“Naomie couldn’t be further removed from that character,” says Jenkins.

“His exterior is so constructed and his eyes are these wells - I couldn’t have found a better personification.”Īs Chiron’s crack-addict mother, Paula, UK actor Naomie Harris is a revelation as she draws on her Jamaican lineage to affect a Caribbean patois. “I knew that character would fortify himself between the second and third parts and when I saw Trevante read the part, I bought it,” says Jenkins. Initially Rhodes read for the part of Kevin, but it was quickly clear which role he was destined to play. And so for the redemptive finale, the film-makers settled on former University of Texas at Austin athlete Trevante Rhodes as ‘Black’, the grown-up Chiron who appears worlds removed from his skinny, victimised younger self. Much happens in the unseen transitions between Moonlight’s three sections. After an exhaustive six-month trawl of acting programmes and high schools, they had found their ensemble of local unknowns to complement the more familiar Naomie Harris, André Holland and Mahershala Ali.Īlex Hibbert and Ashton Sanders are impressive as ‘Little’ Chiron and his teenage version in the first two parts of the film, while Jharrel Jerome plays teenage Kevin, an important friend. Speaking of authentic character, back in April 2015 Romanski and Jenkins had flown to Miami with casting director Yesi Ramirez to scout for local talent. “Miami is a character and you don’t usually see that.” “It was chosen creatively and it feels like it pervades the whole film,” says Kleiner. Gardner agrees it was a smooth collaboration with the New Yorkers and Romanski: “They’ve been lovely - it feels like we were working with like-minded souls.” Sacco calls Plan B “some of the best producers on the planet”.ĭespite a lack of local tax incentives, everyone insisted the October 2015 shoot would take place in Miami. “They’re committed to independent cinema and over the years Daniel Katz, who’s been putting together interesting businesses around content, said they wanted to start making content and not just acquiring it. “We’ve been admirers,” Kleiner says of A24. From the first day, the company adopted a hands-off approach to enable the film-makers to execute on their vision. Then Jeremy mentioned this new project and, if memory serves, it was the same week.”Ī24 committed to fully finance what all parties will only say was a “modest” budget. We’d been saying one day how wonderful Medicine was and wondered what Barry was up to. “We were fans of Barry, and in a cosmic way he came up in a meeting. “From the inception of the company, we knew we wanted to get into production. “It was more a case of ‘right time, right place’,” says head of acquisitions and productions Noah Sacco. Kleiner recalls being “blown away” by the idea of Moonlight and Plan B joined at the end of 2014.īy this time, New York-based distributor A24 had signed up for what would become its first production, more out of a sense of opportunism than any choreographed corporate strategy. Subsequently Jenkins ran into Plan B Entertainment’s Jeremy Kleiner and Dede Gardner in Telluride after he hosted a Q&A at the world premiere of their 12 Years A Slave. Jenkins and Romanski had found their idea and in August 2013 Romanski dispatched her friend to Brussels to start writing. Jenkins had known people like the characters in the play, and would set his film in the same milieu. The story took place in Liberty City, the area where, without knowing it, both storytellers had grown up within several blocks of each other. What also struck a chord with Jenkins was the setting and tone of McCraney’s three-part story of Chiron, a bullied, gay black youngster struggling to find himself as he lurches from young boy to manhood by way of a tumultuous adolescence. There was something about the triptych structure that resonated with me.”

“It was 45 pages, non-linear and jumped back and forth. “ said it wasn’t my story but it reminded him of me,” says Jenkins, who in the years since Medicine For Melancholy had gone down the well-trodden Hollywood path of seeing several projects fall apart. It was called In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue. Jenkins brought up a short piece by the highly regarded young playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney that a friend from Miami had given him. It began in January 2013, five years after Medicine For Melancholy had put Jenkins on the map, when he and college friend and producer Adele Romanski were looking for a project.

Moonlight barry jenkins