It’s the morning of the Academy’s Nominees Luncheon and a perfect blue-sky day in Beverly Hills. The Beverly Hilton hotel is buzzing with catering vans, publicity staff and all that precedes an all-hands event on this scale. But next door, at the Waldorf Astoria, tucked away behind the doors of an upstairs ballroom is an oasis of calm with the relaxed, fun vibe of a family reunion. The Sinners team are gathered for our Deadline shoot, and with the film’s record-breaking 16 Oscar nominations, the moment feels both celebratory and deeply meaningful.
At the center of the shoot, writer-director-producer Ryan Coogler places a hand on the shoulder of his longtime collaborator Michael B. Jordan. Beside them, Wunmi Mosaku and Delroy Lindo smile at a shared joke. Together, they chat. They finish each other’s stories. Eventually they dissolve into laughter, teasing Lindo about his love of the fake garlic on set that was actually chunks of white chocolate. The chemistry is palpable and lived-in, leaving no mystery as to how the magic of their bond came across onscreen.
Since the Warner Bros. film’s release, Sinners’ unique and genre-defying blend of the supernatural, the musical, and the historical, wrapped up in Southern culture during the Jim Crow era, has continued to dominate the conversation. Sold-out screenings sparked endless threads of introspective online discourse and history lessons. Now, with its long list of Oscar nominations, it’s clear the film isn’t just in the conversation; it is the conversation. These are the first-ever acting nominations for Jordan, Mosaku and Lindo. For Coogler, whose Black Panther became the first superhero film ever to land a Best Picture nomination, Sinners‘ success only further cements his status as a tastemaker and innovator.
What this particular moment for Sinners, feels like for me is, I feel very blessed and fortunate to have had the opportunity to find a career that I’m passionate about that always feels exciting, and that brings me into the lives of very unique and interesting people that I feel like I’ve always known.
Ryan Coogler
Together, the group will describe their creative process as if building a shared language. In their respective roles as Annie, the hoodoo priestess, and the savvy, gun-toting Smoke/Stack twins, Mosaku and Jordan reminisce on their habit of trading music playlists, while Lindo speaks too of how music helped him to ground his nuanced, vulnerable performance as the troubled but accomplished blues musician Delta Slim.
As a director, Coogler wove all these elements and characters together, not to mention the film’s big bad —the Devil in possession of an Irish rogue (Jack O’Connell) who hunts after the teen character Sammie (Miles Caton). But looking through Coogler’s filmography shows a common theme of balancing both spectacle and soul. He describes cinema as a quilt, with each filmmaker he admires adding a square in dialogue with those who came before. With Sinners, it’s clear he crafted his own square on that quilt, expanding community both onscreen and off.
Read on for the full interview with Coogler, Jordan, Wunmi and Lindo. They tell Deadline about this moment in time, building trust, opening themselves to vulnerability, and being four artists so in sync that the work of Sinners seemed almost supernatural.
DEADLINE: What defines the magic of Sinners for you?
DELROY LINDO: The widespread power and enduring ability of the film to connect with people deeply.
RYAN COOGLER: The magic of the film is my incredible cast. Getting all these talented people together, they are very lovely to be around, they’ve got different rhythms and they complement really well.
I think it was understanding that this movie is Ryan, and it’s coming from him. And knowing him for such a long time and understanding that I am a vessel for a lot of his expression. And I want to always honor that and understand where those things are coming from, so I can bury them into the character as seamless as I can.
Michael B. Jordan
DEADLINE: Since this is genre-bending film, what is something that you all would also like to star in to flex a skill that you haven’t before?
LINDO: My stock answer is always I’d like to play a Marcus Garvey-esque type character.
WUNMI MOSAKU: Oh, I love that. I want to be in a musical.
MICHAEL B. JORDAN: Any one in particular that you want to share with the world?
MOSAKU: I would love to play Miss Hannigan [in Annie], but I just feel like the perfect one has already existed.
JORDAN: For myself? I don’t know. I’m not sure yet.
DEADLINE: Michael, you like anime. Has anything caught your eye there that you would like to put out into the world? Should Toho be on notice?
