At times, I found watching Emancipation so painful that it was almost unbearable. Its director, Antoine Fuqua, knew this and—to his great credit, I think—talked to me openly and at length for this group of Q&As about his film. Will Smith, a producer as well as the star, answered questions separately by email, and his costars Ben Foster and Charmaine Bingwa spoke to me as well. All of which is to say that—though the Apple Original Film was a late entry into the calendar after a now legendarily difficult year for Smith—the team is very much united behind it. In the movie, Smith plays Peter, a man who escapes the shackles of slavery through the treacherous swamps of Louisiana. It’s inspired by the frankly inconceivable trials and tribulations of an escaped slave best known to history as “Whipped Peter.”

You’ve seen the photo of Whipped Peter, which is enshrined in history books. Peter sits with his decimated back facing the camera, covered in keloid scars, ravaged by lashings. The photograph shows the physical manifestation of the atrocities of slavery, the inhumanity that man can inflict on man. It’s so powerful that it became one of the most widely circulated images of slavery of the 1800s and beyond, shaping public opinion by depicting the horrors of the institution in a single image. The photo demands your attention, even if you can hardly stand to look at it.

It’s fitting, then, that Emancipation is unflinching as we travel with Peter on his Odyssean journey toward freedom and to family. Fuqua and Smith see to it that we bear witness to Peter’s unimaginable hardship—first at the hands of his overseer Fassel, played by Foster, and then as a soldier defending the very country that enslaved him—all in an effort to return to his wife, Dodienne, played by Bingwa in her film debut, and their children. Even Robert Richardson’s cinematography evokes the photograph that inspired the movie.

Not much is known about Peter beyond the indelible photograph, but Fuqua worked with historian Erica Armstrong Dunbar to imagine his escape from slavery and eventual enlistment in the Union Army. Fuqua is the director who guided Denzel Washington to his only best-actor Oscar statuette, as LAPD narcotics operative Alonzo Harris in the director’s 2001 film Training Day. In his acceptance speech, Washington called Fuqua “a brilliant young…African American filmmaker.” Since then, the director has made Southpaw, The Magnificent Seven, and The Equalizer franchise. Now, over 20 years after helping Washington become only the second Black actor to win an Oscar for best actor, Fuqua has set his sights on telling a story about our history, in part, because he believes we are in danger of forgetting it.

“Some young kids were born, the first president they saw was Barack Obama,” he tells me over Zoom. “If we start our history there that means we forget all the past. We forget about Martin Luther King. We forget about Malcolm X. We forget about all our great leaders in the past. Do we forget about Nelson Mandela? We’ve got to go back and we have to have discussions about the past, so that we can move forward, and so we can start healing.”

Healing, of course, is not always a linear journey. Smith knows this firsthand, having spent much of the past year reckoning with the fallout from his outburst at the Oscars. He declined to answer a question about that episode and its effect on the effect on the movie, but Fuqua talked about it frankly, saying, in part, “The film to me is bigger than that moment. Four hundred years of slavery is bigger than one moment. My hope is that people will see it that way and watch the movie and be swept away with the great performance by Will and all the real hard work that the whole crew did.”

Emancipation hits theaters on December 2 and streams on Apple TV+ the following week. Ahead, interviews with the filmmaker and his cast.

Director Antoine Fuqua

Vanity Fair: Since the deaths of George Floyd and Eric Garner, and the Black Lives Matter movement, there have been a lot of conversations about how to depict—and whether we should depict—trauma and violence against Black people, specifically Black men, onscreen. Many people believe we should shy away from it. Yet, with Emancipation, you’ve gone in the opposite direction. Why did you depict brutality perpetrated against Black men?

Antoine Fuqua: Well, first, I respect everyone’s opinion. I really do. It’s an emotional conversation because it hurts. We all witness these things way too often on the news—the brutality [against] a lot of people in the world, Black people in particular in our country, Black men being shot down by police constantly. Also, the violence against each other: We just lost a young brother from Migos. That breaks my heart. The other young brother went to Roscoe’s with his girlfriend. There’s something wrong. There’s something going on.

