You’ll never forget Clarence Maclin’s smile. When the Sing Sing scene stealer breaks into a grin, it morphs his whole face — revealing a charming gap in his front teeth, adding a sparkle to his eye, and giving him a sense of youthfulness and mischief. In director and co-writer Greg Kwedar’s based-on-real-life film about a group of men in the New York prison’s Rehabilitation Through the Arts nonprofit program, Maclin plays a younger, modified version of himself, a hard case who carries a knife, intimidates other men in the yard, and sells drugs to fellow inmates. He’s all hunched shoulders, macho swagger, and crackling magnetism, and you won’t be able to take your eyes off him.
At first, Maclin (nicknamed “Divine Eyeâ€) bristles against the optimistic attitude of RTA veteran and prison-famous writer John “Divine G†Whitfield (Colman Domingo). And he undermines how seriously RTA’s leader, Brent Buell (Paul Raci), takes the program’s acting exercises as they prepare to put on the original time-travel comedy Breakin’ the Mummy’s Code. But as the film continues, Maclin gently lets Divine Eye open up. The oil-and-vinegar friendship he crafts with Domingo’s Divine G provides some of Sing Sing’s most cathartic moments, like when they gaze from a prison window together on the greenery outside. And Divine Eye’s version of Hamlet’s “to be or not to be†speech is one of the movie’s most riveting moments of performance, a turn simultaneously so world-weary, remorseful, and confident that he proves the transformational impact of RTA in one scene.
Maclin was released from prison in 2012, and director Greg Kwedar and co-writer Clint Bentley offered him the role in Sing Sing (based on the Esquire article “The Sing Sing Folliesâ€) six years after meeting him through the real-life Buell. (Nearly all the cast are alumni of Sing Sing’s RTA program.) He currently works as an RTA consultant and ambassador and wants to “continue to inspire brothers and sisters that are coming home.†But Maclin doesn’t want his first feature appearance to be his last — nor does he want people to assume he’s not really acting in the movie. “This work is meaningful and is necessary,†he says. “We’re not just trying to blood-suck the people out here. That’s not what we do.â€
You are mentioned in Esquire’s “The Sing Sing Follies†story. It talks about your audition for RTA, and there’s a line that says, “Divine Eye has long dreadlocks and massive muscles and sings ‘Happy Birthday’ with showbiz pizzazz, throwing his arms out.†Do you remember that moment?
Man, I do remember singing “Happy Birthday.†I remember not having a feeling of being locked in or caged anywhere. It was a feeling of freedom. When I think of RTA, there’s so many fond memories. It’s like a well that we created that we could always go back and drink from, that replenishes us. Mosi Eagle, he’s in the movie, he’s in the play. Big E, he’s in the movie, he’s in the play. The most remarkable thing is that those men were cast in the play based on what we saw in them at the Steering Committee [the group that makes casting decisions for the play]. We saw the better qualities in those individuals and sought to bring those things out by putting them in a role that would cause them to bring those things out. It was a beautiful thing to watch.
There’s a moment in the movie where the RTA members are talking about what their next performance should be, and your character suggests doing a comedy. Was that moment taken from real life?Â
If my brother Divine G said “hot,†I’m gonna say “cold.†I just want to do whatever he doesn’t want to do. That’s our relationship. It’s caused both of us to grow because we had to go read up and study the things that we want to talk about. You got to know what you’re talking about when you’re talking to Divine G.
Is there a scene in the movie that you’re particularly glad is in there for the perspective it provides to the audience?
The scene when we’re in a circle, and Brent says for everybody to close their eyes and think of a place, and then when you open your eyes, you describe that place. The only direction in that whole scene was that Brent was gonna lead the instruction — and that’s it. Everything else that came out of our mouths was genuinely from the place we were at when we closed our eyes. That particular exercise was constructed to decompress after we do so many shows. When it’s over, the cell comes back — clink, clink, clink, bang. [Pantomimes pulling a cell door closed.] You’re reminded that you’re back in prison, and we recognized that this crash was like a depression phase. A lot of things can happen to an individual when he’s depressed in a cell by himself. So we constructed these types of exercises to decompress and peel the onion layer back and be able to sleep good tonight. And I’ll see you guys in the morning, you know?
You’re a co-writer on this film, and you’ve said that you were brought in because you “understand the language of the prison†and could “clean up the language.†I’m curious if there was one scene or conversation in the film that showcases your work the most.Â
One of the very last scenes, when Colman is up against the wall and I say, “Yeah, you fucked up, but we love you.†I wrote that. A lot of that was from my true friendship with the real Divine G, because that’s exactly how he was. He wouldn’t ask for help for nothing, but he’s always there to help. It was a tribute to Colman and how he really was Divine G in every aspect, on set, on-camera and off. His dedication to be Divine G in that moment, it provided me with an opportunity to say to Divine G what I really wanted to say to him.