JORDAN: Everybody should be on notice. But live-action anime, I don’t think it’s ready to be cracked just yet. I think we’re still a few years away from figuring it out. It’s really hard to translate what you feel, and what’s able to be conveyed in animation, specifically Japanese anime to live action, so I think I’ve got to do some more homework. I’m still working on that.
MOSAKU: But what about theater? You know we’re trying to get you into –
JORDAN: I know, I know, I know. Theater down the road for sure. I’ll do some theater.
COOGLER: When it comes to genres that I haven’t done that I would like to do, the best answer I think is all of them. I got kids, so I’m hoping to be around for a long time, and I’m hoping to work for as long as I can. There’s not a genre of movie that I don’t love. So, I hope to work on all of them. I’d like to make a soup-to-nuts. Rest in peace, Rob Reiner, you know what I mean, but When Harry Met Sally is one of my movies that I think about with him. And to me, that’s such a solid romantic comedy that feels adult in whole, and it has eternal relevance, you know?
LINDO: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
COOGLER: I would love to make a rom-com that works like that one day.
DEADLINE: Black Panther was the first superhero movie to get nominated for Best Picture. And now you have Sinners, which has broken the record with 16 Oscar nominations. What does this moment feel like for you, Ryan?
COOGLER: What this particular moment for Sinners, feels like for me is, I feel very blessed and fortunate to have had the opportunity to find a career that I’m passionate about that always feels exciting, and that brings me into the lives of very unique and interesting people that I feel like I’ve always known. Even though I’ve maybe met them recently along my journey. With these three, I met Wunmi most recently, but when I close my eyes it’s like I always knew Wunmi somehow. Even though we met a couple of years ago. But it feels strange to say. Watching my community expand and seeing her kid playing with my kids feels surreal. I think of her as family. It’s the same with Mike, it’s the same with Delroy. Delroy is my neighbor. So, I’m looking forward to when we get past this phase and I just catch him at the post office or something. We could go chop it up. I feel very blessed, awards aside, which is a symbol of a film connecting with people, but just the actual life, the actual career and experience, that has been the ultimate gift.
One of the strengths, one of the things that I most appreciate about Ryan is the generosity of spirit, which gives to each and every one of his colleagues agency, we can talk to him
Delroy Lindo
DEADLINE: Since you mentioned building your community of actors. Since the start of your career, you’ve been pulling up people with you. Through Sinners you’ve got first-time Oscar nominees with Wunmi, Michael and Delroy. But then through Black Panther Ruth E. Carter won her first Oscar and Angela Bassett got her second nomination in nearly 30 years. Your work seems to have propelled Black cinema in a way that transcends boundaries and audience recognition. What’s the importance to you in putting these Black films out into the world?
LINDO: Can I just say something really quickly? I always push back on the notion of Black cinema. It’s cinema. He’s impacting cinema. And it’s not Black cinema. You could say, it’s cinema that happens to be Black. But he’s impacting cinema, in my opinion, not Black cinema per se.
COOGLER: What I’ll say to add to that is, I see cinema as a quilt, you know? And I came up admiring that quilt before I even knew I wanted to make movies. And a lot of my favorite squares and pieces of that quilt were made by Black people and people from the diaspora. I felt the most at home in those pieces. But I admired all of them, and I feel like I’m in conversation with my colleagues. I look up to them and their work, specifically Spike [Lee], obviously; and John Singleton, rest in peace; Ava DuVernay; Nia DaCosta; Steve McQueen; Barry Jenkins; Jordan Peele. These are all filmmakers that I get inspired by, and I feel like it’s beautiful that I get to make things in the time that they are making them, and for the ones that came before me, I feel like I’m working in that tradition. It gives me a sense of connectedness and inspiration.
DEADLINE: For all of you, what was a scene you weren’t sure about, but then upon watching it back, you were like, “Wow, this is actually cooler than I thought”?
MOSAKU: I don’t think there was a scene that I didn’t think was going to work. I read it, and I thought it was a perfect script. I felt all of the characters. I really loved all of the characters and cared about them. The scene that took me by surprise was the chain gang scene and the improvisation between Stack, Delta Slim, and Miles [Caton], and seeing the blues come out of that moment, it was so profound. When I watched it, I was like, “Wow, was that in the script? I don’t remember that being in the script.” And just being completely in awe of their openness and their flexibility and their reception to the emotion that was being built up in the scene and Ryan not calling, “Cut” at the end of the monologue. It just took me by surprise, but the scene itself was perfect and then these moments of genius come through.
