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You may think you've seen a character like Black, aka Chiron, aka Little, in movies before.
As an adult, he is a muscular African-American man, a drug dealer driving an expensive car, wearing a do-rag and gold-plated fronts on his teeth.
"You've seen, at least aesthetically, that character so many times before," said Trevante Rhodes, the 26-year-old actor who plays Black. "Here, though, you see the heart of him, underneath that exterior."
Black is the adult street name for Chiron, the main character in "Moonlight," the new drama by writer-director Barry Jenkins (opening Friday at the Broadway Centre Cinemas).
In the film, Chiron is exploring his identity, as a black man and a gay man, at three phases of his life: as a 10-year-old boy dubbed Little by the bullies who torment him; as a teen having his first sexual encounter with his friend, Kevin; and as Black, reuniting with Kevin years later.
Rhodes went through the usual audition process on "Moonlight," though he was going for the lesser role of the adult Kevin. "Halfway through the audition, Barry Jenkins said, 'I'm going to do you a favor. Come back tomorrow, I want you to read for the other role,' " Rhodes said in a phone interview this week.
Some time later, Rhodes said, he asked Jenkins why the director had him make the switch. "He said, 'I know somewhere in your mind, you wanted to play the role of Chiron,' " Rhodes said.
"He's so distant from me, and as an actor, that's the goal," Rhodes said of the adult Chiron. "I saw him as somebody who grew up as a minority, letting the world see you in a certain light. He projects this kind of view that he wants to sustain. I related to him on so many levels."
Rhodes said he was enticed by Jenkins' script, "the fact that Barry got so deep into who we are as a people."
"We've never seen Chiron put into a narrative on the screen before," Rhodes said. "When we see a black guy on the screen, predominantly he's a drug dealer or a cop or an athlete. Or when we see a gay guy, he's flamboyant, and that's where it stops."
Rhodes said he saw all the facets of the Chiron character in Jenkins' script, which helped because he saw none of the work of Alex Hibbert and Ashton Sanders, who played Chiron as a boy and a teen, respectively. He met Sanders on the set, "on my first day and his last day," and only met Hibbert after the movie wrapped.
Black's outward persona — the car, the gold teeth and so on — is modeled on another character, Juan, a drug dealer who becomes a father figure to the 10-year-old Little. Repeating the surface details made perfect sense to Rhodes. "This is my dad, and I want to be the best reflection of him," he said.
One of Rhodes' most powerful scenes shows Chiron visiting his crack-addict mother, played by Naomie Harris, in a rehab facility. The scene was done with no rehearsal, because Rhodes met Harris on the set only minutes before shooting.
"We don't talk in between takes, because it's such a heavy moment," Rhodes said. "She looks at me and just grabs my knee. That was her telling me, 'Welcome, you're here.' It was my acceptance to being in this space of artistry. That just made each take that much better."
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