00:00Noni for Essence News on the red carpet for Clemency, starring Alfre Woodard.
00:05Tonight I'm going to be asking the stars of the movie, what does a movie about a death
00:09row executioner add to the conversation about social injustice?
00:13Check it out.
00:16We've never heard from the people that have to carry it out.
00:23So it wouldn't matter how I feel about the death penalty, because that's not what you
00:28bring when you find a character.
00:31I have to find the woman.
00:33I had to be able to learn her point of view and see the world out of her eyes.
00:38And so I went with Chinoya to prisons in Ohio, met with women wardens.
00:46They are just like us, but with doing the work that states say they want done.
00:58Nobody wants to talk about with them.
01:00And it takes a tremendous toll.
01:03They have a higher rate of PTSD than some of our troops that have done five, six tours
01:10of duty in Afghanistan, but yet they serve.
01:13It's a kind of suffering we just don't, we don't know.
01:16You know, I worked with Alfre a long, long time ago and I always said, God, I hope I get
01:21to work with that actress again.
01:23And part of it's, you know, that as I've gotten to know her over the years and I realize as
01:29skilled, as instinctive, as talented and as generous as she is as an actress, she's even
01:36more so as a human being.
01:37It was really cool to be under the leadership of a black woman who had directed and written
01:44this piece.
01:45Because of the experience that Chinoya has given us individually or as scene partners
01:51or whatever, when we got together today and spoke about this, there was one panel, we
01:56all were crying.
01:57I think it's when you really, it's artists coming together, doing what we wanted to do.
02:02And when you have artists coming together to do that with a great story too, it's just...
02:07So, I'm hopeful that through this film, I'm just hoping that it opens hearts and opens
02:13minds because that's really important.
02:15We need to really achieve social justice for all.
02:19It'll be my first time seeing it with an audience, so I'm really interested to see how they play
02:23that out because this movie is heavy.
02:27In terms of how we deal with real life, I think that this film proves that we have bigger
02:32issues to address when it comes to how we engage the problems within the judicial system.
02:37And I think this film brings out a lot of those questions for the audience to ask themselves,
02:42how do I really see the situation when it comes to the death penalty, when it comes to
02:46life in prison?
02:49Do these people deserve a second chance?
02:51So it's a very timely movie.
02:53We don't pose a question and give you the answer.
02:58We just pose a question and allow you to figure out the answer for yourself.
03:00It's a very important story that Chinonye just, wow.
03:06I mean, mind-blowing.
03:07When I first read the script, I knew that this was going to be something visceral and very,
03:13very important.
03:14I hope that audiences in watching Clemency will connect to the ecosystem of humanities tied
03:20to not just capital punishment, but to incarceration.
03:24I think that this is a film that is really rooted in the humanity that exists between prison
03:28walls.
03:29And I believe that we really need to get to a place where we're not defining people by
03:32their worst possible acts.
03:34We're not discarding their, we're not writing them off, but we're really seeing their humanity
03:38because that's how change is going to happen.
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