And there was another scene with Smoke and Annie in the shop when [Ryan] changed the second line from, “Why are you here, Smoke?” to “Elijah, why are you here?” And that was like, again, I thought it was a perfect script, a perfect scene, but then just calling him by his name broke the whole scene open to something else. It elevated the scene, it was just beautiful.
JORDAN: From a pure execution standpoint, there was a scene where everybody had to eat garlic in the circle. We really got to eat, you know what I’m saying? And the garlic was not garlic, it was white chocolate.
MOSAKU: It was crazy sweet.
JORDAN: They were garlic bulbs or cloves, whatever you call it. And they’re huge. So, we’re in the scene and passing this around, we’re eating and shit. I got gold fronts in and shit, so I can’t really eat with them in, and I’m chilling and I’m like, “I don’t know how the fu-k this is going to work out. I can’t even talk at this moment.”
COOGLER: So much fun.
JORDAN: So as the cameras moved around, we spitting sh-t out and throwing the chocolate at certain places on set.
COOGLER: I never got to talk about this. OK, so that day we got the fake garlic and it’s made out of white chocolate and the whole cast is there, and there’s two stunt dudes there too. And as soon as it comes out, Delroy’s like, “That’s too much chocolate,” and like, “The pieces are too big.” But he’s in character as Delta Slim. So he’s like, “Ryan, we can’t eat all this chocolate, man, we actors.” He’s like, “We got to cut it down into the smaller pieces, man.” I’m trying to figure out where the camera is going to be. And they all descended on the pieces, and they trying to break them smaller and smaller, and somehow Delroy became the executive of how small –
JORDAN: He started rationing the chocolate out to everybody. It was a whole exercise on that sh-t.
COOGLER: And I’m like, “It can’t be that bad.” He’s like, “No, try it, man. Eat one.” And I was like “Yo.” And then Del thought he was slick because he kept fake eating it. I remember –
JORDAN: [turning to Delroy] You were holding it in your hand and sh-t.
COOGLER: He would hold it and fake eat it and then Zinzi [Coogler] would be like, “Hey, he didn’t eat that.” I’m like, “I know.” And then when we cut it together, it kind of works because you’re not sure if he’s really eating or not.
JORDAN: It played to the whole suspicion of who was a vampire, who wasn’t, and stuff. So yeah, that just worked out a lot better than I thought it was.
COOGLER: Oh my gosh. Man, that just brought me back into being in that scene, bro.
JORDAN: That was good.
DEADLINE: Do you have anything to say for yourself, Delroy [laughs]?
LINDO: No, no. He said it all [smiles].
DEADLINE: Wunmi, going back to what you said earlier about the relationship between Smoke and Annie, it seems she’s the only one who can get Smoke to slow down and listen. What conversations did you and Michael have with each other and Ryan about portraying their dynamic, especially since by the time the audience sees them on screen, they’ve already had this whole old part of their relationship play out?
JORDAN: I think understanding a bit of the history and how they came to be together, what kind of losses they had together created who they were. And a lot of music, we had these playlists that we would share with one another or songs that would remind us of our characters or what we were going through, and we would constantly share back and forth or listen to them together. And that was really an emotional kind of tether of our arc throughout the movie.
It was really like, oh, actually me and Michael now know each other well enough and trust each other well enough, not as well as Smoke and Annie, but we know Smoke and Annie so well, and we know each other well enough to know that there is no wrong answer now.
Wunmi Mosaku
It was also a lot of vulnerability. I think it was understanding that this movie is Ryan, and it’s coming from him. And knowing him for such a long time and understanding that I am a vessel for a lot of his expression. And I want to always honor that and understand where those things are coming from, so I can bury them into the character as seamless as I can. And understanding that, I think we added an opportunity to share a bit of those experiences, and how can we infuse those into the relationship. That was a very fulfilling part of it and a very emotional part of it. But it starts with just trust and vulnerability, and so I think that was a main thing that we went through together. And always checking in on one another.