The only thing I can do is try to tell stories that I think could be inspiring in some way but remind us of our history. Because there is a responsibility: We are citizens of the United States of America and that’s the same country that kidnapped us and forced labor and brutalized us with violence for greed. So, I don’t think we can forget that. I don’t think we go about it with bitterness. We should go about it with an open heart; we should go about it hoping to have conversations about it and try to start some sort of healing about it.

If we keep brushing it under the rug, there’s a chance of things happening again. As we see in the world, neo-Nazis are saying things about the Jews again. We’re going to allow history to repeat itself just so we feel good at night? There’s a great saying that courage only matters when everything’s on the line, and sometimes that means being uncomfortable.

I hear people walking around saying, “What’s up, king? What’s up, queen?” We were kings and queens in Africa but also slaves. You can’t forget that history—there’s no modern world without us. Rome had slaves. America had slaves. Spain had slaves. It’s part of the world we live in. You have to look at that and tell stories about those things and try to find a new way in, which I hope we did.

I appreciate that. Some have argued that we don’t need any more slave narratives. There’s an argument that seeing violence perpetuated against slaves as entertainment will only promote more violence.

Well, I’m just a filmmaker, I don’t know what it does. What I do know is that…[long pause] I don’t think the killing of George Floyd had anything to do with a movie. That brutality on a people is passed down in generations. The ugliness, the pain—that doesn’t just go away.

As a filmmaker, I wasn’t out looking for a slave movie; I never saw Emancipation as a slave movie. I wrote “sacred motivation” on the top of my script, because it was something more spiritual for me and for Will. It was a story about triumph. I used to sit with Will and the writer and we’d go through the script with the producers and everyone. I remember saying, “Let’s take out anything that says Peter’s afraid.” What fear? Fear of man? What can man do to you? They’ve already treated you like an animal—less than an animal. Living as a slave is death. What he had was, he was free in the mind. His body was a slave, [but] his mind was free. His heart was free. His spirit was free. He was free to love. He was free to be unselfish, to help other people. He was free to inspire.

You mentioned that you wanted to find a new way into telling this story. I think one of the most interesting techniques that you employ is the mostly black-and-white color gradient of the film, with some pops of color.

The great DP Robert Richardson—he shot it for me. When I first jumped on the phone with Bob…. First he told me, “I better not get bitten by a snake.” Because he hates snakes, and his exact words were like, “Antoine, don’t get me fucking bitten by any snakes” [laughs]. So then he said to me, “How do you see the movie?” When I read the script, I saw it as beautiful and brutal. There’s something about when you look at the real brutality of slavery, the real inhumanity of slavery, the degrading way other human beings treated other human beings—it doesn’t even feel like it’s on earth.

Because we live in a modern world today, it’s easy for someone to say, “I don’t want to see that anymore.” But think about the reasons they did that—the greed. You have people today that are ignorant, running around talking about a civil war again and the idea of slavery again and all that silliness that’s never going to happen. There’s no more slavery, that’s a wrap [laughs]. But you realize that they don’t even know what slavery was about. Because if they did, they’d know it’s more about industry.

As a Black man who saw the film, it was physically painful to watch because of the violence and the trauma—thinking about what my ancestors and my great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents went through, and how much time has passed and how little time has passed. How do you want people to feel as they watch this film?

I understand. I remember hearing a quote—it may have been Maya Angelou—that said, “Not knowing is painful. Knowing is even more painful.” It’s hard for you to watch because you know it’s true. You know your ancestors really went through that. So for you, it’s even harder.

But it’s necessary, because you can’t forget the level of brutality that human beings are willing to go through for money, for greed. You watch things now—you watch Trump and the whole circus, what do you think that’s about? Power and money. Power and money. You’ve got children dying, being shot up at schools, and you’re going to tell me you can’t do anything about guns? Me and Will and Ben Foster—we had long conversations about the truth. It was always about trying to find a way to be inspiring [and] showing people that you can make it through anything.

Don’t ever let anybody break you, take your faith, your spirit away from you. “Emancipation” means your mind as well, not just your physical body. You have to have a purpose and you have to be on the righteous path of love and unselfish love. That’s the key to me. That’s what the movie is really about: unselfish love. It’s a love story, I’ve always said that.

