Stephan James

When you were starting out, was there a hurdle you had to jump over with how vulnerable you have to be as an actor?

I’m not really sure when that happened for me. I’ve been really fortunate and really lucky to be a part of some really cool things. Sometimes you look at things and you can’t be too protective of yourself. I think that to do this is to give a part of yourself, in some shape or form. Once you realize that and you accept that, then it’s easier to go about your work. You have an obligation as an artist to bring truth, and some of that truth has to come from you, right?—from your own personal experiences, or whatever that may be. To do this at this level, I think you learn that pretty quickly. You’ve got to give some of yourself.

I’m just impressed that you were a teenager and doing this stuff. Teenagers are so painfully self-conscious and worried about their image, and vulnerability is the last thing you want.

You know what? I started acting when I was 16, professionally, so it wasn’t like I was this child actor. I really made a conscious decision to chase this dream. And it wasn’t for anything else other than the fact that I loved acting. It wasn’t about anything else, and it’s still not about anything else. I’ve worked with so many incredible people, that I’ve just had an opportunity to take a back seat and just watch them, so early on in my career. That, to me, is invaluable for the work that I’m doing now.

A lot of your best-known roles are period pieces, but also characters in an oppressed situation. They’ve been undeniably great roles, with great directors, but is there something frustrating about potentially only getting those kinds of roles or being known for them?

Even though my career started in that sort of direction, I don’t feel trapped in the slightest sense. Maybe at a point in time I might have felt like that could happen to me, but I don’t feel like that anymore. It’s really our duty to be conscious of the roles that we’re taking on, or the stories that we choose to tell. For me, I never saw myself as like a politician or an activist—I’m just an artist. So people look at Selma or Race, and they’ll be like, “Are you scared of only being this type of an actor?” Not really, you know. I would do Selma a hundred times out of a hundred times if that script falls on my desk, because it’s just a great story. I would play Jesse Owens a hundred times out of a hundred times, because it’s the great Jesse Owens—he’s bigger than an African-American hero, he’s just like a world hero. He’s somebody who breaks the gap between races through the sport of running. Guys have literally changed the world through their actions. Those are roles that I take ten times out of ten. Am I scared by being typecast? No. I just played Walter Cruz in Homecoming, which is a colorless role—had nothing to do with the color of my skin. I just did an action-thriller film [17 Bridges] that was not a period piece at all, that was about guys who steal drugs and have a big manhunt take place in New York City. I did that with Chadwick Boseman and J.K. Simmons. So I’m not really worried about that. I just want to tell diverse stories. There’s no way I’m going to be pigeonholed into being a specific type of actor. I want to do everything.