Whenever I’m as Smoke, I’m always by Wunmi, and we’re always kind of together. And there’s this one scene that we did right after Stack died, at the time, and Smoke shot Mary, and she ran out, Smoke’s kind of like the aftermath of that moment, he’s kind of in shock. And I remember Wunmi coming over and just being that support for Smoke and sat by him and held his hand a little bit, and it was a moment. And the first take or two, there was a bit of reservations, but our process of where Annie was and where Smoke was there was a bit of almost over-respect of our processes, and we had a sidebar conversation about that. I was like, “Yo, if we ever feel like that again, let’s not second-guess it at all. And let’s just always just follow that instinct and just do whatever we feel.”
And I think that was a turning point moment for… not that it wasn’t happening before, but it just took it to another level of comfortability and freedom that we can really move however our characters see fit and everything’s on the table. And that kind of unlocked some stuff for us. Not to speak for you, but that’s that.
MOSAKU: No, definitely. I feel like she was definitely his protector and his shield. That moment that Michael was just talking about, you don’t know as Wunmi, if you are going to overstep a boundary that Michael needs to process his character’s loss. And that moment was really, when we had that conversation, it was really like, oh, actually me and Michael now know each other well enough and trust each other well enough, not as well as Smoke and Annie, but we know Smoke and Annie so well, and we know each other well enough to know that there is no wrong answer now. That there’s just a free rein to be creative and express what we are truly feeling. So that was a really beautiful moment because we were able to just go, “Oh, we’ve got each other, and we understand each other now.
JORDAN: And we both had the same feeling about it.
MOSAKU: The same exact feeling.
JORDAN: So, when we had the conversation like, “Oh, sh-t, I was feeling like this.” You were feeling like that. And it just came together in a really dope way. So yeah, it elevated a lot of stuff for our dynamic for sure.
DEADLINE: Delroy, I was talking to Miles recently and he said what he loved about watching you on set is that you would be off listening to old school music to get into character. Talk a little more about how that helped your process with Delta Slim?
LINDO: It was just trying to immerse myself in the musicians from the region, Delta blues, and I always reference Son House, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Ike Turner. And I know Ike Turner is controversial, but he was a brilliant musician and very, very knowledgeable about the traditions that the music comes from. And so I would, in addition to listening to the music, I was watching documentaries. But as far as the music is concerned, yeah, it helped me to stay focused and connected. And with a musician like Sunhouse, really interesting because he was navigating throughout his life the relationship between the sacred and the profane. And that just resonated for me.
And then when I would hear a musician like Howlin’ Wolf talk about… There was one, there’s the expression of the music, just the way Howlin’ Wolf sounds and the content of his music, but then he would talk about his relationship, for instance, with Muddy Waters. So all of that was just enlightening for me, and it really helped me stay grounded in the world that Ryan had created. And through the reverence that I have for those musicians, hopefully it could help me infuse, to use Mike’s word, infuse what I was feeling and how I was responding to the music into my own work as Delta.
DEADLINE: You mentioned the complexities of those musicians and infusing them into the character. How did you work with Ryan to further inform Delta Slim? I’m thinking about the times you’ve spoken about having conversations to leave that car scene in or building up Delta throughout the film.
LINDO: Delta Slim is critical to the story and that came from Ryan. There was never any intention to shortchange my presence in the narrative. And as far as the various processes, I don’t want to talk for Ryan.
COOGLER: It’s all good.
LINDO: But we would talk. As far as the various processes that Ryan was navigating as a storyteller, despite that, there was always an openness from him. And I’ve said in countless interviews that one of the strengths, one of the things that I most appreciate about Ryan is the generosity of spirit, which gives to each and every one of his colleagues agency, we can talk to him. So the areas that I was concerned with, I could always talk to him and know that I was being heard. And I’ll say this, and again, I don’t want to speak for him. The things that were not in the cut that I first saw, Ryan himself was aware of the importance. So, it was not like I was having to twist his arm and say, “Man, you need…” No, he understood, and I want to believe that he and I were sufficiently connected creatively that he understood what I was saying and why I was saying it. And so it was an easy call to reinsert those things. And again, I don’t want to talk for Ryan, but that was my impression.
