Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. In a new psychological film, a father faces the unimaginable. A strange intruder enters his home in the dead of the night, where his wife and daughters, including a newborn baby girl, are asleep upstairs. Then, when he asks the intruder to leave, she doesn't. What would you do in that situation? This is the plot of The Knife. In this instance, the intruder is a white woman. The family is Black.

After hearing a loud noise, his wife, Alexandra, and his daughters, Kendra and Riley, rush downstairs. The intruder is unconscious with a knife nearby. Everybody is shaken, so they call 911. The family wants to get their story straight before the police arrive, but as they arrive, the wife makes a decision that could affect the trajectory of the family's lives. A review in Slant Magazine says, "With The Knife, writer and director Nnamdi Asomugha turns a night of domestic crisis into a taut, moral thriller about the slipperiness of truth."

The Knife opens in theaters tomorrow. Joining us now to discuss it is its producer, director, and actor, Nnamdi Asomugha, who stars in the film as Chris. Hey, Nnamdi.

Nnamdi Asomugha: Hey, Alison. How are you?

Alison Stewart: I'm doing well. Also joining us is Mark Duplass, who co-wrote the film alongside him. Mark, welcome back.

Mark Duplass: Hey, Alison. What's up?

Alison Stewart: It's all going forward. Nnamdi, what were the particular themes that you wanted to explore when you were writing this film?

Nnamdi Asomugha: First of all, let me say that was a great setup for the film. I hadn't heard it described that way. I felt like I was watching it for the first time. That was very great. Thank you for that. I think the themes-- Chief for me, it's entertainment. I wanted it to be thrilling. I wanted it to be exciting, intense, and all of those things. Then I also wanted there to be this deeper meditation on race and masculinity, and class, and I think who gets to make decisions and choices in society, and all of those things.

There was always to be a bigger conversation that came from it. I think early on in the film, there's voiceover where you hear the character saying that the film is basically about choices and consequences. I think for me, with every character, as we were writing it by design, they make a choice that has a pretty detrimental consequence in the way the rest of the night plays out. All of those themes came together for this one for me.

Alison Stewart: Mark, the two of you wrote this together. I'm curious about when you're writing a thriller and you're writing something that involves a police investigation. How important are the details when you're writing a script that involves the thriller aspect and the police investigation aspect of it?

Mark Duplass: Turns out they're important if you want people to watch the movie and like it. I think it helps.

[laughter]

Mark Duplass: I kicked off a very, very rough first draft of this thing. Paramount for me was creating something that I felt could be done very successfully in 80 minutes. It could be done predominantly in one location. I really, really like the idea of keeping my movies as these little chamber pieces so that not only can they be made cheaply, but most importantly, they can be made independently and with as few authorial voices as possible. What was interesting to me about this script is when I finished the first draft, I very quickly realized that I wanted a partner who could help me make it better.

That's something I've done with my brother Jay throughout my whole life. We have this partnership. We've been making movies since we were kids. Lately, I've been wanting to do something different. I want to partner with different people and I want to make new friends, and I want to tell different kinds of stories. I brought this to Nnamdi because I really wanted him to act in it. He had so many good ideas and so much good feedback about the script and where we could add nuance and where it could be more subtle, and we could change this character from a man into a woman, and it became very clear to me that this was going to be my partner.

Alison Stewart: That's so interesting. You said a lot there, but one thing I focused in on, you wanted to keep it in one location, in one room, Mark. Why was that?

Mark Duplass: Yes. I really like chamber pieces because to me, they focus on interpersonal dynamics and faces. These are the things that I'm obsessed with. I think that as movies get bigger and bigger and bigger, I like to get smaller and smaller and smaller. That's just my personal taste. There's a pragmatic element to that as well, which is when you're trying to make work in an industry that's very difficult to make work in right now and maybe are risk averse to some of these themes that Nnamdi was discussing, if you're going to do those kinds of movies, you need a massive movie star or two in the lead. You need a lot of money.

I like to design things so that they can be made as cheaply as possible, really, so that we can maintain the creative control. With that in mind, I decided to set this thing all inside of this one house.

Nnamdi Asomugha: Yes. I was going to say there's no way that we would have shot in the time that we shot if there were multiple locations. We wouldn't have gotten it done. We wouldn't have raised the financing. I think when we finished the script, we were shooting four months later, that would have never happened. It was a great decision.

Alison Stewart: Nnamdi, you wear multiple hats for The Knife, and it's your directorial debut. Who did you consult to try to understand what it means to be a director? You've been an actor before, been an actor on Broadway. You've been an actor in films. I'm curious who you talk to.

Nnamdi Asomugha: YouTube. [laughs]

Alison Stewart: What?

