Story / Luna Bacce
Photographs / Angela Marie (@angela.marie.picture)
Styling / Wilford Lenov (@wilfordlenov)
Hair / Coco (@kicknitwitcoco)
Make-up / Dey Rose (@dey.aloe.rose)
Shot in New York Metropolis, NY
Whether or not she’s taking part in Maya Miller in Netflix’s Ozark or bringing class and complexity to Athena Trumbo in HBO’s The Gilded Age, Jessica Frances Dukes has a approach of constructing each character really feel like she existed lengthy earlier than the digital camera arrived.
Now, Dukes is moving into one other rigorously constructed chapter of American historical past. In MGM+’s The Westies, she performs Birdie Polk, a fictional Black FBI agent navigating early-Nineteen Eighties New York and a world formed by organized crime. The sequence attracts from actual individuals and occasions, however Birdie exists past the confines of any single historic document.
For Dukes, that pressure creates one thing she calls “pressurized freedom.” There’s the duty of honoring the true brokers who fought organized crime, alongside the inventive freedom to think about a lady whose story was by no means written down.
That house between historical past and invention is the place Dukes appears most at residence.
From Birdie’s quiet authority to Athena Trumbo’s place throughout the world of The Gilded Age, her characters occupy areas the place energy, id, and historical past collide. And reasonably than merely recreating the previous, Dukes brings her personal perspective to it—asking what occurs when tales which have historically been left on the margins are lastly allowed to take up house.
We caught up with Dukes to speak about The Westies, constructing Birdie Polk, the inventive chemistry behind her scenes with Titus Welliver, returning to The Gilded Age, and what it means to share the display with an icon like Phylicia Rashad.
Your character Birdie Polk on The Westies appears extremely managed. Is there something that genuinely scares her or makes her lose that management?
I don’t suppose Birdie has time to course of concern at work, and dropping management isn’t an choice for her. She’s acquired a job to do. There’s a kind of necessary desensitization with Birdie that I felt she wanted as a way to do her job. However Birdie is from the streets; that is her residence too, so who is aware of what sort of life awaits her outdoors of that FBI workplace.
There’s nearly a chess-match high quality to Birdie and Keenan. Once you and Titus had been filming, did something shock one another throughout a scene?
Day-after-day there was a wonderful creative shock working with Titus and this group. I by no means knew what transfer he was going to make, and he by no means knew mine. We had an exquisite match each scene, a dance as he would name it. Titus is great at what he does, and most of what you see in our scenes is 2 individuals who genuinely click on. It felt easy to create with him.
Once you realized you had been taking part in a fictional FBI agent inside a narrative impressed by actual individuals and occasions, did that make you are feeling extra strain or provide you with extra freedom?
I feel it’s pressurized freedom, lol! I undoubtedly put strain on myself to finest signify the true brokers who led a number of process forces making an attempt to take down organized crime. The liberty is with the ability to discover my very own model of all of them. Being a Black lady on this place of energy in 1980 was an thrilling alternative by this group. Not being tied to a selected story provides them and me creative freedom to make Birdie her personal individual. We have now freedom to take her story wherever we would like.
What shocked you most if you began researching New York within the early Nineteen Eighties?
Nothing surprises me about New York Metropolis. It is without doubt one of the most well-known cities on this planet! Organized crime is one thing the world has grown up with and nonetheless offers with to at the present time, and as soon as you reside in New York, you already know something is feasible. The information at the moment was massive. I did get pleasure from digging deeper into the burning of the Bronx by landlords and a lot extra as I constructed Birdie’s doable panorama.
Do you suppose Birdie would have behaved in a different way if she had been a person?
The fantastic thing about artwork is that we get to inform the story our approach, and the viewers will get to have their expertise with it. I’d be curious to see what the viewers thinks.
Was there a scene you had been nervous about earlier than filming that ended up being one in all your favorites?
I wouldn’t say I used to be nervous about any particular second. I simply wished to do my finest and swing for the fences. She needed to be daring and in cost! I wished to signify New York correctly; I wished to signify the women and men who threat their lives every day to save lots of others, and I wished to liven up the superb character that Chris Brancato and Michael Panes wrote.
The Gilded Age is returning for Season 4 in November. The present provides us Black characters who aren’t merely outlined by their relationship to white society. How necessary was that distinction to you?
It’s essential to me to be part of this lovely depiction of Black historical past inside this superb story. It’s fantastic to be part of a narrative that brings you into the world of the Black elite within the 1800s. Our tales as Black persons are all so completely different and layered, and so they all should be proven to the world. I simply love what The Gilded Age has accomplished with this.
Phylicia Rashad performs Elizabeth Kirkland, whose worldview is such a pointy distinction together with your character Athena. What was it like taking part in reverse her?
Phylicia Rashad is a power and has been for fairly a while. I’d watch her performances on repeat rising up. Her class and poise are unmatched and completely inimitable. She has influenced generations of artists, and with the ability to create artwork in the identical house as her is a dream. I stay up for extra alternatives to be throughout from the icons who’ve formed me as an artist. It’s a superb forged to be within the room with, and she or he is simply completely superb.
For Jessica Frances Dukes, interval drama is about making room for tales and views which have too usually been omitted of it. From Birdie Polk’s authority in The Westies to Athena Trumbo’s place inside The Gilded Age, her work continues to deliver complexity to characters who refuse to be confined by the worlds they inhabit. As she places it, “Our tales as Black persons are all so completely different and layered, and so they all should be proven to the world.”
