‘Till’ Star Tosin Cole: From Larking About In The ‘House Party’ Reboot To Portraying A Civil Rights Legend
14.01.2023 - 06:59
/ deadline.com
Tosin Cole was larking about on the set of the Warner Bros House Party reboot in Los Angeles when an email dropped from casting director Kim Coleman (BlacKkKlansman) about Emmett Till’s story.
“I was like, ‘I’m filming for months non stop, I want to go home,’ ” he recalls thinking. “They wanted me to go for Medgar Evers, and I was like, ‘I don’t know who that is. Let me think about it.’ “
His agent brought him up short telling him, “No, you got to do it. At least send a tape.”
“I was like, ‘I’m doing night shifts in LA. I don’t know when I’ll have time,’ ” he worried.
That’s when Barbara Broccoli, an executive producer of UAR’s Till, zinged him a message saying, “We’d love to have you on board, if you can.”
That missive sharpened Cole’s mind.
Besides overseeing the James Bond universe with Michael G. Wilson, Broccoli’s active in theater and independent film production. She supported Debbie Tucker Green’s play Ear for Eye when it played London’s Royal Court Theatre starring Lashana Lynch (No Time To Die) and Cole. They also appeared in the screen version produced by Fiona Lampty, now director of UK features at Netflix, of which Broccoli was an executive producer.
“Barbara had obviously put in a good word for me … And then, I did the research about who Medgar Evers was, this giant of the civil rights movement, and I was just like, ‘Ah, sh*t. I don’t know, man,’ ” says Cole, recalling the moment over breakfast at the Dean Street branch of Soho House in London.
“And then, obviously, I did the tape. The offer came through. And then it was like, ‘All right, cool. We want you in Mississippi in like two days after you finish wrapping House Party.’ But I was nervous because I didn’t know who he was and I didn’t know how