As one of the year’s most highly anticipated films preps for its national release later this month, Danielle Deadwyler, Till’’s lead actor is admitting that she initially had apprehension around taking the role.
“I’ll be honest, it was the most scary thing I could think of, role-wise, to do,” Deadwyler, 40, recently told PEOPLE. “I neglected to read it. And I say that to show a kind of parallel to the experience of Mamie, to show that we don’t always boldly walk into things.”
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Mamie Till Mobley was Emmett’s mother. In history, she would be known as one of the civil rights activists who joined in the fight after Emmett Till’s 14-year old son was lynched for whistling at a white girl (later revealed to have been a lie by Carolyn Bryant) in Mississippi in 1956. While Bryant’s husband Roy and brother in law J.W. Milam was also arrested for the murder, and later admitted to it. However, no charges were ever filed. Carolyn Bryant is in her 80s and has not been charged.
Deadwyler tells PEOPLE that she actually grew up working with civil rights organizations in her hometown of Atlanta, and that she felt a sense of responsibility for this story “to be told right, and for it to be told truthfully and historically accurate. All that was going into the feeling of saying ‘yes.’ “
Actress shared with us that she was a mother herself, which helped her connect with Till-Mobley.
“I think that it did,” she says. “But I think the weight of everything is bigger than me and my experience. I’ve known this story since I was a kid and I’ve had proximity to this story and the people who knew Mamie well into her later years, and the people who were impacted by her choices have had an impact and influence on my life. So it’s been a part of me for a long time.”
Till-Mobley infamously fought to have her son’s body returned to Chicago after his murder, and to hold an open casket funeral service—a decision intentionally made so that the world could bear witness to the cruelties and violence of racism in the south during the Jim Crow era.
“She’s bringing you into the utter and complete drudgery of what it means to be a mother who sees something happen to a loved one, a person seeing the ramifications of terrorism on her child,” Deadwyler says.
His mother met with Emmett till before he left Chicago to go to Mississippi. They discussed the type of treatment that a Black boy might receive in the south. Deadwyler tells PEOPLE that she’s had to have similar talks with her own son.
“I feel f—-ed up about having to have that conversation, but I still did have to have a conversation,” she says. “I have this responsibility to inform him how to navigate the world. His school environment and social environment are very white. And I’ve made a point to have a certain kind of cultural upbringing for him. He’s privileged. I tell him he’s privileged in a certain way, and everyone is not.”
Deadwyler continued, “He’s very aware of the social dynamics that are happening. He’s having the conversation with me about Uvalde and how his peers are reacting. He’s having the conversation about Buffalo and not sitting into him and his body. There’s this attention in the Black experience that I know he’s understanding now. Innocence is shifting.”
Actress Jennifer Till also said that she hopes justice will one day be done for Till’s family.
“That’s what they deserve,” she says. “I don’t know what it wholly looks like, but I know that it is a continuous effort on their behalf; it’ll be a continuous effort on the Black community’s behalf. It is wrong to perpetrate an egregious act on a child and not suffer any consequence. Accountability must be sought. Justice comes in a number of ways, and it is yet to be seen.”
