Ntare Mwine Talks 'The Chi,' Embracing Ronnie And Connecting With The South Side

Some television shows make your heart race -- they make you gasp for breath as you anticipate the next twist and turn. Then, there are shows that speak to your soul; they seep into your consciousness dredging up long forgotten memories. In her outstanding drama series, The Chi, Golden Globe winner Lena Waithe give the South of Chicago back to its people. Told in a cinéma vérité style, The Chi shows everyday folks scratching, surviving and most importantly, living. Layering an extensive character study with a coming-of-age tale, Waithe seamlessly connects the lives of Emmett (Jacob Lattimore), Brandon (Jason Mitchell), Kevin (Alex R. Hibbert), and Ronnie (Ntare Mwine). We watch as they confront themselves, their Black manhood, and one another after a violent event interlocks their lives forever. Over the course of the ten-episode first season, it’s Ronnie that makes the biggest transformation – leading him down a path that even Ntare Mwine didn’t see coming.

As I stepped into the infamous Blue Moon Café in Brooklyn’s Fort Greene, I spotted Mwine seated near a window with a cup of tea in his hand; the actor stood as I approached. Unlike his character, Mwine’s face was bare, Ronnie’s infamous goatee and haunted eyes were gone for the moment. Instead, a bright and warm gaze greeted me. Mwine was eager to chat about the role that has changed his life most unexpectedly. The New York University alum wasn’t apart of the original cast of The Chi, nor was Ronnie a role he thought he could tackle. "I came on board the second round in the regular audition process," he remembered. "It was a role that I'd never done before, so I didn't think I was right for the part. But the casting director, Carmen Cuba, cast me in the show, The Knick, so I went. The audition scene was Ronnie high -- smoking on the couch. I had no idea how to even play this. I couldn't see myself doing it. I literally went to the audition just to thank Carmen for casting me in The Knick, because it had opened up so many other doors. I didn't do a great audition. I walked out and went back to the car. I got a call from my agent, saying, "She thinks you're right for the role, but she doesn't want to submit the tape she made, she thinks you can do a better tape." (Carmen) asked me to do a self-tape, but I was going to Uganda for the holidays. (I) came back, and never did the self-tape because I thought, “I'd love to do it, but I'm not right. They're gonna find someone from Chicago to do it.”

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Tiffany Boone Talks 'The Chi,' Black Women And Telling Complex Stories

Chicago is being used as a political pawn. Murder rates and gang violence are splashed across our newspapers and television screens with no consideration for facts, figures, and the people who live and thrive in the city. Lena Waithe’s critically acclaimed Showtime series The Chi, gives the city and the South Side, in particular, a chance to speak for itself. The Chicago native’s engrossing characters and words are what drew actress Tiffany Boone out of her acting hiatus and back to television. A few days after The Chi was granted an early season two renewal, Boone and I chatted over the phone. The Baltimore native explained why the role of Jerrika Little shook her awake and reinvigorated her desire to tell stories. “I read it, and I was like, ‘Oh my god, I have to be in this. How do we get me in this? Do it now,’ she recalled. “I auditioned, and I didn't get it, and then they cast it, shot it, and then completely recast it. Here we are three years later.”

It wasn’t simply Waithe’s love letter to her hometown that drew Boone to the story, The Following alum connected with Jerrika because she found a kinship with the young woman. “She felt familiar to me," Boone remembered. “I normally play characters that are very different from me. I've played quite a few murderers and a lot of crazy people. It was the first time I had read something that felt, really super close to me. (Jerrika) is a young Black woman trying to get her career together and trying to build this strong relationship with this man she's in love with. She’s strong, funny, independent and complicated —it felt like me, it felt like my friends, it felt like my family, it felt like I knew her. That's what made me want to play her. Then with Jason (Mitchell), we just understood each other from the beginning. It's just a second hand with Jason and I. I think Jason is also in a situation where Brandon is the closest to him that he's ever played as well. We brought a lot of ourselves.”

Thus far, The Chi focuses on four men, Emmett (Jacob Lattimore), Brandon (Mitchell), Ronnie (Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine) and Kevin (Alex R. Hibbert) whose lives intersect after the murders of two young men from their neighborhood. However, women are very much a part of this tapestry. “The women, at least in the first season, are orbiting them -- we are the planets orbiting their sun," Boone explained. “So, you don't get to see a lot of our lives, outside of our interaction with them. I thought (the scene with Jerrika’s girlfriends) was great and I would love to do more of that. For Black women, our relationships with our girlfriends are so important and so vital to who we are. Your girlfriends are your refuge. What surprised me the most is when (the ladies) showed up to set -- the friends. They were all natural too, and all of us were different sizes and shapes and colors. It was amazing to see the way they cast that and immediately we had a camaraderie.”

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Jason Mitchell On 'TYREL' And Refusing To Conform (Sundance Interview)

It’s freezing in Park City, Utah, but Jason Mitchell is unphased by the brisk windchill and unending slow flurries. The 31-year-old's career is continually rising, and it shows in his upbeat attitude. His performance on the Lena Waithe helmed The Chi is garnering rave reviews, but Mitchell is at Sundance for another project entirely. In TYREL, the New Orleans native stars as Tyler, a young man who takes a trip to upstate New York with one of his friends. He soon finds himself trying to navigate blinding whiteness as the only Black person in the group. When Mitchell read the script which was penned by the film’s director Sebastian Silva, he jumped at the chance to be involved. “It was the most unorthodox thing I think I'd ever seen,” he explained. “(Sebastian) let me know that he wanted me to have the role, but he also wanted me to make sure all the nuances were right because he’s not Black.” As Black folks, we’ve all experienced that sense of unease that comes with being the only Black person in a room. It’s a feeling Jordan Peele captured perfectly in his stellar Oscar-nominated film Get Out. It's a feeling that Mitchell further emphasizes in TYREL — sans the horror elements. “I feel like it's important to let people know how we feel, meaning Black people, especially Black men in this situation,” Mitchell expressed. I think it's important to do that in a non-violent manner. I thought this was the perfect way to show that everyday struggle. A lot of times my characters go to extremes, like Ronsel in Mudbound— he was very extreme.”

From his breakout role in 2015’s Straight Outta Compton as the legendary Easy-E to his more recent roles in The Chi and Amazon’s Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams, Tyler is Mitchell's closest role to an every day Black man, and he wanted to be sure that the screenplay reflected as such. "(Sebastian) really wanted to know if you were Black, how would you feel in this situation," he said, "A lot of the ways I moved reflected that. That's what makes TYREL such a beautiful movie. They have things in there that only black people can get.”

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