“There is injustice happening here,” says an activist (Adepero Oduye, “Pariah”) in the trailer for Ava DuVernay’s Central Park Five story “When They See Us.” That, unfortunately, is a massive understatement. The four-part Netflix miniseries, debuting May 31, revisits the events leading up to five young men of color — Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, and Korey Wise — being wrongfully convicted of a rape in the early ’90s. “When They See Us” lays out how racism, hatred, hysteria, and a broken criminal justice fed into injustice.
Thirty years ago today, on the night of April 19, 1989, a woman was beaten and sexually assaulted in Central Park. Dubbed the “Central Park Five,” McCray, Richardson, Salaam, Santana, and Wise were blamed, painted as monsters in the media, and falsely convicted. “When They See Us” takes place over 25 years, from the night of the rape to the Five’s exoneration in 2002 to their settlement with New York City in 2014.
As the spot for “When They See Us” depicts, the police manipulated the young detained men and lied to them in order to coerce a false confession. “They said if I went along with it, that I could go home,” Korey (Jharrel Jerome, “Moonlight”) admits, “and that’s all I wanted.” And it’s clear right from the get-go that the DA (Felicity Huffman) wants someone’s head — it doesn’t even have to be the guilty party’s. “Every black male who was in the park last night is a suspect,” she says. “I need all of them.”
As scared as Antron, Kevin, Yusef, Raymond, and Korey are, their parents are even more terrified. “The police will do anything,” Antron’s father (Michael K. Williams, “The Wire”) yells through tears, “lie on us, they will lock us up, they will kill us.”
To coincide with the premiere of “When They See Us,” Participant Media, in collaboration with Color Of Change, Vera Institute of Justice, Institute for Innovation in Prosecution at John Jay College, The Opportunity Agenda, and more, will launch a social media campaign promoting reform in the criminal justice system.
DuVernay created and directed “When They See Us.” She penned the project with Attica Locke (“Empire”), Robin Swicord (“Little Women”), and Michael Starrburry (“Legends of Chamberlain Heights”).
The miniseries’ ensemble cast includes Jovan Adepo (“The Leftovers”), Justin Cunningham (“Succession”), Freddy Miyares (“Elementary”), Chris Chalk (“Gotham”), Vera Farmiga (“Bates Motel”) , Niecy Nash (“Claws”), Storm Reid (“A Wrinkle in Time”), Kylie Bunbury (“Pitch”), John Leguizamo (“Bloodline”), and Joshua Jackson (“The Affair”).
DuVernay’s OWN family drama “Queen Sugar” will return for Season 4 on June 12. She’s an exec producer on “The Red Line,” a limited series about a racially-charged police shooting that will bow April 28 on CBS. A Prince docuseries and an adaptation of Octavia Butler’s “Dawn” are among the other TV projects on the “13th” filmmaker’s slate. She’s also set to direct “The New Gods” for the big screen, a DC Comics adaptation about a group of deities who come into existence after the gods of classic mythology are killed. The project marks the second time DuVernay has helmed a $100 million-plus film. She became the first black woman to do so with last year’s “A Wrinkle in Time.”
https://youtu.be/u3F9n_smGWY
