Tonya Mosley

And I was just curious, when you were writing that dynamic, were you consciously setting up two different kinds of traps?

After your first film, Little Woods, Jordan Peele tapped you to direct Candyman, which is a reimagining of the 1992 film directed by Bernard Rose about an urban legend, this supernatural figure with a hook forehand who appears when you say his name five times in a mirror.

But your version digs deeper into racial violence and systemic erasure and

that created that legend.

And I actually want to play a clip from the film.

In this scene, Billy Burke, played by Coleman Domingo, lives in what was once the Cabrini-Green housing project in Chicago.

And he's telling Anthony a story of the Candyman.

Let's listen.

That was a scene from the 2021 film Candyman, directed by my guest today, Nia DaCosta.

What was it about the original Candyman, and specifically about what you could bring to it that made you know you wanted to direct it?

I also want to talk with you about your aesthetic because I'm starting to see it.

Like with every movie, it becomes clear.

There's a moment in Candyman, actually there's several, and actually in Hedda as well, where you are holding on to these long, unbroken shots.

So we're locked

into the character.

We're moving through space and you just don't cut it.

There's like no tight, medium, wide shots of these different spaces.

Where does that come from?

What are you trying to make us feel when you are refusing to cut away?

Candyman opened at number one, and it made you, as I mentioned before, the first Black woman to debut at number one at the box office.