Barry Jenkins Instagram – I won a DGA award for THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD. Or rather I should say that myself, Liz Tan, Elaine Wood, Spoon, RichLEIGH, Jesse Carmona and AJ Bruno won a DGA award for THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD. And truly, anyone who’s name was ever on a call sheet any of those 116 Days of production shares in this award, both cast and crew, the most cohesive and inspiring I’ve ever worked with. Which isn’t to say the others weren’t cohesive and inspiring, but, given the challenges posed to this crew — the mental, logistical and emotional challenges? My goodness. And if I have ANY regrets about the making of this show, it’s that we could not have a proper wrap to take a deep breath and share in the thing we’d all completed.
And we would NOT have completed it without the @celluloidgypsy Liz Tan, our 1st AD. No one will EVER know the feeling of sitting in that office with Liz fighting to save this show. And she’s too modest, so she would NEVER tell anyone the sacrifices SHE made to get this train onto the tracks, to get James and Kiva and I to day one so we could somehow get to days two and three and, eventually, 116. I’ve rarely felt as whole as looking at Liz on set and realizing she was proud of me, that I had lived up to the faith she had in me and the sacrifices she’d made to stick with this show and see it through. On a show with pitfalls EVERY DAMN WHERE, she kept us on schedule, on time, working and reworking and REWORKING the schedule so this crew had reasonable days with damn good vibes (so long as you weren’t driving a Gator 🤣) and an emphasis on mental welfare being every bit as important as securing page counts.
I would have loved nothing more than to rent out the Kimball House and just go from table to table shaking every single damn crew-member’s hand; from the teamsters all the way to the women set way back in that elementary school tracing out those patterns — every single damn one.
Sadly, that was not to be, but, my SINCEREST thanks to you ALL 🤲🏿 | Posted on 17/Mar/2022 22:59:09
