By Dov Kornits
“I think the impact is going to be felt…his legacy is going to come just as much afterwards,” says Devon Terrell when we meet him at a swanky Sydney hotel on the promotional trail for his role as a twentysomething Barack Obama in the drama, Barry, an indie which was picked up for global distribution by Netflix. “My generation and the generation under me have someone to look up to,” he continues. “When I look at him, I go, ‘That’s someone that I want to be like as a person.’ Not as a President, but his values as a person and his morals. I was thinking that I was the only person going through this, but doing the research, you realise that the struggles that he went through and the way that he came out of it is incredible. I hope that Barry is a part of that legacy.”
Born in Long Beach, California to an African-American father and Anglo-Indian mother, the dual-citizen moved to Perth at the age of five. Barack Obama was a natural inspiration, and the period which is depicted in the film – when Obama first came to New York to attend Columbia University at the age of 20 – was something that Devon Terrell could immediately identify with after he himself arrived in Sydney at the age of eighteen to attend NIDA in 2011. “I knew that I needed to get away, grow up, and learn more about myself as a person… just like Barry. Literally! We’re very similar in terms of the way that you put yourself in a position where you feel alienated. You grow in the situations where you don’t know what to expect. That was my main goal in going to NIDA: to grow up and become a man.”
Although Barry is the first time that we have seen Devon Terrell on screen, his big break came when Steve McQueen (12 Years A Slave, Shame, Hunger) cast him in the lead role for his HBO pilot, Code Of Conduct, which, although produced with a supporting cast that included Helena Bonham Carter and Paul Dano, never went to series. “Six months out of drama school, Steve McQueen plucked me out of Sydney,” says Terrell today about the revered British artist/filmmaker who he still calls a friend today. “I did the first audition, and they loved my tape, so I did my second audition in Sydney with notes. Then I got the call saying that they wanted me to audition in New York. It was a big open call, and I got the role. It helped with Barry in terms of what it takes to lead. When you’re number one on the call-sheet, there’s a demand to bring your A-game every single day, and for people to look at you as the barometer. Steve also made me grow up very quickly. He’s a brilliant man. He’s extremely talented and demands a lot of you, and when you meet those demands as an actor, there’s no better feeling.”
Although it never aired, being cast in a leading role by one of the world’s great filmmakers augured well for Terrell’s future prospects. And it didn’t take long for his agent to call about another leading role. ‘I don’t want to scare you but it’s Barack Obama,’ warned the agent of the script for Barry. “I was like, ‘Count me in,’” remembers Terrell. “And then I said, ‘Let me read the script.’ I had a big emotional connection with it, and halfway through, I forgot that it was Barack Obama, and it just became the story of Barry. I know what it’s like to be mixed race and struggling with identity, and it’s how you come out of that, and he came out of it in such a positive way. It felt like the Barack that we don’t know.”
After clicking with Barry’s director, Vikram Gandhi, over a skype session, Terrell was offered the role, which then triggered the casting of the supporting parts, including Ellar Coltrane in his first post-Boyhood role as Obama’s college buddy, and one of today’s hottest actresses, Anya Taylor-Joy (The Witch, Morgan), as an amalgam of three of Obama’s girlfriends during his Columbia University days.
And then there was the research. “I read the books and all the articles about him back then,” Terrell explains. “I tried to stay away from him today. I tried to understand what his ex-girlfriends said about him. Because I have so much respect for him, I wanted to put my whole life into it – learning how to play basketball left handed, writing left handed, speaking, walking, talking…everything that I could do, I wanted it to be as real as possible. I didn’t want people to watch it and think that it’s Devon playing Barack, I wanted this to be about Barry.”
Goal accomplished, with Devon Terrell’s performance receiving award-buzz after it premiered at this year’s Toronto Film Festival. And how did he cope with that unique voice and staccato? “I listened to his voice constantly,” Terrell replies. “I didn’t try to keep in character. If someone came up to me, I talked to them. But before every scene, I tried to remind myself to think about where the voice is landing. I didn’t want to mimic him. I wanted it to sound authentic to what he would have sounded like at that age. And the looseness… I’m a very direct person, so I had to find the looseness and the swagger that he walks with. I had to find the subtle confidence that he has, but then take it back and also be the quiet guy in the corner. A lot of people remember him being the quiet person in the corner – observing and battling in his own mind. People said that he was in his own mind just trying to find an eloquent answer to everything. He was a man struggling to find where he fit in the world.”
And now that the 24-year-old Devon Terrell has found where he fits in the world, he is off to New York next year to take his career to the next level, in search of the next acting and life challenge. Let’s hope that this eventually brings the actor back to Australia, because if Barry is anything to go by, then Devon Terrell is going to be our next big movie star.
Barry is available on Netflix from December 16, 2016. For more on Netflix, head to the official site.