Will Smith had his own incident in front of the world, an incident of violence, that caused quite a stir. I would love to know your reaction to that moment, given the fact that we’re seeing Black trauma play out in real time with the star of your movie.

It hit me later. I was still having post-traumatic stress syndrome about being in the swamps of Louisiana. People were calling me and texting me. I couldn’t deal with that—I was still dealing with the other thing. But it didn’t feel real to me at all, because I was with Will for two years and I haven’t met a nicer human being. I’m being honest about it. He was kind to everyone on the set. Will would go around and hug and shake hands—we had 300-something extras and military. Marines. We had to stop Will from doing that because of COVID. He’s funny. He’s fun. We had certain extras that were the dead bodies in the graves, and he would go give them money for laying there in that heat over 100 degrees.

So, I saw a different person than that one moment in time, and so my reaction was that particular moment is very foreign to me when it comes to Will Smith. I have nothing but amazing things to say about Will Smith, really genuinely. You can ask anybody that worked on the movie, they’ll tell you the same. Nicest person I’ve ever met in my life. Chris Rock—I know Chris—Chris is a good guy too. I’ve spent time with Chris, and I think it’s an unfortunate event and I hope we can move forward and get past it.

But you’ve got to remember, Will did a movie. The movie was supposed to end in October, but we didn’t finish that movie until January because of a hurricane, the heat, COVID, a tornado, and 12 other things. It was just crazy, really. It’s really hard to release a character who’s been brutalized and called the N-word every day—constantly, every day—and still be the nicest person in the world. That, I know. So no excuses for anyone or anything, but I can say that he’s a good man and I hope that people can forgive him and that we can move forward. I hope Chris and Will find a way to sit together publicly, privately, whatever, and make amends. I think it would be an incredible statement.

Speaking of Apple, it was unclear whether or not this movie would actually be released this year. When did you decide, and how did you decide, “Okay, we’re showing this movie to the world. It’s coming out this winter no matter what?”

It was always a full conversation with Apple. They were very sensitive to myself, to Will, to all the people who worked on the movie. There was never a conversation with me and Apple or my producers, Todd Black and Jon Mone or Heather Washington, about the movie not coming out. It was more about, “We’re assessing everything. We’re seeing what people are saying.” They were very careful about it. Then we showed the film to some people and their reactions were really positive, and we discussed it along the way.

Of course I wanted people to see the film. My conversation was always, “Isn’t 400 years of slavery, of brutality, more important than one bad moment?” We were in Hollywood, and there’s been some really ugly things that have taken place, and we’ve seen a lot of people get awards that have done some really nasty things. So I think Apple considered all those things, and we discussed a lot of those things. Then a decision was made by the people in charge of distribution and the money at Apple—and I’m grateful, I’m really grateful.

What do you hope audiences take away from Emancipation?

Well, I really hope people walk away feeling like they’ve seen a film that was unexpected in the genre, and that they feel inspired by the story—inspired enough to discuss it and want their friends and their kids to see it, the ones who are old enough, and have a real discussion about it. I hope people are moved, emotionally moved. I hope they see the love story and feel the love story that we were really aiming to tell.

I really appreciate you taking the time to have this conversation

I appreciate it. I appreciate this conversation more than you know. It’s important. This is why you make the movie—to have real conversations, honest conversations. It’s all you can ask for.

Producer and Star Will Smith

Vanity Fair: What did you see when you looked at the photograph of Peter before you were involved in Emancipation, and what do you see when you look at that photograph now?

At first I saw the sheer horror, the sobering reminder of mankind’s seemingly infinite capacity for brutality. In his scars I saw our history and everything our ancestors fought for and against in this country. I saw me.

When I look at it now, I feel even more. Each one of Peter’s scars now has a story behind it. There is a man behind the image. A man who has endured both visible and invisible atrocities that are beyond my imagination.

Antoine Fuqua said that it couldn't have been easy to shake off a character who endures what Peter endures in the movie. Did Peter stay with you and how did that manifest itself in your life, for better or worse? 

Getting into the character of Peter was grueling; physically, emotionally and mentally in every way. Not just for me, but for every single person working on the film. We had therapists and spiritual teachers on set. We had a pastor. The daily reminder of the merciless treatment of a race of people was punishing to our spirits. 