Nnamdi Asomugha: That was where I learned how to direct. All jokes aside, there's so much information on YouTube and just online on what it takes to learn this craft. When I speak to audiences about the film, especially filmmakers, I let them know that I'm representing those of you that did not go to school for this, that don't understand the technical language, that can't tell you what type of camera we're going to use for this or this lens or how this setup should look.

I represent those of us that just go on feeling, and I think that's how I approached this. What are the movies that I loved? What are some of the performances? How do I meld all of that together and get what we got? For me, the consultation was just as many videos and as many interviews as I could possibly find that could tell me what to do. The great benefit was having Mark, who's done this for many years and done it at such a high level, to just be able to bounce things off of. We did that for so long. It really helped out in the end.

Alison Stewart: Mark, of course, people know you as a director, but what aspects of the script, as a writer, were helpful for the director as he's building out this world?

Mark Duplass: I think for me, when I started to discuss the idea with Nnamdi of him possibly directing this, which he was resistant to at first, by the way, but I was like, "You are the architect of this movie now." At a certain point, that first loose draft that came into my hands passed over into Nnamdi's hands. Before you know it, we've switched seats and he's really in the driver's seat. I had this innate confidence in Nnamdi because, look, yes, he's a freshman director here, but he's also really like a fifth-year senior. As a filmmaker, he's produced a bunch of incredible films.

More importantly than that, I had this journey where I used to be a musician, and then in my late 20s, I moved over into filmmaking. Everything I learned as a musician about the creative process and how to handle myself, it all transferred in interesting ways. For those of you who don't know, Nnamdi had an illustrious career as an NFL football player. He has a way and a maturity, knowing how to listen to people, knowing how to seek out excellence, and a discipline to him that he's learned from everything he's been through.

He's not your average first-time filmmaker in that way. It was really obvious to me that all the things he had learned and that maturity level was going to make him great, and he was.

Alison Stewart: Nnamdi, I have to tell you, there's a guy on our staff who was so psyched you were going to be a guest.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: From football. I can't even tell you. How did you strike the balance, Nnamdi, between producing, acting, writing, and directing? You can't give them like a quarter each, but how'd you find the balance?

Nnamdi Asomugha: There's a lot of compartmentalization that has to go on. Also, I think as a director and an actor, it really serves you because you're telling the same story. I feel like from producing, you're talking about financing, you're talking about everything else, but specifically as director, actor, it helps. I had a great team around me, I got to be honest. I went to every single head of the department, whether it's production design, cinematography, hair, makeup, whatever it is, and I told them, "You guys run with your ideas, bring them back to me, and best idea wins."

I wanted them to sort of bring their own personal attributes to whatever their role was. For me, that helps so much because I didn't have to worry as much about all the other facets. They were going to bring what they had, and we were going to move forward in that way. It really took a lot off my shoulders just having a great team around me, and it made it, I would say, a little easier than most people would think.

Alison Stewart: A new psychological drama film follows a young Black family subject to a police investigation after an intruder enters their home. It's titled The Knife, and it opens in theaters tomorrow. Director and actor, and producer Nnamdi Asomugha stars in the film. He's joining us alongside co-writer Mark Duplass. Let's listen to a clip from the film. This is moments after Chris's wife and their daughters have come downstairs, and they see what's going on, and Chris calls 911. This is from The Knife.

Chris: She broke in. I'm calling the cops.

Alexandra: Wait, what? What happened?

Chris: I just told you. She broke in. I came in, and she was standing right there.

[phone dialing]

Alexandra: Fuck.

911 Operator: 911. What's your emergency?

Riley: Mom?

Chris: We need an ambulance right away to McCullough and Simpson. Somebody just broke into my house. Please.

Kendera: Hey, Mom. What happened? Mom?

Alexandra: Kendera, wait.

Chris: I don't know, but she's on the ground bleeding to death. Ma'am, please hurry.

Riley: Is she dead?

Chris: Don't touch her.

911 Operator: Okay. How did she get on the ground?

Chris: I don't know. I don't know. We just need a [beep] ambulance. Listen to me. There's a woman dying on my kitchen floor.

Riley: Mom, is she dead?

Chris: Riley, I swear to God.

911 Operator: What's your address, sir?

Chris: 1220 McCullough Street.

911 Operator: Okay. An ambulance and deputies are on the way. Is there anyone else in the home with you?

Alison Stewart: We're not going to give too much away, but we will say that the wife makes a decision. She makes a decision before the cops get there. Why does she feel that the truth is not enough, Mark?

Mark Duplass: Really great question. That's a really complicated question. I started writing this movie sitting inside of my office at the beginning of the pandemic. We were watching the Black Lives Matter movement, and we were watching what was happening inside of the Black communities with the police. I grew up in New Orleans, where I was driving drunk at 15 years old around and got pulled over. I got away with so many things.

