Danielle Brooks

Miami Film Festival

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Major productions across the stage and screen have been a cornerstone of Danielle Brooks’ career, from her breakout role in Netflix’s Orange is the New Black to her Broadway debut in The Color Purple, for which she earned a Tony Award nomination for best featured actress in 2016, to the 2023 musical film adaptation of Alice Walker’s book which earned her Oscar and Golden Globe nominations. Yet it’s indie projects, the Juilliard grad says, that make her feel most connected to her craft and purpose.

“Independent films are so incredible because I think they reflect the truth of who we are,” Brooks said during the Miami Film Festival, where she received the Art of Light Award following a screening of her latest project, If I Go Will They Miss Me Tuesday night. “It’s not about big blockbuster movies to make a dollar, it’s about the people. And that’s why I got into this, so that I could be a reflection, the light, because there were people in this industry, artists that were that light for me.”

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Brooks stars as Lozita Harris, a mother of three trying to hold her family together as her partner, Ant (J. Alphonse Nicholson), struggles to connect with their son when he returns home from prison in the semi-biographical, mythical feature from Walter Thompson-Hernández.

During the Miami film festival, Brooks chatted with The Hollywood Reporter about why she so deeply believed in the project, which, since its Sundance premiere in January, has been acquired by Rich Spirit, shooting in a public housing complex in Watts and how working on the film inspired her to make her own short.

Your connection to If I Go, Will They Miss Me dates back to Walter Thompson-Hernández’s 2022 short of the same name. What drew you to the project?

My team had come to me and said, “Hey, there’s this film that we want you to think about being involved in. There’s this amazing new up-and-coming director, Walter Thompson Hernandez.” And I’m always like, “Ooh, new. I like,” because that means there’s a new energy that’s being put out into the film industry, and that excites me. So they were like, “Come look at the short.” And I looked at the short, and I was like, “Wow, this is different from what I’ve seen before, but it still has this energy, sort of like a Moonlight, that I liked.” And I loved how he shot Black people, but I also knew that there was passion behind it because I could tell that there wasn’t this big budget that he had, that everything that he was putting out there was community-based. …And when I met with him, we sat down at the London hotel, and we talked for over an hour, and I immediately told my team, “Yes, I’m down.” And this truly was a passion project. This is one of those films that you end up spending money to be in it. It wasn’t something that came with a large check, and I knew I wanted to be a part of it because it felt honest and real. It was so different from anything that I’ve ever played before, people like Sophia [in The Color Purple] or Taystee [in Orange Is the New Black] who were bigger-than-life characters; there was a quietness about her that I was drawn to.

Your character, Lozita, and all of the characters in this film are based on real-life people. What did your preparation look like, and is there a difference in how you approach roles that are biographical in nature versus fictional characters?

It’s very different. I enjoy playing people who are real. I got the chance to play Mahalia Jackson in the past, and each character that you play does require something different, but this one was interesting because Lozita was based on a true person, and so was Big Ant. But unfortunately, the person that I played had passed away, so I wasn’t able to speak with her. Everything that I was learning about her was from her partner, who was still alive, and from Walter, the director, who was good friends with her, and pictures. Pictures tell a thousand words. There’s one thing I really wish I could have had, which was her tattoos, because she had all these tattoos, and I felt like they told such a story about who she was, and she wore braids. So I was like, “I’ve got to make sure I have these br

Danielle Brooks Talks 'If I Go Will They Miss Me' Acquisition