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Meet nanny manager Nikyatu Jusu, who already has Jordan Peeles’ blessing

Meet nanny manager Nikyatu Jusu, who already has Jordan Peeles’ blessing

 


Nikyatu Jusus’ parents loved white Jesus. They sent her to a Christian high school in Atlanta, where she was one of the few black students. Thank God I’m tenacious, she said. At university, when Jusu began to search for her West African roots, she wondered why her hyper-literary Sierra Leonean family hadn’t introduced her to the folklore that had contributed so much to the culture of their place of origin. birth. Jusu assumed they were unfamiliar with this, until she delved deeper.

In fact, Jusus’ parents knew both the African deities who now appear in his first film, Nannywhich won the top Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, has struck a Prime Video distribution deal that would be worth $7 millionand this week earned Jusu a Independent Spirit Award Nomination. (It hits Amazon on December 16, following an Oscar-qualifying theatrical release.)

The deceitful water spirit Mami Wata and the trickster spider Anansi were symbols of resistance during the Atlantic slave trade, and they are creeping specters in Nanny. Why did I have to take that away from you? Jusu wondered when his parents started telling about the importance of Mami Wata and Anansis. Because you’re too busy talking about Christianity.

Nanny uses horror trappings to explore this same westernization that many immigrants experience. Jusus’ protagonist, Aisha (Anna Diop, best known for Titans and 24: Legacy), is an undocumented single mother from Senegal who moved to New York City and took a job nannying a young girl on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The concert is a means to an end. Aisha wants to establish her life in the United States so that her 6-year-old son can join her.

Their lack of closeness has had a distancing effect, and being subjected to the domestic melodramas of her white employers (Michelle Monoghan and Morgan Spector) doesn’t make Aisha feel more intimate. His spiritual claustrophobia quickly turns outward. Disturbing sounds, slippery shadows and the position of disturbing nightmares Nanny just shy of a haunted house movie.

Born and raised in Atlanta, 40-year-old Jusu is finally getting the Hollywood calls she’s long worked for. Most fresh-faced directors have to wait for box office returns or art house prestige to save their careers, but the Jusus phone started ringing before Nanny even open. The estate of George Romeros approached her, via a recommendation from King Richard director Reinaldo Marcus Green on directing a sequel to night of the living dead written by LaToya Morgan (The Walking Dead).

Nikyatu is a dear friend and NYU alumnus, says Green, who couldn’t assume night of the living dead himself because he’s busy with a Bob Marley biopic. She was the first person I thought of because her film Nanny explores similar themes and sensibilities. She’s uniquely qualified and precisely the right director for the reboot of this amazing property and I can’t wait to see what she does with it.

More recently, suicide in the sun, a dark vampire thriller about motherhood which is one of five short films Jusu has directed since 2007, Mark a feature film go-ahead from Jordan Peeles’ production company, Monkeypaw. (Sunlight and some of Jusus’ other shorts are currently available to stream on The criterion channel.)

At one time, Jusu thought of becoming a biomedical engineer. Despite her love of movies and a childhood spent reading Octavia Butler and Toni Morrison, she didn’t consider herself an artist until she took a screenwriting course at Duke. Assuming it would be an easy choice, Jusu was surprised when her teacher told her she had a knack for the craft. The beauty of tripping over your passion is that it puts you in a stranglehold, she tells The Daily Beasts Obsessed during the Austin Film Festival, one of several promotional stops Jusu has made on behalf of Nanny since premiering at Sundance in January.

Jusu wrote the Nanny storyline on and off for about eight years, combining the folk shed explored in college with the story she had in mind about a West African immigrant caring for a privileged American child. She poured elements of her own mother and aunt into Aisha, whose supernatural visions intensify as she feels further and further from home. Part of the films’ tension comes from how graceful Aisha’s bosses can seem one moment and unsettling the next. Are they trustworthy? Her mind may be playing tricks on her, but she knows enough to defend herself when she’s not paid on time.

In NannyAt first, Jusu thought she might try to chase people off the streets, an approach that directors Chlo Zhao (Nomadland, the rider) and Sean Baker (The Florida Project, Mandarin) have improved in recent years. Potential financiers were not interested. Even though most viewers don’t know Mami Wata and Anansi, Nanny employs enough horror conventions to deserve the audience that well-known actors can attract. Still, Jusu was determined to find the type of lead actress she wanted.

I probably look like an asshole after a while, but I don’t care about Hollywood’s A-list system, Jusu says. It’s costing your budget so much, especially as an up-and-coming filmmaker who’s a nameless filmmaker. Like, someone asking for $4 million? It’s three-quarters of my budget just for you to show up for two weeks to be an antagonistic force. Anna Diop has found the perfect balance between authenticity and the work, with Titanswhich felt a bit mainstream.

The righteous disregard for big celebrities may need to evolve now that it’s attached to more high-profile projects. She considers herself a disruptor, but it’s hard to work in Hollywood without embracing industry priorities. Monkeypaw has a distribution deal with Universal Pictures, and a top studio cares a lot more about bankability than the average Sundance indie. That’s fine for her, as long as the stars in question are willing to audition and go through the process, which includes chemistry tests, rehearsals and a level of collaboration that isn’t always a given.

When the first reviews of Nanny were published, some mostly white critics questioned whether the African mythology in Aisha’s periphery was undercooked or unnecessary. Such responses only affirm Jusus’ commitment to films that center black perspectives. She could have included other spirits, but her visual effects budget would only allow for a limited number. In casting Mami Wata and Anansi, she took the same approach as Guillermo del Toro, which is to humanize monsters so they say something about the world at large. They are there to warn Aisha of danger.

night of the living dead and suicide in the sun will keep Jusu, who lives in Baltimore and teaches film at George Mason University, firmly rooted in the horror genre. But the Primary instinct fan in her is also into psychosexual thrillers and all things dark. She would just walk the line in a romantic comedy or a simple drama. She’s someone who knows what she wants. Because so much of Hollywood has already anointed her, she seems likely to get it.

I’m just really obligated by the dark side of everyone because we live in a society, especially in the South, where it’s all about civility and respectability and smiling at the grocery store, even if that person would lynch me tomorrow, said Jusu. I’m intrigued by the truth versus the veneer.

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