‘Till’ Star Danielle Deadwyler Reveals The Emotional Trauma Of Her Gut-Wrenching Portrayal: “I Am Completely And Utterly Wrecked”
On and off screen, Danielle Deadwyler implores us to not “look away”. Her eyes convey a quality that filmmaker Chinonye Chukwu recognized when she cast the Atlanta native to portray Mamie Till-Mobley, mother of 14-year-old Emmett Louis Till, who was abducted, then lynched by white supremacists in Mississippi on August 28, 1955. When her son’s tortured, misshaped body was shipped home to Chicago, Till-Mobley insisted on an open casket to ensure mourners witnessed first-hand the life-ending cruelty her sweet boy had suffered. “We can’t look away either,” Deadwyler says. “We have to look.”