There isn’t much Keith (Bentley Green) remembers his mother Cheryl (Wanda Sykes) giving him as a child in “Undercard,” except maybe passing him a blunt when he was six. Before being shuffled over to another household where he could grow up with a little more care, he knew well enough to avoid any drugs that he could see even at his young age debilitated his mother, but he did end up picking up someone else from her when he put on a pair of boxing gloves, carrying on a legacy from her work as a corner woman at a Liberty City gym.
The battle that takes place outside of the ring in Tamika Miller’s drama ends up being as fierce as anything inside of it when Keith has developed into a potential draw as a prizefighter and Cheryl, back on the wagon for the last decade, could be the right trainer for him, though she’s been busy with another up-and-comer Kordell (Xavier Mills) who could prove to be his competition locally. Not only do Keith and Cheryl go at it, having years of disappointment to overcome, but Cheryl has to contend with the ever-present threat of maintaining her sobriety and continually proving herself when she’s broken people’s trust before in the grip of addiction. Miller shows considerable muscle of her own as she watches the estranged mother and son roll with the punches, finding their footing in a place where so many have beaten the odds as Cheryl is quick to remind Keith that he stands in a place that was once a refuge for those forced into the margins by segregation even as they were celebrated elsewhere.
Ultimately invisible foes appear as the most formidable opponents in “Undercard,” which Miller and co-writer Anita M. Cal elegantly bring out, armed with a surprising left hook of their own in casting Sykes in a rare dramatic role. The film actively tells the story of underdogs while becoming one of its own as it conquered crowds on the festival circuit and will begin a nationwide release this week and on the eve of opening in theaters, Miller spoke about how she found boxing as a way into a story of self-reliance and legacy, a decade’s worth of preparation and honoring the city where she grew up.
Is it true this all started in the gym for you?
Yeah, there was a there was a time when I was a bit obsessed with boxing as a workout. I never wanted to get hit, but I was training at a wildcard boxing gym in Hollywood and got to know a lot of the trainers and boxers coming up. As a storyteller, I thought I’ve never seen a film that features a woman boxing trainer in this male-dominated field, so “Undercard” was born when I was immersed in boxing, coupled with just my wanting to see something I’d never seen on film.
If you were in L.A., at what point did Liberty City enter the mix since it’s such a key part of the story? I particularly liked the scene outside of what’s assumed to be the Hampton House where so many legends passed through town.
I’m from Miami. I was born and raised in Miami, a a stone throw from Liberty City and the pork and beans projects are pretty well-known. There’s been a lot of you know gentrification over the years and a lot of those tenements have been torn down, but it’s a community that’s rich with history. Although I don’t specifically mention the name of the place in the film, there’s an homage to [Hampton House] where so many Black legends have come through and stayed at because they were not able to stay in Miami Beach [due to segregation], so Etta James, [Muhammad] Ali, all these different luminaries would stay in Liberty City and many people don’t know that history there. It also happens to be the same place that Barry Jenkins set “Moonlight,” although I think my script was written before that.
Wow. You’re able to show off the environment so well, using the wide frame with a lot of negative space. Did the way you want to shoot this come immediately?
It’s interesting because I love the negative space and having my actors off-center. I think that lends itself well to a film really having more depth and more intimacy and the shot, particularly of that hotel [that stands in for the Hampton House] and these other moments when I had the opportunity to shoot at some really great locations, it was really important to me that I maximize the production value, like “Let’s see this place,” so if there was a great mural or some wonderful graffiti, I really wanted to capture that. And that homage to the Hampton House is also about really capturing the scope and the depth of what this place was.
I also loved the church with the incredibly high ceiling where the AA meetings took place. What was that like to find?
That church was such a fabulous location and while the film is set in Miami, we filmed in Puerto Rico. It was written in the script that this AA meeting would happen in the basement of a church and one of the my producers said, “I have this great location, this church. Why don’t you take a look?” And I saw some photos of it and I was blown away by the beauty. It’s a condemned church. There’s nothing in there but pigeons, but it had the rafters and it was just so cinematic. The colors really popped.
What sold you on Wanda Sykes for this?
“Undercard” is a film that has been 10 years in the making and Wanda’s been on from day one. I always loved the idea of Wanda. I’ve been a fan for a long time of her comedy and when Wanda read the script, she was like, “Wait, where are the jokes? Queen Latifah wasn’t available?” We had breakfast and talked about the material and I just said, “Wanda, look, you have been a woman in the male-dominated field of comedy for 20-plus years and you have been slaying it. It’s that kind of vulnerability and fearlessness that I want in this role and I knew that no one would see this coming from her. That made it even more exciting for me to have her on board.
Wanda fell right into this role. We had only a couple of days to rehearse, and I rehearsed with her and Bentley Green, who plays her son Keith in the film. For me, it was really more about the two of them being comfortable with one another and trusting each other as actors. And Wanda, we know for her comedic timing, but from my observation, it was not a stretch for her to drop into this role of Cheryl and I had the utmost confidence in her being able to pull this off. She was amazing to work with.
One of the scenes that was really moving was a big confrontation between Cheryl and Keith that actually seemed to have similar choreography as one of the boxing matches in the film. What was it like to block that out and create that dynamic cinematography?
That’s was probably my favorite scene on the page in the script and for a long time, I thought about it and I knew there had to be a lot of movement. The bodies had to be moving. But we never rehearsed that scene on purpose and we only did two takes. As you can see, the [actors] really brought it and I knew in my mind how I wanted to block it, [a bit like] cat and mouse [with] give and take, [with] someone walking away, the other person stopping them. We played that out a little bit on the night. [I said] “This is what I’d like you to do, like you can’t stand in front of each other and talk because that’s not what would really happen in real life. We usually are moving around, so I’m just grateful that both Wanda and Bentley trusted me to to guide them.
When you’ve had on your shoulders for a decade, what’s it been like to unload it and see audiences engage with it so far?
It’s exciting. “Undercard” had a couple of festival screenings late last year and our film won the Audience Award back-to-back at the Newport Beach and St. Louis Film Festivals, so that was a great affirmation and people are really responding to the film, so I’m excited to get out to the world. It’s one thing to make the film, but a whole other to actually get it out to the marketplace and I’m very much in production mode to a great extent [since] I really want people to see it and talk about it. It’s a film that’s filled with a lot of heart and I want people to be moved by it. For me, this is not a boxing film. This is really a film about a mother and son and about family and redemption. Those are the themes that mean the most to me. Boxing just happens to be a backdrop.
“Undercard” opens in theaters on February 27th.