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Kendrick Sampson

stars in Amazon Prime Film

Something From Tiffany’s

Photography Frederic Auerbach

Fashion Editor Deborah Ferguson

Interview Juan Marco Torres

American actor Kendrick Sampson stars in Amazon’s Something From Tiffany’s with Zoey Dutch, a cheeky romance film unfolding in NYC during the holiday season. Sampson is not afraid to talk about all the injustices he continues to witness, and his drive to fight them is unparalleled. We sat down with the actor to talk about this journey filming the movie, the intense experience of protesting during the BLM movement, and his production company BLD PWR.

Vest and Jeans: Kenzo

You started your career when you were barely 10 years old calling agents in your native Houston, then moved to LA when you were just 18. Where does this drive come from?

As far as the drive, a lot of people ask me that question. The short answer is, I don’t know. I mean, I can, I can guess and use context clues and speculate, uh, that maybe it was something to do with the rebels in my family that we always hung out with the rebels in my family because my family was not happy, was very racist against the fact that my, my mom married my dad. My dad is black. Um, and my mom is identified as white of European, of European descent, French German.

We have a big Mexican side of our family. The white side of our family was racist to both and that put us in a position of being the outcasts, the misfits, if you will, in the family. And we had to hang out with other misfits because they were the only people who would come over. I always looked for people that I could relate to, and I would always relate to children of immigrants, people that didn’t fit in necessarily in school for whatever reason. The nerds, the creatives, you know, the emo kids. That is something that I’ve always gravitated towards, maybe indirectly or directly. Tthat skill or that passion for the misfit, that passion to be a rebel was fostered in me, was developed inside of me, was encouraged.

Whether it was intentional or not, that’s the only thing that I could really think of. You know, another part of it might just be a privilege. I’ve played with this answer sometimes that maybe it is that I’m a dreamer. I’m a Pisces, Pisces are big dreamers.

I’m always thinking about space and what’s beyond. I explored that in ways that are very purposeful. I always say that one of my biggest privileges in my life, besides male privilege, is that I know my purpose. And when I’m set on a purpose, when I believe that that purpose is higher than this earth and that God has given me a purpose, or that somebody needs help, and I know they need help, and I know it’s right, I’m so fixated on that purpose that it drives me no matter what the circumstances are. It will make me move. It will make me, once I’ve set my mind to a goal or whatever, that purpose is rooted deep inside me, it has to be done. That’s why I always want to fix things. Once I’ve set on something, I have to figure this out. I wanna see it all the way through, which is what led me to move to LA. Without considering, a lot of people are like, “it was really brave”. I didn’t see it as brave, it was just exactly what I needed to do. It was a very purpose driven thing. No pun intended, to make me drive all the way across the United States and thinking, now that’s where God wants me to be. And people ask me if, would I live anywhere else? And it’s really hard to say if I would live anywhere else, whether I like the weather or whatever, because the thing is I’m always driven by purpose. So I would live where I’m purposed to live. Although I don’t think I’ll ever be purposed to live in a place that is cold as hell. Um, that would be against God in my mind, haha.

Jacket and pants: Willy Chavarria

Can you describe what happened while protesting the death of George Floyd?

Yeah. As far as the uprisings in 2020, I was part of co-organizing several protests at least once a week after the murder of George Floyd and several others. We’re talking about Breonna Taylor, Andres Gudo, and over 600 that were killed during the tenure of Jackie Lacy in LA.

So many people had been murdered, and we wanted to make a statement. It was the height of COVID-19 and everybody was scared to come outside, but we knew that we were getting killed inside and outside, where people were discriminating against us for wearing masks. It was this whole thing. We wanted to highlight the violence of the system, that it’s not only violent in the streets with police, but also the budgets are violent, the policy is violent, and targeting our people.

We attended one of the protests, a big one that we had after our first one downtown in city hall, where we were protesting Jackie Lacey and with Black Lives Matter, Los Angeles, who had been leading that effort for a long time.

My organization, BLD PWR got together and said, what can we do? And we wanted to host a follow up to that first protest where we educated people on budgets and, you know, did some more deep dive political education at Pan Pacific Park in LA. The crowd got so big because so many people wanted to support us, and came out to protest. Thousands of thousands of people that you couldn’t see in the park.

It’s a huge park. You couldn’t see the park anymore. So many people went. We decided to start marching down Third Street. Long story short, police showed up when we had this incredible, beautiful protest, and an event really where we acknowledged the land, where we acknowledged the ancestors. We acknowledged the Tongva folks, the Tava people that are still here. We wanted to make sure that people couldn’t go about their regular lives, even though it was COVID-19 at that time, without acknowledging what was happening and demanding a change, we just can’t unlearn what we’ve learned, and we have to do something about it. The police showed up as they always do, and gave us even more examples of how violent they are by unleashing rubber bullets and batons, and extreme violence on people who were protesting with no weapons. They saw me and saw people behind me and targeted me.

I’m in the middle of a lawsuit with them, so I guess I can’t say too much, but they saw me, they tried to take my phone. They knew that my phone was broadcasting, that CNN had picked up my feed to my live. They shot me at least seven times with those rubber bullets and beat me with these batons. I was bloody, trying to fight them and keep them off of my people that they were beating.

That led up to the biggest one in Hollywood where a hundred thousand people, some estimates say, were out in the streets, and it backfired on them. They thought that they could scare us back into our houses. And the opposite happened. People came out and drove all over the country, because they saw what was happening. We released our Hollywood for Black Lives Demand Letter, over 300 high profile people in Hollywood. The work that we did, especially around abolition and the legal system, was culture shifting. It was culture shifting and transformative in so many ways.

