‘O’Dessa’ stars Regina Hall, Kelvin Harrison Jr. dish on Sadie Sink
“O’Dessa” actors Regina Hall and Kelvin Harrison Jr. chat with USA TODAY’s Ralphie Aversa about making the movie musical with co-star Sadie Sink.
NEW YORK − “Shut up before I carve out your throat!”
Someone shouting that is sure to, at the very least, grab your attention. In this instance, the threat is made by Regina Hall, who plays Neon Dion in the post-apocalyptic musical “O’Dessa” (streaming Thursday on Hulu).
“That was an ad-lib, actually,” says the 54-year-old actress, seated beside her co-star Kelvin Harrison Jr. The film’s title role is played by Sadie Sink. “In that moment, (Neon Dion is) not going to say, ‘Be quiet.’ “
“That’s more poetic and cold-blooded than anything that I could have come up with,” “O’Dessa” writer and director Geremy Jasper acknowledges. “I like to be flexible, especially with someone like Regina who is very light on their feet, who really embodies the character and has a real improvisational flair.”
The movie is loosely based on the Greek mythological figure Orpheus, a legendary musician who travels to the underworld to save the love of his life, Eurydice. In “O’Dessa,” Sink’s journey begins as a quest to retrieve her family heirloom guitar. But she eventually travels to an unknown world to help save Euri (Harrison), a sex worker she’s fallen in love with who’s employed by Neon Dion.
“I haven’t seen something like this before,” Harrison, 30, recalls of his initial thoughts after reading the script and music. “It’s definitely fantastical. But there was a sincerity about it, too, especially with the O’Dessa journey and feeling more like a love story than anything else.
“It’s a really cool blend,” says Harrison, joking that the characters in the script were so crazy, that he wanted to meet the person who wrote it to see if he was “well.”
Casting Sadie Sink ‘changed everything,’ the director says
The film came into focus after Jasper was introduced to “Stranger Things” star Sink, who “fell in love with the character, and then actually demoed one of the songs, just her with a guitar and her camera phone, and sent it to me,” the director says.
“My jaw dropped when I saw it. It’s like, ‘There is the film.’ And then it changed everything.”
Harrison recalls one instance in which his “incredible” co-star’s fingers were bleeding from strumming guitar chords, but she didn’t want to take a break. Sink hid the injury because “she knew this was Geremy’s baby and she really wanted to honor that,” Harrison says. “Her character was this tough, resilient heroine and she didn’t want to get in the way of that journey.
“Her bravery and her joy and light every day, I think kept us all kind of keeping the same energy.”
Regina Hall and Kelvin Harrison Jr. recall their Hollywood beginnings
Hall and Harrison have both taken interesting paths to Hollywood. She was pursuing a graduate degree in journalism at New York University when she decided to pivot.
“My father had passed away my first trimester (of college),” she recalls. “I hadn’t studied acting, either, so then I had to go back to school. I didn’t have my dad, so I had to go to bartending school to pay for class. And then, of course, I drank and don’t remember anything I was supposed to.”
Hall never became a bartender, although she did land a job as a cocktail waitress. Her first acting gig came in 1997 and her career has spanned both television and film since then. In 2019, she became the first Black woman to win best actress at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards.
As for Harrison, he was cast in 2013’s “Ender’s Game,” which starred Viola Davis. After befriending Davis’ stand-in, Harrison was able to chat with the Oscar-winning actress.
“I was a curious kid and I came up to her and I was like, ‘If I wanted to get into acting seriously, what would you say?’ he says. Davis told him to take a class. “So I started studying and taking local classes. That shifted the trajectory into really understanding the craft that I wanted to be a part of.”
Hall echoes Davis’ advice for aspiring actors.
“I studied. I loved learning, but I think you never finish,” she says. “I learn on every job from every person I work with. I think it’s like a destination: never fully arrive.”
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