Delroy Lindo is feeling the love and planning for the future.
The actor says that his Oscar nomination for “Sinners” has shown him how many people are thrilled for him.
“That’s been truly monumental,” says the supporting actor nominee. “And I can’t help but be impacted by that because it’s a lot of positive, really positive energy and it comes from all over and it is very, very, very genuine. It feels wonderful.”
And this appreciation hasn’t just come in the happy times. After a person with Tourette syndrome shouted a racial slur as Lindo and Michael B. Jordan presented during the British Academy Film Awards ceremony, more support came his way, including a standing ovation while presenting an award at the NAACP Image Awards six days later.
“It is a honor to be here amongst our people this evening, amongst so many people who have shown us such incredible support,” Lindo said onstage Saturday at the event. “And it’s a classic case of something that could be very negative becoming very positive.”
Lindo took home the supporting actor trophy that night, ahead of the Academy Awards on March 15.
He’s in the running for an Oscar his “Sinners” performance as bluesman Delta Slim, in a category also populated by Jacob Elordi for “Frankenstein,” Sean Penn and Benicio Del Toro in “One Battle After Another,” plus Stellan Skarsgård for “Sentimental Value.”
While the U.K. has been keen to claim him as a British Oscar nominee, the London-born actor sees his years growing up in America as the making of him.
“The reality is my career has been in the United States and the irony is, had I not had my career in the U.S., you and I would not be talking right now,” he says during an interview with The Associated Press in London, before the BAFTAs.
His film CV boasts “Malcolm X,” “Get Shorty,” “Clockers,” “The Cider House Rules” and “Da Five Bloods.” On TV, he’s been an FBI agent on “Kidnapped,” a sheriff on “Blood & Oil,” a lawyer on “The Good Fight” and an estranged father on “UnPrisoned.” His theater work is equally impressive, with a Tony nomination for portraying Herald Loomis in “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” on Broadway.
And despite the awards season circuit dominating his time at the moment, Lindo shared his wish list of future projects with the AP.
Spiritual roots
Lindo is set to wear three hats — of director, co-producer and actor — for a film set in Jamaica, where his mother was born.
He says he plans to show a different side of the Caribbean island.
“They think about sea, sand, and sun, and that’s wonderful. But I am interested — in this particular story — in showing, sharing with audiences the spirituality that’s in the land and in the people,” explains Lindo.
Unfinished Bard business
“I’d like to play Othello on film, I really would,” says Lindo.
He’s portrayed Shakespeare’s tragic hero twice onstage in the 1990s and still feels inspired to revisit the role.
“I remember, cumulatively, the second time playing it, I developed such an appreciation for the material, for that man, and to be able to delve into that again on film intrigues the hell out of me,” he said.
Acting the activist
Black nationalist Marcus Garvey influenced Malcolm X and Civil Rights Movement leaders. Lindo’s been linked to playing Garvey before but says he was never actually approached about it.
“I think that Marcus Garvey, obviously an incredibly important person historically, and the organization that he started, the UNIA (Universal Negro Improvement Association), was also very, very important,” says Lindo. “I’d like to play something kind of Garvey-esque.”
Writing Windrush
In 1948, a ship named the Empire Windrush arrived near London, carrying 800 passengers from the Caribbean to new lives in Britain.
Lindo’s mother was one of them. Her journey is something he’s writing about in a memoir about how he came to be born in the U.K. and how they are both “representative of Windrush.”
“I feel that I haven’t seen a lot of stories that, in cinema, in film, that depict … wide enough aspects of that extraordinary experience. I’d like to do something that reflects that,” he says.
