![]() But each was able to spend time with the men whose stories they were now telling. None of the actors playing DuVernay’s five young protagonists were alive in 1989. “I’m constantly trying to learn, I guess, as I get older, or through my entire life, what is my place of privilege, right? To examine the undue benefits that life has given me just based on the virtue of the colour of my skin, and the accident of my birth in North America,” he says, adding later: “So this is a part of that for me, that continual process of learning.” As a young man, Jackson too came into contact with the criminal justice system when he was charged with assault and intoxication in North Carolina back in 2002. Joshua Jackson, who plays Mickey Joseph, Antron McCray’s defense attorney, is perhaps best known for his role as Pacey Witter in Dawson’s Creek. And that’s why people like this man could make comments like that.”įor others, being involved in a project exploring such direct themes was a reminder of their own privilege growing up. “That’s the underlying current of why the justice system is imbalanced. From the 1600s all the way through history to today,” he says. “The corollary, the overriding theme, is keeping black and brown people in their place. But Blair Underwood, who plays Robert Burns, a trial attorney for Yusef Salaam – another of the five boys – sees Trump’s intervention as part of a historic trajectory. Many of the performers in DuVernay’s series seem reluctant to discuss Trump’s continuing role in the saga. It offered a portentous insight into his ability to draw on racial division for political gain, and yet another reason why revisiting the case feels so important today. Trump took out advertisements in all the major New York daily newspapers days after the attack in 1989, calling for the five boys to be executed. This despite DNA evidence tying another man, who later confessed to his involvement, to the rape, and a decision by the city to vacate the charges against all five of the wrongly accused. The case continues to polarize opinion in New York with many, including Donald Trump himself, still arguing the five men were responsible for the crime. To hear these successful actors talk about their own conversations at home is a stark reminder that the endemic injustice on display two decades ago has not gone away. Niecy Nash and Jharrel Jerome in When They See Us. Nash, herself a mother of three, says: “We definitely have to have the conversation because, with the playing field not being level, the goal is for them to make it home alive.” Niecy Nash, who plays Delores Wise, mother to Korey, another of the five boys, nods in agreement recalling the scenes in which she is forced to comfort her son in prison. Williams is familiar with such talks, as many African American families across the country are, and he says he drew on conversations he had with his own son as he performed the scenes. None is more confronting than Bobby McCray explaining to his son he should sign a false confession in the hours after the attack due to his misplaced belief it would allow him to walk free. Some of the most moving sequences are the intimate moments between parent and child as the adults are forced to explain the brutal realities of policing to children of colour. DuVernay’s series is something of a revisionist history, choosing to focus primarily on the story of the five boys and their families as they navigate the sharp end of the criminal justice system. Williams, now 52 and best known for his role as Omar Little in The Wire, plays Bobby McCray, father of Antron, one of the five boys falsely convicted. Seeing them failed, and feeling like something was not adding up.”Ĭaleel Harris and Michael K Williams in When They See Us. “Looking at the news I see these young boys and they resemble me. Michael K Williams was 22 when the incident took place, living in the neighboring borough of Brooklyn. These videotaped confessions would later go on to secure convictions against all five boys in one of the most closely watched trials of the decade. The five boys were paraded in front of the media after, they say, they were intimidated by NYPD officers into falsely confessing their involvement in the assault – despite no DNA evidence linking them to the scene of the crime. The case ignited existing tensions in the city, drawing into sharp focus the racial bias of the city’s police force, its manifestly unequal justice system, and the prejudice of New York’s white establishment class. The five boys were falsely convicted of the rape of a white woman, Patricia Meili, in Central Park in the spring of 1989. When They See Us is a new four-part Netflix series from the Oscar-nominated director Ava DuVernay that revisits the case of the Central Park Five, a group of wrongly accused black and brown teens from Harlem.
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