Jharrel Jerome on Unstoppable, Timothée Chalamet and teenage crushes

You can watch Jharrel Jerome’s entire filmography and not know what to expect in person. Introduced to audiences as the teenage Kevin in Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight, Jerome depicted Korey Wise aged 16 and 29 in Ava DuVernay’s When They See Us, a double performance that made him the first-ever Afro-Latino to win an acting Emmy. Last year, the 27-year-old starred in Boots Riley’s I’m a Virgo as a 13-ft teenager who awkwardly towers over friends and vehicles, and now he’s the lead of Unstoppable as Anthony Robles, a one-legged wrestler whose mother is played by Jennifer Lopez.

One November evening, I caught Unstoppable at a Leicester Square cinema in which the Q&A comprised Jerome, Lopez, director William Goldenberg, and the duo of Anthony and Judy Robles, the real-life son and mother the film is based on. “You watched me with a baby face for two hours, and then I came out?” remarks a smiling, bearded Jerome the following morning. “What makes acting so exciting for me, and where my passion lies, is in transforming.”

Last night, Lopez mentioned to the crowd that, to get into her maternal role, she had to repeatedly touch Jerome’s face (“because he’s my baby”), which she noticed he didn’t seem to mind. “When she said that, I was blushing,” says Jerome, laughing. “The work is the work. She’s an incredible actress. When I saw how committed she was, it was easy to put the fan away.” I note that in a 2020 interview with Backstage Magazine, the article refers to Jerome wearing a J-Lo shirt. “Really? I only knew [she’d be in the film] in 2023. That was me being a Bronx boy, and a fan of everything that comes with it, including Jenny from the block.”

She was already an inspiration? “If anything, she was even more of an inspiration to the women in my family, like to my sister, who just revered her confidence and power she had as a woman. For me, she was probably one of my biggest crushes growing up, man. It’s Jennifer Lopez. The year I was born, she did Selena. Ever since I was growing up, I’ve known her.”

Based on Anthony Robles’ book Unstoppable: From Underdog to Undefeated: How I Became a Champion, the film follows Jerome’s Anthony as a school kid and determined wrestler who rises up the ranks despite missing a limb. Jerome is so convincing in the role that a viewer without prior knowledge might not realise he isn’t actually a one-legged actor. The seamless visual effects were enhanced by using the real Robles as a stunt double, and the duo training together for seven months, five days a week, two hours a day. Further exercises involved nailing the posture, voice, and crutches. “It felt like wrestling school,” says Jerome. “Or Anthony Robles school.”

Jerome and Robles spotted parallels between their lives, not least their commitment from a young age to their craft. For Jerome, that involved studying at LaGuardia, the performance arts school whose graduates include Timothée Chalamet, Nicki Minaj and Liza Minelli. “I was terrified to do an audition when I was 16,” says Jerome. “I felt like a boy from the Bronx without movie star potential. My mother would tell me, ‘It doesn’t matter where you’re from. It’s who you are, and you’re a movie star.’”

At the end of the 2010s, there was a huge conversation amongst Black actors, that we don’t have to do Black trauma films anymore. We don’t want to play the slave, the convict, the hood guy, the drug dealer

How does someone stand out at these institutions? “I went to school with a lot of kids who thought talent would take them all the way,” says Jerome. “But actors like Timothée Chalamet aren’t just talented, they’re driven, focused and committed. Then there’s the luck part of it all. Timmy, we reach out to each other sometimes. It’s cool to have seen him at school, walking through the hallways, and now seeing who he is. It’s also cool being the guy following right behind him.”

After high school, Jerome attended Ithica College, and within the first few months he failed around 20 auditions – one of the more painful losses was what later became Damson Idris’s part in Snowfall. On the day he turned 18, the frustrated actor had a chance to put himself forward to play Chiron’s love interest in the middle chapter of Moonlight. “It was a Friday and I could start my birthday celebrations with friends, or get this audition done,” says Jerome. “The last thing I wanted to do was a self-tape, because they’d take me two hours, and I was just getting nos for my auditions. But my roommate Justin said, ‘Give me a sec, bro.’”

With Justin’s help, Jerome acted out the beach scene from Moonlight in his dorm room, next to an unmade bed. “I sat on the ground, and mimicked having a joint in my hand. I did the over-the-top stuff you’re not meant to do.” However, Barry Jenkins was instantly sold, and no callbacks or chemistry reads were required. “I found out that whole film was cast, and somebody who was originally supposed to be in it sprained their ankle. My manager was like, ‘They need to shoot in six days. You’re going to get on a plane in five days.’”

Jerome was only 19 when La La Land won and then subsequently lost to Moonlight for Best Picture at the Oscars. The actor’s reaction is documented on the telecast. “You’ll see little Jharrel in a white suit, in the back, coming on stage with Ashton, and I’m weeping. I’m in tears. My face is white, my jaw has dropped, and it’s like I’ve seen a ghost.”

After Moonlight, Jerome asked his team to reach out to Ava DuVernay, which led to him auditioning for the young Korey Wise in When They See Us. Walking in with a beard he needed for a TV show, DuVernay deemed Jerome too old. Months later, Jerome finished Mr Mercedes, and requested a second audition, now shaved. He was then cast as both the young and old Korey Wise – two roles intended to be played by two people. “Anthony saw When They See Us around the time I won the Emmy, and said he didn’t want anybody else to play him,” says Jerome. “Winning that Emmy led to conversations I hadn’t been in before.”

Jerome has, then, picked projects carefully and often because of the director, such as on Full Circle with Steven Soderbergh and I’m a Virgo with Riley. On the latter, Jerome is tasked with imbuing recognisable teenage awkwardness into an absurd, anti-capitalist story, all while depicting someone who’s so tall he can’t stand inside buildings. “After When They See Us, I could have done another film about being incarcerated and young, and I purposefully went against that,” he says. “I didn’t want to be typecast.”

The discipline, Jerome explains, is in turning down roles, even when a newcomer’s instinct is to accept everything. “It’s definitely risky, because you need to put food on the table, and as a young actor of colour, there’s not many opportunities. At the end of the 2010s, there was a huge conversation amongst Black actors, that we don’t have to do Black trauma films anymore. We don’t want to play the slave, the convict, the hood guy, the drug dealer. Denzel Washington is one of my favourite actors. We’ve never seen Denzel sag his pants, hold a gun and sell drugs, unless it was Training Day, which he won an Oscar for. I want to follow in those footsteps.”

As a musician, Jerome writes his own lyrics. I correctly guess he’s working on some scripts. “I don’t want to be a rapper in my forties,” he says. “I want to make a shift like Clint Eastwood.” He reconsiders this. “Even the greatest of directors look so exhausted directing. I can see myself acting and having a writing credit. Which is a little different, right? There’s a lot of director-actors. I would be a writer-actor.” As for what he’ll look like, he adds, “I would love to play a character where I have a beard, and I look and sound like Jharrel Jerome. But if I play a character that stretches and bends me, then I feel like I’m really performing.”

Unstoppable is available on Prime Video from January 16