WATCH: Karan Kendrick and Brie Larson discuss their unmissable film ‘Just Mercy’

Dec 24, 2019

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Just Mercy may be the most important film of the year and there are tons of reasons you should run, not walk to your nearest movie theater to see it. The film that stars Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Foxx hits select theaters on Christmas Day and opens wide on January 10.

Jamie Foxx tears up while discussing his father at ‘Just Mercy’ screening at AFI Fest

In it, Jordan (whose company produced the powerful flick) portrays attorney Bryan Stevenson, the real-life hero who has been fighting to exonerate the wrongfully incarcerated through the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) he founded in 1989. Since then, he has saved more than 125 men from the death penalty. In 2014, he wrote Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, which is the basis of the film produced by Jordan’s Outlier Productions.

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Jamie Foxx co-stars as Walter McMillian, a death row inmate who insists he’s innocent. O’Shea Jackson, Tim Blake Nelson, and Rob Morgan delivered incredibly impressive performances and two fiercely talented women make a major impact as well. Karan Kendrick plays Minnie McMillan, a wife who refuses to lose hope in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. Brie Larson plays Eva Ansley, EJI’s co-founder who has a passion for the plight of death row inmates and helps Stevenson in his quest for justice however she can.

TheGrio sat down with both of the actresses to find out how they tackled the crucial roles and showed how two very different women were able to support and strengthen two very different men.

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“One of the really powerful things about this film is that it gives us the opportunity to have uncomfortable conversations,” says Kendrick.

“Being a student of Bryan Stevenson, I learned so much. It wasn’t just me making those choices about that character,” she said. “That was very much part of the conversation with Dustin and Bryan from the very beginning.”

Check out the full interview above.