Ryan Coogler on How 'Black Panther 2' Led to His Latest Film, 'Sinners'

Set in 1930s Mississippi Delta, Sinners stars Michael B. Jordan (his fifth time working with Coogler) playing dual roles of twins Smoke and Stack, bootleggers who return to their hometown in Chicago, looking to establish a place where folks can get together and let loose away from the Jim Crow racism so pervasive at the time. They rope in the help of a Hoodoo healer named Annie, who’s played by Wunmi Mosaku, and their young cousin Sammie, played by newcomer Miles Caton. Things go awry, as the film morphs from an historical drama into a music-fueled horror.

OkayAfrica spoke to Coogler to find out more about making the film.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Was there something you took from preparing for Black Panther and Black Panther 2: Wakanda Forever that you perhaps kept in the back of your mind to use as inspiration for Sinners?

I always treat my past experiences like stepping stones each time, ordinarily and creatively and technically. A big thing for me was the self-examination that is a part of my process – that led me to go to the continent [of Africa] and research before making Black Panther. This film that we just made, Sinners, is very much in conversation with that, because in going back to the continent, I skipped over the American South, which is a more recent home for my ancestors.

What's funny is the Black Panther films brought me to that place physically, because I had to shoot in Atlanta for the most part of both of those movies, and that's in the American South.

My first time seeing a cotton farm, an actual cotton plant, the field itself, was when I was in Byron, Georgia, shooting the scenes for Black Panther 2: Wakanda Forever. So, it's funny, because Black Panther physically brought me to the South. I was there physically, but not mentally until that moment [of self-reflection.] Until that moment of seeing that, and realizing here I am, I'm late thirties, I had never seen one. And I did that same type of ancestral research, and pondering, on Sinners, but it was in a location that was cultured in a legacy that was much more recent for my ancestors.

Speaking of the South, the blues is at the heart of this film, but there are so many forms of music and art that you invoke. In one of the film’s stand-out moments, with Miles Caton’s character playing his guitar, you bring in West African music and griots and other elements, showing in incredible homage, how music is so interlinked across time and space - from Lagos to Lars Ulrich. What informed that scene?

That's a great question. I'm a Black man, I'm a former athlete, I'm a filmmaker. I was raised and steeped in spiritual practices. I went to Catholic school, from kindergarten through my senior year of high school. So, I'm very cognizant of, and almost obsessed with, rituals. But I didn't know to call them all rituals.

Until I actually went to South Africa, and I saw a Xhosa man describe what I would've called a get-together or a party. Where I'm from, we call it a ring-a-ding-ding. But that’s what that is. It’s in 1932, but that scene is part of a ritual. That's what that is. My experience over my life, including my time on the continent, has made me more attuned to rituals, the specificity of them, the specificity of its participants, the historical context of them, and the function – because rituals always have a specific function. They have a function for the group, they have a function for the individual.

And it is very important to people who are struggling, especially when they're under forms of repression. You will see them double down, triple and quadruple down, on the value of their rituals, so that these are not broken, so that these are not forgotten.

It hit me like a ton of bricks. This big, giant party and these gangsters and sharecroppers, they just need a night of reprieve once a week, from all the shit that they're dealing with. And all the shit that they're going to deal with in the coming weeks. The reality [is] that a lot of them might die before they see better times. The reality of how fucked up their parents had it, and their grandparents had it. That they can participate in this ritual, that's so awesome. It's so powerful. It gives them a release from that. And for me, it was about figuring out, through film language, what that would look like.

Wunmi Mosaku told us that working on this film helped improve her Yoruba. What did you tap into her background for?

She's incredible. She's an exceptionally humble person, but an insanely gifted actress, and a great technician. And she’s a new mom. This is her first big role after becoming a mom. It was very fitting for this character, because I saw Smoke [Jordan] and Annie [Mosaku’s character] as grieving parents. And that's kind of their approach to everybody if you watch the film in that light, in their performance. I was honored that this was her coming back to work after becoming a mom. And she had such an incredible insight into story-telling and performance.