If you didn’t think Gabrielle Union was capable of what she pulls off in The Inspection, Elegance Bratton’s lyrical narrative feature debut, fret not—neither did she. The Bring It On and Being Mary Jane star has been a bona fide Hollywood star for decades, but as a performer, she always felt something holding her back. “There have been plenty of performances that I just kind of phoned in,” she tells me in Toronto, the day after the film’s world premiere. She leaned toward work that felt easy, familiar, comfortable. She knew how to draw a crowd, how to make something hit big. But going to those deep, dark places like certain actors around her were? Either she didn’t know how to, or she wasn’t ready.
She is now. In The Inspection, Union bookends the film as Inez, the withholding mother of protagonist Ellis (Jeremy Pope). In our few glimpses of her world, we see her as troubled: a harshness to the way she regards her own son, whom she left to fend for himself at 16 after he came out as gay, and a disarray to the way she lives, her hoarding habit cramming into frame. She is based on Bratton’s own mother (who died just before filming), part of his autobiographical tapestry: The film dramatizes his experience of enlisting in the military as a homeless twentysomething to win back her approval. A crushing final scene between Pope and Union reveals his hope’s futility—as well as its enduring quality.
Union, who also executive-produces the film, is unrecognizable here. I don’t mean physically, necessarily—though there is a transformation as well. It’s like we’re meeting a new actor, with the same starpower that holds the camera’s attention, but with a riveting, fresh feel for complexity and toughness and empathy, from the inside out. With Union and her husband, Dwyane Wade, raising a transgender daughter in the public eye, the film’s darker elements hit her personally hard, too—an emotional connection that continues to reveal a whole new way of acting for her. She’ll only go deeper from here.
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Vanity Fair: How are you feeling? Last night seemed pretty emotional.
Gabrielle Union: I’m still emotional, I’m still processing it. The first time I watched it was by myself on my iPad, as an executive producer, a month ago. Last night, I watched it as a mom and an actress, and it hit completely different. I’m still processing a lot of emotions. And then my husband and I talked about it all night long, and then mostly talked about it again today. But I felt hopeful. There are some situations that can feel very bleak. And I left that feeling at least hope that perhaps, not just in our family, but a lot of people’s families, that maybe people can turn a corner.
At the premiere, Elegance mentioned that you did a lot of hard work on the movie in multiple ways. Obviously on camera, we see it, but can you describe your level of involvement, both acting and producing, and how it first started?
He came to me pretty early. He was like, “I think that you can be Inez and I want you to executive produce.” I read the script and I was like, This is everything you want in a script as a producer, it’s got all the bells and whistles. And then I was like, “Wait, Inez? Hold on. What have I ever given off that makes you think I could do this?” In fact, I immediately thought of a number of homophobes that work in this town who could probably do a much better job than I—like, not much of a stretch. But he was like, “I know you can do it. And for you to do it of all people, I think will make people uncomfortable and maybe reexamine some of their own things.”
That was a little dark to realize, that as much as I was in general I look at homophobes as just trash and I don’t generally mince words about that, I had to figure out a way into a woman that is my director’s mother, where they had a very complicated relationship—to find the character and build it from scratch. What did she want? What are her needs? What were her dreams? And then go from there.