And yet, I don’t think I would want to “shake off” Peter. The concept that Peter illuminated for me is that heaven and hell are states of consciousness. For me to have the opportunity to walk in Peter's trial, and try to understand and dissect what is going on in the heart and mind of a man who has endured what he has endured—and survived—is a gift. It is a source of new inspiration and has helped me to cultivate a higher capacity for empathy.  

When you signed on for Emancipation, you knew you'd have to enact scenes of horrific violence. What was your mindset going into it, and did you have any misgivings, given that some people argue that brutality, particularly against Black men, is triggering to watch and could conceivably inspire more violence? 

I think the difficult part for all of us connected to the project was to reconcile that these events actually happened. We didn’t make this story up. Those scars are real. This is a critical part of American history and I believe that acknowledging it and learning about it is central to the future betterment and elevation of our country, and even the world. Like Peter, through the suffering we can and will find emancipation; physically, emotionally, and maybe most importantly, the emancipation of our minds. 

At the end of the day, Emancipation is a beautiful piece of art that we hope will help bridge the gap between people. A story that will help all of us find and desire the greatest version of ourselves. This is a movie about freedom. It’s about faith, endurance and love. A whole lot of things that the world needs more of right now. 

Costars Ben Foster and Charmaine Bingwa

Vanity Fair: How did you feel signing onto Emancipation knowing you’d have to bring such traumatic acts to life?

Charmaine Bingwa: I know this is a conversation that comes up frequently, but, to me, this film is about honoring these people’s lives. I understand people’s aversion to the tougher side of stories sometimes, but Peter was a real person. His trauma, and his pain, and those lashes on his back—he suffered. I understand the aversion, but I don’t think it’s fair to wipe out a whole pile of stories that are really important and relevant.

I think it speaks to our current times—everything that’s going on with hateful rhetoric, and hurtful ideologies, and people fighting for freedom in Iran and Ukraine. There’s still a massive part of this story that is relevant today. Unfortunately, the echoes of slavery can still be felt.

Ben Foster: I was incredibly reticent to take on the role. When I read it, it was a thrilling read, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to ask these questions. But particularly right now, there’s no better way to be in service—at least for what we do—than to share the story. We need to share the stories so we don’t forget. We can’t address our current day, unless we reflect on our past. What happens if we turn off the news and we stop seeing things about Charlottesville and we don’t hear about George Floyd? Should we not talk about that? If we look at our country in North America, you turn on the TV, the acts of violence are not that dissimilar. So I think it’s vital that we continue telling these stories. But what Antoine has done is not make a dusty historical film. He’s done something that’s, I think, truly magnificent by making it feel more relevant.

One of the filmmaking choices Fuqua made was to shoot in mostly black and white. Did you know that was Antoine’s vision going into the film?

Bingwa: I didn’t know that going into it—the beautiful way he would bring it to life. I think it is a beautiful separation between “This is the past.” What [Fuqua] does with color correction and Bob Richardson, our wonderful cinematographer…he’s truly an auteur. He put his heart and soul into this film. I think that helps to separate these two time periods that we’re talking about but also show how they’re interlinked as well.

Foster: Bob Richardson is one of our finest cinematographers. He’s been playing with color tonality for decades, and I think this is some of his most refined, profound work. The black and white with pops of green or slight pops of red is done with such elegance in such a ruthless world. We were shooting on location in the swamps of Louisiana. We were working on the plantations where men, women, and children were enslaved and murdered. And you feel that every day and we’re following a man’s will to survive the grossest of inhumanities.

What do you hope people take away from this film?

Foster: If the belief is held that babies are not born with hate—that hate is learned, and that once infected with hate, one could be cured or at least have a different perspective through conversation, through dialogue with one another. That is what I hope for—a conversation about our shared humanity.

Bingwa: A cautionary tale. What can happen when hateful ideologies start to spring up in society. The thing that really moved my heart, and that I hope people get, is that it’s a love letter to our ancestors. It was so ever-present from being on location, what they gave up. We were acting what they went through. I can’t even imagine what it’s like to go through it. So I just want them to know: We feel you across space and time. We respect you and we thank you for everything that you’ve given to us.

These interviews have been condensed and edited for clarity.