Winston Duke has had an incredible few years as an actor. As well as playing the fan-favourite M'Baku in record-breaking Marvel Cinematic Universe blockbusters like Black Panther and Avengers: Endgame, he's also made an impact in the likes of Us and Spenser Confidential.
Now, Duke is taking on a very different role in Nine Days, an original sci-fi project that sees the actor play the lead and serve as a producer behind the camera.
When we were recently lucky enough to catch up with him and co-star Zazie Beetz (Deadpool 2), we asked Duke what excited him most about exploring an original concept like Nine Days coming off the back of being the star of hugely successful movies like those listed above.
"It wasn’t coming from some sort of IP. I really was attracted to how creative something like this could be. This is something that exists on such a smaller scale compared to something like a Marvel piece [but] still felt incredibly grand in its idea and scope," Duke tells us in the video above. "You’re dealing with the afterlife and there’s world-building very similar to an Avengers world or building a Wakanda. It’s building a lexicon of language and physical language and rules to a world very similar to creating a Wakanda or any kind of comic book world."
"It still felt really big because we were doing a lot in a very short time. Those big movies, you get like 70 days, whereas we had 23 or 24 days to shoot 116 to 118 pages. It still felt really great and a cool challenge to learn a lot and have a lot more onus in a piece. You don’t really get that on Avengers, You don’t really feel like you own it," the actor and producer continued.
"On Nine Days, I felt like I owned a piece not just as a producer but as a contributing artist. Zazie got to feel like she owned a piece of this movie because she was there making sure things worked. David Rysdahl got to feel like he owned a piece of this movie. Benedict Wong...that was really great and really a testament to making things in that independent film model too."
This insight is really interesting, and it's hard not to be excited about where Duke plans to take his career next. Nine Days is a movie that feels like it could have serious awards potential (you can read our 5* review by clicking here), and the actor clearly gave a lot of thought to what it means to be a producer on a project that's vastly different to those billion dollar blockbusters he's appeared in.
Nine Days will be released in New York and Los Angeles on Friday, July 30, 2021 and nationwide Friday, August 6, 2021. We'll share our full interviews with the cast early next week.