I always think about that. I think that Alexandra, who plays the wife in this, has an awareness of what optics look like of when someone walks into a home with a Black family and sees a white woman on the floor, and she is nervous. There is evidence to support those nerves. I can certainly identify with the lengths I would go to protect my family. That was a swirling pot that led to that move.

Alison Stewart: Nnamdi, do you want to answer that question as well?

Nnamdi Asomugha: I just want to give Mark a little more credit than he's given himself, I think, in this script. I think one of the first things that jumped out at me was that he was really in tune to how society is. He understood to me very clearly that the system doesn't allow for certain people to feel like they're safe or they can be honest. They feel like there's no way that they can win, and they have to be tricky sometimes and subvert the truth in order to feel safe.

It really jumped out at me from the script. He just put together just a really strong character study. I think for me, she does make some choices that some people will raise an eyebrow to, but what always interests me is not that people lie, but understanding the circumstances that forced them into the lie. As I was reading the script, that kept jumping out at me, and I was like, "Okay, we need to find the ways to enhance that and really stay on this topic." Because what Mark started was really very beautifully done. Just to give him a little more credit than he's going to give himself there.

Alison Stewart: Nnamdi, we see that the intruder is white, but the cops who show up, Manny Jacinto, who's Asian, plays an officer, and Melissa Leo, who's white, plays the detective. What thoughts went into the physical characteristics that you were going to cast these roles? Were they always that way?

Nnamdi Asomugha: No. Sometimes you write roles and you aren't thinking gender, and you're not thinking race. You're just like, "Let me get these characters out." The detective we started off that was a male character. Melissa Leo's performances in all of her films, specifically this movie, Flight, by Bob Zemeckis. The way she turns up in the last five minutes of the film, and she's interrogating and questioning Denzel Washington, and really getting him to the truth.

I knew that that was important for this role. She kept flashing my mind. That was a very simple switch to make this character a woman. Then, in terms of Manny and just having cops that were all races-- We've seen the films where it's the white cop and the Black family, and we know exactly how it's going to turn out. When I was a kid, one of the films that really shaped my movie experience in my life, the first film I ever saw in a theater, was Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Which is another Bob Zemeckis film. The second film I saw in a theater was Boyz n the Hood.

Alison Stewart: Oh, wow.

Nnamdi Asomugha: I was a very little kid, and my aunt snuck us into the movie theaters, which she shouldn't have. I remember leaving the theater and asking her, "Are you sure this wasn't real? Are you sure this one--" I grew up in LA, and I know that it felt like a true story, but the other thing that stuck out to me from that film was, there is a cop that is constantly harassing the Black kids in the neighborhood, Cuba Gooding and Morris Chestnut, and Ice Cube. He continually is harassing them. He shows up a few times in the film.

It struck me that the cop was Black. It was a move that John Singleton made that I think really got behind the truth of this cops versus people of color thing, which is, it wasn't always about race. There was a thing about power and control and who's wearing the big pants in the situation. For me, when it came to casting this, it was, I hate to say, colorblind, but I think I was a little more conscious of the fact that I've seen this done without the straight white cops like we usually do. The brilliance of John Singleton in that moment led to the casting of Manny and some of the other cops in this.

Alison Stewart: Mark, we don't actually know why the woman ended up on the floor. What does that do to you, for you as a filmmaker, to let us, the audience, fill in the blanks?

Mark Duplass: Sometimes that works really well in a movie, and sometimes it doesn't. You have to have a very deft hand as a director in order to make you feel like you're being cared for. I'm always nervous to have these you-interpret-it audience moments in movies, because if they're not cared for, then it just looks like you really don't know what you're doing. That was one of the things that I really loved going through post-production with Nnamdi on this movie.

This is a thriller. This is a tight 80-minute thriller. It started with a lot of the trappings of that. There was some pretty heavy score. You could feel it. Then, slowly but surely, Nnamdi started to trust himself and the story and the cinema and started pulling everything away. That feeling he just told you about, "Was Boyz n the Hood real or not?" I think, is imbued in this movie. Very little score. The tension is so incredibly thick. It almost feels like a documentary at times.

Nnamdi and I just watched this in a theater full of people in Los Angeles a couple of days ago, and I've never seen anything like it. It was gasps, and it was loud, and it was an interactive experience with the screen. I think that there's less of that now, I guess, is what I want to say. It ties back to why we wanted to make this thing independently, was to have the trust and the faith to pull away the modern trappings of the thriller and go to something much more simple and allow the audience the space to move around and find their own truth inside of it.

Alison Stewart: The name of the film is The Knife. It opens in theaters tomorrow. Nnamdi and Mark, thank you so much for your time today.

Mark Duplass: Thanks for having us.

Nnamdi Asomugha: Thank you, Alison. This was great.