00:00It's called Shuffle right there.
00:07If your cast had a theme song, what would it be?
00:10Yeah? Good question, Shay.
00:14You've been a DJ for the whole movie.
00:18It's amazing grace.
00:20I was just gonna say, because you played that so much.
00:23It's amazing grace. It's the grace of everybody here
00:26taking on this wonderful story,
00:29the grace of Bryan Stevenson, the grace of Walter McMillan
00:32and all of those guys who maybe they didn't even know
00:35that something like this would be in our future.
00:38Because what's crazy about it is that at any point in any time
00:42we could feel things slip away from when you're in a situation
00:48that you don't know if you're gonna get out of it,
00:50but the amazing grace of great people is always celebrated.
00:59Just Mercy is a movie about Bryan Stevenson,
01:04who's an incredible human being, a defense attorney,
01:07who started the EJI, the Equal Justice Initiative.
01:09And it takes place over a course of several years
01:13on one of his most famous cases of Walter McMillan,
01:16a wrongly convicted man of rape and murder,
01:20of heinous crimes that he didn't commit.
01:22And he gets them exonerated.
01:24Along the lines, you meet a few inmates
01:27that he had to take on early on in his career.
01:30And yeah.
01:32Is that a good element of pitch?
01:33That was good.
01:34Kinda. It was a little rough around the edges,
01:36but we got there.
01:37High five.
01:38We got it. I wasn't ready.
01:39Let's go to the score.
01:40I wasn't prepared.
01:41Ten! Ten! Ten! Ten! Ten! Ten!
01:44I remember when I learned about it,
01:46because I was with Destin,
01:47we were kind of just talking about the state of the world,
01:50and I was talking about just feeling like I wanted to do more,
01:55and he was like, oh, you should read this book.
01:57And the book just was hard for me.
02:00It just hits in waves of knowing that I needed to finish it
02:04and feeling so much pain while reading it,
02:06and it really stayed with me.
02:08I think it's, especially right now,
02:10it's so easy to just get depressed
02:13with how much problems there are in the world
02:16and feel like, oh, there's nothing really I can do,
02:19so I'm just not going to do anything.
02:20But the life of Bryan Stevenson
02:23and what he has proven to me
02:25is that we can make a difference.
02:28And it's incredible the amount of change
02:32that that one man and the team that he has created
02:36has done in this country already.
02:39And I'm so excited to see what he's going to do next.
02:43When I saw the first picture of Minnie McMillan,
02:46I felt like I knew her.
02:48I felt like in her I saw my grandmother immediately.
02:51And so being from the South,
02:52there was an experience that I absolutely understood.
02:55So allowing her to live in all of those moments,
02:58that's what I was trying to do
03:00and to best serve her experience.
03:03When I read the script,
03:05it was so unbelievably humbling
03:07to be asked to be a part of this project.
03:11And yet the character is really quite an extreme person.
03:18And so it asked for a level of characterization
03:21that is anything but humble.
03:25And so it was really about finding that balance
03:30to keep the pyrotechnics down
03:35but still be honest to who the guy was.
03:37And that was a really interesting balance to try and achieve.
03:41I don't know, for me, reading up on Anthony,
03:45Anthony Ray Hinton and everything he had to go through
03:48for him to just be cutting the grass for his mom one day
03:52and then to get picked up and to be accused
03:55and put on a death row for a murder he didn't commit.
03:58Sixteen years in, he got a ballistic specialist
04:01to prove that he didn't do it.
04:03And all he had to do was have any judge in Alabama
04:06look at that report.
04:08And they didn't for an extra 14 years.
04:10And he had to lose his mom.
04:12And for somebody to have that much taken away,
04:15I wanted to give something to him.
04:17So it was important for me to embody Anthony.
04:21And he's a joyful man.
04:23He likes lifting people's spirits.
04:25But it's just a certain feeling you get when the cell doors close.
04:30Even on set, it's just that quiet on set.
04:34It's just a feeling that blankets over you.
04:37And so you've got to harness that and realize what you're there for.
04:41One of the lines that resonate with me, I believe you have,
04:43is watching a river full of people drown and can't do nothing about it.
04:48You know, it's like that kind of attitude towards our justice system
04:52on the outside looking in blatantly on how it disrespects,
04:57you know, if you're poor and innocent, you're way more guilty
05:00than you are if you're rich and guilty.
05:04You know what I mean?
05:05If you're a teenager being accused of stealing a book bag
05:09and you sit in jail for three years without no trial,
05:12then you're a college student, rape a girl behind a dumpster,
05:16and you get six months probation because they don't want to mess up your future.
05:20What kind of justice system is that?
05:22And hopefully with this movie we can create that kind of dialogue
05:25that we can move towards some healing
05:27and actually get a real justice system in place, you know?
05:30Peace, you know?
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