Jonathan Majors

The Black Reel Awards nominee recently chatted about Sony Pictures Releasing's biographical film in which he played Ensign Jesse Brown.

You know what I mean? So for that performance and that story to push through, and for me to be the one, the tip of the spear in that it was emboldening, man. You’re supposed to be stoic and trustworthy or the batty, batty, you know what I mean? There’s always secrets in a play and in a story where you go, oh, we going to talk about that? And because maybe there’s something about the crucible of just being in the Navy together and also seeing yourself in another individual that you wouldn’t expect to see it in. I mean, there’s a lot of chaos that’s happening, you know what I mean? And the maneuvers, I mean the opening sequence that you guys will see, that’s in camera. And from the beginning of the film, you watch Tom and Jesse engage in that. Was that all in the script for you or did you really have to go through a lot of that? It’s not important to me, I don’t care how you really look at it, but when you look at it in this totality, you see that the arc of it is, yeah, it’s emotional and there’s a breaking, but there’s also a pretty immediate rising of a phoenix that happens. I’m going through something, Jesse’s going through something, and the audience is going through something. “When I read the script, I was just bowled over by how heroic he was in battle and outside of battle,” he explains.