Relativity(NEW YORK) — Red Tails actor Nate Parker stars as a young cop in his first big screen leading role in Beyond the Lights.
“I portray a character named Kaz Nicol, and basically it’s a story about a woman who is on the brink of super stardom and she’s had to sacrifice her soul in many ways. My character comes in at a very critical moment in her life and through a series of events he’s able to save her life physically but through their relationship they basically come to save each other,” he explains to ABC News Radio.
Although it’s his first leading role, Parker says he didn’t feel any pressure on set.
“It doesn’t take any more or less work to build a character. When you accept a role you say to yourself how can I bring this character to life in the context of the project? And you become a servant of the overall film,” Parker explains. “And if you do your job well, whether you have one line or all the lines, then you’re successful.”
“So I try not to put any extra pressure on myself,” he adds.
Parker stars opposite British starlet Gugu Mbatha-Raw. The two share some intense and playful love scenes in Beyond the Lights. Parker says its a chemistry the two honed long before they even walked on set.
“We went to dinner. We went to Disneyland. We spent a lot of time together, as much as we could, before filming,” he says. “And then the rest, it was written. The words were, in some sense, almost poetic and they just worked in a way. The rest was in the dialogue, getting you there.”
In the romantic-drama, Parker portrays the onscreen son of Danny Glover’s character, Captain David Nicol. Captain Nicol wants his son to follow in his footsteps, to not only become a top cop but eventually a politician in Los Angeles.
On filming with Glover, Parker says, “It was great. When you work with people of his stature, you know icons, you can only hope that they’ll be as giving as you need them to be. …He was very open to my thoughts and we were able to…put together a relationship that seemed authentic.”
Beyond the Lights, written and directed by Love & Basketball creator Gina Prince-Bythewood, opens nationwide Friday.
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