More than a decade after his feature film debut, Chain Letter, Deon Taylor is diving headfirst into the genres that first sparked his love of filmmaking.
In his new thriller, The Intruder, Taylor turns his lens on Annie and Scott Russell (Meagan Good and Michael Ealy), a married couple who purchase a stunning estate in Napa Valley from an older gentleman, Charlie Peck (Dennis Quaid). Unfortunately, though the couple is determined to make the home their own, Charlie refuses to let go of the house--or of his obsession with Annie.
Ahead of the film’s premiere, Taylor spoke with Shadow And Act about moving from pro-basketball to film, The Intruder, and why he has never given up.
Taylor has always been interested in telling stories on film. However, —there wasn’t always a clear path for him to do so. That never deterred the Gary, Indiana native. Instead, he dug deep and gathered every resource at his disposal to begin making the films that ignited his soul.
"This script was one of the first scripts that I read, and I said, ‘This is me,’" he said. "I've always like[d] other people's scripts. However, being an independent artist, I've always been forced to write my own thing because I've been trying to find that one thing that speaks to me. I just liked everything about The Intruder. It was such a fun read, and it took me on a ride. It was the blueprint to a lot of the things that I really wanted to do film wise. I'm a rule breaker. Everything just really spoke to me as a blessing because David Loughery is such a great writer, a much better writer than me. But, it was just fun to read something that really sparked.”
Though screenwriter David Loughery didn’t initially have a Black cast in mind to portray Annie and Scott, Taylor knew this was an opportune time to put a spotlight on Black people in the thriller genre. "It was an opportunity to show a millennial couple that just so happens to be African American," said the Meet the Blacks director. "I loved that I could drop them in there and have them buy a $3.5 million house. Casting wise, they were all my choices. I've always loved Meagan and Michael and what was interesting about this movie was sometimes when you get ready to put together these types of films you wanna go after people that audiences recognize. Michael Ealy is such a strong, dynamic actor. I just feel like Meagan is just someone that I've been a fan of for a long, long time. I had never seen Meagan do this. I'm always trying to play someone against [a] type, which is what I did with Paula Patton in Traffik."
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