September 15th, 2010
The young star of Friday Night Lights takes us behind-the-scenes of George Lucas' upcoming World War II biopic about the Tuskegee Airmen
Red Tails will be George Lucas's first original project since ending the Star Wars Saga in 2005 with Revenge of the Sith. George co-wrote the screenplay with John Ridley, and chose Anthony Hemingway, who has mostly worked in episodic television, to direct this rousing true-life tale of the Tuskegee Airmen. History hasn't been too quick to acknowledge this team of African-American fighter pilots, formally the 332nd Fighter Group of the U.S. Army Air Corps.
The film will trace the group's constant struggles throughout World War II, when the American military was still racially segregated and subject to Jim Crow laws, which prohibited black soldiers from fighting alongside white soldiers on the battlefield. In chronicling the Tuskegee Airmen's bomber escort missions in Europe, Red Tails will also provide George Lucas the opportunity to reenact some of the greatest aerial battles ever witnessed in history. It was these same aerial battles that influenced and shaped the many starship dog fights seen in the original Star Wars trilogy.
Red Tails won't be released until later next year, but we recently caught up with its young star Michael B. Jordan, who plays pilot-in-training Maurice 'Bumps' Wilson. Often called the Denzel Washington of his generation, Michael B. Jordan rose to prominence on Friday Night Lights and has recently joined the cast of Parenthood. He chatted with us about Red Tails, working with its all-star cast that includes Terrence Howard, Bryan Cranston, and Cuba Gooding Jr., the rumors swirling around those pesky reshoots, and what we can expect once the finished movie is in theaters.
Here is our conversation:
Can you tell us more about the character you play in Red Tails? There's not a whole lot of information about Maurice 'Bumps' Wilson out there...
Michael B. Jordan: I want to talk to you about Red Tails. But it's currently in post. There have been a lot of rewrites. We did a lot of reshoots. I am not sure, exactly, what the finished product is going to be right now. I play young flight officer Maurice Wilson. He is a Tuskegee Airman straight out of camp. He is straight out of flight training, he just got his wings, and he landed in Italy. He is a really young pilot, but he is eager to be a man. He is eager to fight. But he has a lot of learning to do. Some of the veteran pilots take him underneath their wing. They show him how it is done in a war. It's like a freshman going into college for his first semester. The upperclassmen take the freshmen under their wing. They show him the ropes. They try to make him feel comfortable. They want to make him feel like a part of the crew. That he is one of the boys in this war. Because we are out there by ourselves. I'm not sure how familiar you are with the Tuskegee Airmen and their journeys, but during the early 1940s, we didn't have any rights at all. They didn't want us over there. They didn't want African-Americans fighting in the war whatsoever. So we kept each other company. And we kept each other focused. For the war, we weren't actually allowed to engage in air-to-air combat. We weren't allowed to engage in any fighting, whatsoever. For the first six months, we were literally practicing, and dog fighting, and training. The first time that we went out on an actual mission, we were veterans. Because we'd been practicing for the first six months between ourselves. We weren't allowed to actually fly. Or see any of the action. When we first got action, that is how our reputation started to build up. We got known for our flawless missions because we were already pros by the time we stepped into a plane and actually saw live combat.
Red Tails comes to theaters in 2011 and stars Terrence Howard, Daniela Ruah, Bryan Cranston, Cuba Gooding Jr., Tristan Wilds, Lee Tergesen, Andre Royo, Method Man. The film is directed by Anthony Hemingway.
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