able to help so many people feel like they exist, too.”
He stops and sighs.
“I’m kind of burnt on talking about it ... but when you think about diversity and inclusion, the main issue is that people are trying to tell you that all these images they see up there never include them — so therefore they don’t exist.
“When we do put them up there, suddenly they exist. They don’t have to explain themselves as much to the world; they can say, ‘Well go see Moonlight and maybe you’ll understand a little bit better’ or ‘Look at the persecution that young man dealt with and maybe you’ll understand what I dealt with growing up’.
“That can bring about real change in our community. That’s really powerful.”
MOONLIGHT OPENS TODAY
Originally published as Oscar, SAG, BAFTA nominee and Moonlight star Mahershala Ali has something else to look forward to
7 must-see masterpieces at new NGV blockbuster
The doors to NGV’s hotly anticipated French Impressionism exhibition have finally swung open. And you’ll want to make a beeline for these world-famous works.
8 of the best life lessons from Disney movies
From family ties to war and peace, animated movies are big on delivering bang for buck when it comes to sharing sage advice.