Jacket, shirt, shorts, boots, tie and hat: Moschino

Tell me about how your organization BLD PWR came about and the kind of work you do.

Speaking of Build Power, our mission statement is to realize, to reimagine and realize the liberated future that we know our people deserve.

We’re a production company that puts on educational events and produces short form content, in collaboration with our partners, which are radical, radical grassroots folks like the Center on Black Liberation and Indigenous tribes.

Our impact side focuses on two major areas, state violence and mental health and intersections in those areas.

On the production side, we are looking at a wide array of different types of stories. Genre agnostic. We love all genres, all formats. We’re producing long format content and we’ve got a lot of really dope animated projects. We came about because we wanted to shift the culture in Hollywood and have a central place. Me, Tia Oso, Mike Gil Laroche, co-founded Build Power in 2018, and launched it in 2019. We wanted to consolidate our efforts to organize Hollywood for the liberation of our people, and really mitigate a lot of the damage that was coming out of Hollywood towards really important causes because people weren’t properly educated or didn’t have the right relationships. So many stories come through our work and so many, there’s so many incredible creatives, black creatives, indigenous creatives, brown folks that we wanted to support, that we collaborate with all the time. We’re just continuing to do the same work that we’ve always done. A lot of the time we were consulting with production companies and such. We’re telling incredible stories that need to be told, need to be heard, through podcasts, television, film, and short form content. The most important thing that we always say is we want to tell those stories that everybody’s scared to tell.

We want to tell those stories that dig into our mental health, that dig into regular everyday relationships, LGBT, sex workers, families, immigration, you know, taboo topics of religion, sex and politics that are entertaining.

How you shift culture is be unapologetic about the truth, making sure that it’s grounded in our communities with the intention to leave it, leave them better than we found them.

Jacket and pants: Willy Chavarria

Can you tell me about your dynamic with Leah Jeffries while filming?

KS: I think like any two people that share the love of someone really important to them, a deep love of people important to them, and then they lose that and they share that loss. Alot of the time that brings people together, brings them closer, sometimes it drives them apart. But I think with them something kind of beautiful is that they take care of each other and Daisy’s always trying to keep him on his phone and such, and seems to have unusually good advice coming from a kid.

She’s had to, it seems like she’s had some growing up fast to do in terms of her intellect, but she’s still such an incredibly bright light as a kid. I think he has her best interest in mind too. It seems like Ethan has a problem with pleasing everybody, trying to please everybody to the point that he sometimes will leave out things or lie, whatever for the sake of avoiding conflict. And Daisy is the only person that Ethan is a hundred percent honest with.

He just can’t lie to her. It seems they have a very transparent relationship, which I think is healthy for a father and daughter.

Jacket, top, pants, and shoes: Zegna

Jacket and pants: Willy Chavarria

Do you have any favorite memories from the holidays?

My favorite memory of the holidays would always be the food. My mom used to make some bomb ass food. She would make lamb roast and green beans and peanut butter cookies, chocolate oatmeal, brownies and cheesecake, buttermilk pie. I can go on and on and on. We were country so they would be like rabbits, all kinds of shit. I would say the other one is that a couple of our families used to get together and go to the homeless shelter in Houston. Anna Diop, who’s an incredible actress and The Nanny right now, and her family and mine would get together and have an incredible time at the shelter. Her family is Muslim, so they didn’t celebrate Christmas, but they would come over and eat and uh, we would all go to the homeless shelter together and have an incredible time with my nephews and nieces.

Jacket, Top, and Pants: Zegna

When you’re not in LA, where are you?

When I’m not in LA I am all over the place. I mean, sometimes I wonder where I live, I have to ask myself. Overall, I think I’m mostly outside of LA, mostly in Houston, Missouri City, and I go to New York a lot.

I go to Miami at least once a year. I go a lot all over Mexico and all over California. The Bay Area, San Diego, Detroit. I’m just leaving. I always take a vacation at the end of the year to disconnect. I just got back from Senegal, which was absolutely incredible.

My first time on that continent of Africa. It was life changing. It was beautiful.

Can you share about your role in the upcoming Amazon series I’m a Virgo?

I’m not sure what I can say about my actual role in, I am Virgo, but I am a Virgo. Looks incredible. Boots Riley was at the top of my list, literally number one at the top of my list of people that I wanted to work with last year. And I was blessed to receive a call and he asked me which role I want, and I almost fell out of my chair and pooped on myself a little bit because I was so ecstatic.

He creates these incredible, surreal worlds. He has amazing politics rooted in black liberation, and the stories he tells and the way he tells them are so creative and inspiring. So you can expect nothing less. There are always strange characters and a lot of them are very complex. It’s a surrealist world, so expect some really crazy, incredible visuals.

Top and Pants: Zegna

Vest and Pants: Willy Chavarria

What are some things you are looking forward to in 2023?

In 2023, I’m working on my follow through, you know, all the goals that I set and the projects that I started last year. I’m having accountability in that, just following through and being true to my word and holding those accountable around me to follow through and be true to theirs. I’m really looking forward to new opportunities and amazing experiences and adventures as always.

I’m excited about the expansion of Build Power and Build Power productions and our work in the community and the incredible stories that we’re gonna tell. Like I said, I just got back from Senegal, so in the vain of the Grios and the storytellers that came before us,

um, super excited about the future of storytelling and re-imagining and realizing the Liberated future we know we Deserve, which is our mission statement at Build Power.