Mahershala Ali Cries Over 'Moonlight' at BFI London, Stays Silent on 'Spider-Verse'

By Tom Whitfield

Mahershala Ali broke down in tears on stage at the BFI London Film Festival on Saturday while recalling the boy at the center of Barry Jenkins' "Moonlight," the film that won him the first of his two Oscars ten years ago.

The moment came during a Screen Talk hosted by Amon Warmann. Ali was discussing the dinner-table scene in which young Chiron asks Juan, the drug dealer Ali plays, whether he sells drugs. "You see this like crisis for this young boy who's already in crisis," Ali said. "It's really heartbreaking."

Asked what accounts for the film's enduring power, Ali paused, wiped away tears and told the room: "Sorry, just need a second."

Composed, he offered his answer. "Any time people put flesh on the bones of those who haven't been seen or had their moment, I think it's important," he said. "I think 'Moonlight' was able to make those characters people… make it personal."

Where Juan came from

Ali built Juan on a man he had known all his life — an uncle-like figure he played basketball with growing up, who also worked as a substitute teacher. The man was arrested and imprisoned while Ali was in college. "I thought of him a lot in the making of the film because of how human everyone was in my environment and in my upbringing," Ali said.

He was no less direct about the backlash to "Green Book," in which he played pianist Don Shirley opposite Viggo Mortensen. The controversy over what Shirley's family had and hadn't sanctioned followed the film's awards run. "I still stand by it. I stand by the work," Ali said, adding that he also stands by "the experience as a whole, and what it taught me."

The role won him his second Oscar, but the criticism cut deep. Ali described going from feeling like a golden boy to wondering what he had done wrong. "I think I'm just sensitive in general, you know what I mean? So it definitely like had its impact, like for sure," he said. He stayed grateful for the exposure. "Like swords are folded in the fire, you know?"

Of the back-to-back wins themselves, he drew a hard line: "I felt a sense of accomplishment, which is not fulfillment." He keeps both statuettes in a cabinet, out of his sight line, so he can get back to work. That is a choice, not a gesture — and it says more than any acceptance speech.

What about the 'Spider-Verse'?

Ali voices Aaron Davis in the animated "Spider-Verse" films, including a version of the character from another universe who appears at the end of "Across the Spider-Verse" and returns in "Beyond the Spider-Verse." Asked how he tells the two apart, he shut the door: "I don't want to give anything away or spoil anything, I've got to be careful."

Pressed on whether he had finished recording, he joked: "I might not even be in it, man! I don't know, man! I don't know!" Take that as neither confirmation nor denial.

He was more forthcoming about process. Actors are filmed in the booth, and improvised moments often make the final cut, sometimes prompting rewrites and extra sessions. "I think that's why, honestly, the animation films will hold up better than live-action films," Ali said — a claim fans of live action may dispute, but one he did not qualify.

The cost of the work

Ali went straight from "Green Book" into "True Detective" with only a week or two off, playing detective Wayne Hays across three timelines. The older Hays meant 80-hour weeks, four hours in the makeup chair from 3:30 a.m., a seven-month shoot — and a one-year-old daughter at home.

"I just think about how I almost went crazy doing that part," he said.

Two of his films screen at the festival. He voices bandit leader Brendan in the animated "Wildwood," and in the action thriller "Your Mother, Your Mother, Your Mother" he plays Latif, a devout Muslim father and contract killer, with three or four days to learn the fight choreography. "It's really more like dance than what people realize," he said.

On playing a Black Muslim father, Ali was blunt: "I don't feel like Black fathers have the dimensionality that I would love for them to have."

Now filming the HBO series "Task" with Mark Ruffalo, Ali described himself as "exhausted for the right reasons" and "tired in the right way." Then came the closer, one line, no elaboration: "So that's why I feel like I'm just getting started." A decade after "Moonlight," two Oscars in a cabinet and two studio franchises pending, the claim is at least checkable.