There is a moment when Judas and the Black Messiah where two lovers face off, alone in a room and suspended in time amid the revolution. At that time, no one was younger or more passionate than these two. Deborah Johnson (who now serves for Akua Njeri), played by Dominique Fishback, opens a diary and reads a poem for Illinois Black Panther Party vice president Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya). We hear it and watch it watch it with love.
The poem is originally from Fishback, but belongs to Deborah. The love story is a true story made fictitious and, although we know how it will end, this poem and its guarantees seem the most important truth at this moment, a gift.
Above zoom, Fishback is equally effusive and attentive, careful with his words, but never spared them. The 29-year-old actor, writer, poet and self-proclaimed “Jessica Dia do Capuz” (she is a great New girl fan) has a natural aptitude for apparently everything. She was the high school class speaker, captain of the basketball team and prom queen. His first professional test was for an HBO miniseries, Show me a hero, with David Simon, which she managed and later led Simon to write Darlene’s role for her in The Deuce.
If everything looks so perfect, you should know that the job was to work. In March, Fishback will turn 30 and will be officially involved in the entertainment industry in some way for half his life. As a teenager, she was part of the MCC Youth Company, an after-school theater program in New York that allowed children to write and represent original works. “That was when I started to discover that I was a poet and started to really find my light on stage.”
Even before having a focused audience or artistic medium, she would stay up late, admiring Lucille Ball’s physical comedy in I love Lucy, and writing in her diary about the different ways she would have interpreted scenes in Sister, sister. In 2014, she debuted a solo show, Subverted, who was nominated for the New York Innovative Theater Award and in which she played 22 different characters. And, before receiving an email from director Shaka King offering him a role in Judas and the Black Messiah “If she wanted to”, she was writing her own pilot for a Black Panther style Romeo and Juliet romance.
“Acting is part of my purpose as a storyteller, but I need to tell my own story too,” she says. “I have to write and create from my own experience to help other people see each other.” Now she is playing a part of the couple of unhappy real-life lovers.
The film follows the FBI informant (Lakeith Stanfield) who helped the agency carry out the assassination of President Fred, a period contained on the screen that overlaps his burgeoning relationship with Deborah. It is real, and it is dark, this collision of life, death and more life – Deborah is pregnant at the time of the assassination of the president – and there is still an undeniable light contained in the story of this young love. Who, if not a poet, could fight against the darkness and give us that light?
“I wrote the poems in Judas and the Black Messiah like Deborah, ”says Fishback. “Poems about your dimples, poems about your first kiss. Diary notes of things we don’t see in the film. “
You also won’t hear all of these poems in the film, most of them belong only to Deborah, but the process of creating them was an important part of Fishback’s interpretation of that part of the story. “I wanted to make sure that it was fully performed outside the Black Panther Party and outside [chairman Fred]. “
Photo: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
In real life, Akua stopped writing poetry when he met the president, but for the film, Deborah, who was only 19 at the time of the murder, keeps a diary. Originally a prop, the diary became a talisman. Even now, he’s still with Fishback. During our Zoom, she flipped through its pages, showing drawings, clippings from newspapers and magazines, pages of statements from female bubble letters opposite the pages by hand.
Fishback plays Deborah with strength, softness and care. Being part of a local community that practiced mutual care and respect for each other gave Fishback access to a deeper level of trust, understanding and freedom in his work, which allowed him to harness the energy he hadn’t felt in a while. “When I started doing television and cinema, I stopped writing poetry and felt blocked,” she says. The care she felt on the set helped her overcome that block, something that was crucial for her to embody the character. “Deborah had a lot of confidence and love for President Fred. I knew it couldn’t be blocked to incorporate that. “
In her first moments alone with the president like Deborah, she is bold, provoking him for her shyness; after her release from prison, she calmly reveals her pregnancy; and, just like Akua did in real life, Deborah covers the president’s body with her own pregnant body through a police bullet storm.
“I already had my share of police terrorism,” says Fishback. “I don’t have to imagine what it is like to hear gunshots up close: I know what it’s like. Sometimes we think, ‘Why did I have to try XYZ?’ I always see this only as a more detailed view of the characters that I must incorporate. I pray to be a vessel for spirit and energy to flow. “
In addition to using previous experiences to inform her performance, the setting on the set helped her to highlight and bring her own love to the story of Deborah and President Fred. “I learned unconditional love on a personal and professional level from this cast and crew, and my poetry suddenly became love poems, soft poems,” she says, looking surprised. “I am always Brooklyn, I never imagined that all the poems I would be writing were so soft and extravagant.”
Then Fishback has his eyes set on romance, comedy and fantasy (Lucasfilm: Call her for Children of Blood and Bones adaptation!) There is more writing to be done as well. And a book club on Instagram to manage. Maybe even music eventually. “As a writer, I never meant to say it was just one thing,” she says. “If I can take what I’m learning now and help other women while I’m evolving, then I can pay it forward.”
With half a life dedicated to that moment, its continuous evolution proves that one thing will never be enough to define it. From children’s theater to the writer, from the poet to the actor, everything that their light captures comes to life in its brilliance. How fortunate for us that, as witnesses to its light, we can enter that glow now too.