"It's so mean and wicked and evil", Mary J. Blige addresses police bruatlity promoting 'Body Cam'

Record ID: 1553946

  • Title: "It's so mean and wicked and evil", Mary J. Blige addresses police bruatlity promoting 'Body Cam'
  • Date: 21st May 2020
  • Summary: UNIDENTIFIED FILMING LOCATIONS (MAY 21, 2020) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) ACTRESS, MARY J. BLIGE, SAYING: "There's so many of our people being gunned down every single day by the police in the United States so that's what drew me to the role and the fact that there's so many good cops that get looked over because of corruption in the police system so those are the two reasons that drew me. And, of course, the mothers that are grieving over their children every single day, even right now today."
  • Embargoed: 4th June 2020 23:54
  • Keywords: African Americans Film Mary J. Blige body cameras horror police violence race
  • Location: UNIDENTIFIED FILMING LOCATIONS; BRUNSWICK, GEORGIA, UNITED STATES;
  • City: UNIDENTIFIED FILMING LOCATIONS; BRUNSWICK, GEORGIA, UNITED STATES;
  • Country: USA
  • Topics: Arts / Culture / Entertainment,Film
  • Reuters ID: LVA006CEVKABX
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: CONTAINS PROFANITY
    Since she appeared in 'Mudbound' in 2017, Mary J. Blige has been splitting her time between acting and music, appearing in TV shows such as 'Scream: The TV Series' and 'The Umbrella Academy'.
    The Oscar nominated actress is now carrying an entire film in 'Body Cam', a supernatural thriller about a police officer investigating the unexplained deaths of her colleagues.
    "I pick my roles the way I pick my music. It has to be relative to me, it has to be relative to someone else and it has to be something that moved me enough to want to play the role," she told Reuters in an interview on Thursday (May 21), adding "I have to have an emotion or something in me that can bring this person to life and I do the same with my music."
    The film is set against a backdrop of police brutality in modern day Los Angeles. Blige plays a bereaved mother and police officer, who is returning to night shift on the day that relations between police and the African American community have reached fever pitch.
    When a police officer is brutally murdered and strung up, Blige's character Renee sees something unusual on the body cam footage of the officer and decides to start her own investigation.
    When asked why she took the role, Blige replied "It wasn't so much the horror of it all although I'm a huge horror movie fan. That's all I watch, mostly, is horror movies but that wasn't the reason I wanted to be in the movie and play this role. The reason was because there's so much corruption in the police system that people needed to see that they're not alone in it."
    Blige said that she feels numb every time she sees reports, like the recent killing of jogger Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia by a white former law enforcement officer and his son. A recently released video from 2017 shows a police incident involving Arbery, where an officer attempts to tase him, but the taser appears to malfunction.
    "It's unbelievable. It's so, it's so mean and wicked and evil. I don't understand why innocent people, young people, black people are dying at the hands of police. I don't understand it. It hurts, it hurts really bad."
    "It makes you a little nervous, because I have nephews that are like in their twenties and nieces that are young and just trying to live their lives. We're all trying to live our lives and then cops are able to come and shoot us down like dogs when they get ready or people can just drive up on you while you're taking a jog and just shoot you because they think that you did something wrong. Man, it's just ridiculous," she said.
    In 'Body Cam', which is available to purchase now and will be available to rent on June 2, police brutality is taken to task - not only by Renee but also the spirit world.
    (Production: Rollo Ross)
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2020. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
  • Usage Terms/Restrictions: None
Register