Many of your scenes are with Colman. Was there a moment where you made a choice that surprised him?Â
In the scene where we’re on the hill and he hands me the paperwork and we’re walking off, the last thing I say is, “They better let me out on this bullshit right here, too.†[Laughs.] Nobody expected that. I improvised that. Clint and Greg were very open about that. It’s a risk involved with making choices, and sometimes you weigh and judge, “Is it worth the risk?†These are things you may have to do in a split second. This is where the training comes in, this really good training that I received from so many people. It may not have been formal training, but it was training, nonetheless, from professional people who have been doing it for a living. This is why I have a problem when they say, “You’re just playing yourself.†It seems to take a lot away from the people that trained me.
You are playing a version of yourself, but it’s years removed from the present and a written and edited version. What was important for you about honoring that past version of yourself? How did you approach it?Â
I didn’t have to approach it alone, thankfully, because I had a whole team around me. All I really did was lay out stories to them and tell them how things used to be. Not only things that I’ve done or I’ve experienced personally but things like how the climate was and what people were doing. I did do 17 and a half years in this environment, and those memories are so carefully crafted into the character that I played. As far as the jargon and the language of the environment, there’s really no place to go research that because it changes every day. I had to go back to where we were at that time and the things we used to say. That’s where we get “beloved†from because that’s an actual true story. That’s one way we tried to make a change, by changing the way we identify ourselves.
When people say that you’re just playing yourself, how does that make you feel?Â
I received training from all these wonderful people that came into prison and went through various strip searches and treatment that you wouldn’t believe just to come help me. You take a lot away from them when you just say that I walked up there and played myself.
There are a couple of scenes I want to ask you about, what your headspace was for them and how much they come from your life. The first is when you quote King Lear to a surprised Divine G. I think if people are coming into this movie with stereotypical assumptions about the members of RTA, then that moment punctures them.Â
I love Shakespeare, all of it. King Lear is one of the top. We needed that moment to show, I know a lot more about this than you may think I do, although I may not want to show you right now, because I don’t really know your intentions. In prison, the toughest guys are the most guarded because we love hard as well. It’s a balanced thing. And to violate that love is a terrible thing for us.
Is it fair to call that moment a flex?Â
[Laughs.] It’s kind of like a flex, but it’s a flex you might not want to flex around everybody.
Do you remember the first time you read King Lear?Â
I don’t remember the first time I read it. I think it was during a workshop with RTA, and the first time I read it, I liked it. But the first time I heard it, I liked it even more, because Shakespeare depends on the amount of inflection you put on a word. That can change the whole sentence or the whole paragraph. It’s a study thing. It’s, “We’re locked in for 30 days and we’re not going nowhere. Great time to pull out Shakespeare.â€
I obviously need to ask you about the Hamlet monologue scene and how you approached the “all this shit is yours†swaggering around the stage.Â
Man, it was a moment that I was waiting for because that monologue is so deep. I like to work backward from certain things, go from the last line. And “Ay, there’s the rub,†it had me screwed up for a long time because I couldn’t work it out. Once I worked that out, it straightened out everything in the monologue for me because I began to see it the way I think he saw it — coming from a poor man’s perspective.
What was it like to act that moment? Because that’s the turning point of the film, when your character is able to take instruction and we see the change in his performance.Â
I had to be as disliked as I was in the beginning — I had to — in order to show contrast, in order to show the change, the growth, the development, the possibility of what could be. To be able to use this Hamlet monologue as the crème de la crème, it was an honor and a pleasure because I love it so much. That’s why I poured so much into it.
In the film’s final scene, you pick up Colman’s character after he’s released. It’s such a joyous, emotional scene when you two greet each other. Can you talk about filming that?Â
The ambition of every one of us is to be able to be there for your brother when nobody else is there. When your brother is only expecting to see a bus and you see your brother standing there. That’s what we all want to be able to do, once we build those bonds and those relationships. The way Colman enfolded himself into the family, into the group, that’s a bond that’s gonna last forever with each one of us. It’s not just a bond with me. He bonded like that with each and every one of us. We’re gonna always consider him the brother.
Did you film that at the end of production? Did it also have all the emotional swell of finishing the film?
It did. Colman didn’t know I was gonna hug him, that’s a fact. He thought it was gonna be like, “Alright, we out.†He had immersed himself so much into Divine G’s life that he was Divine G walking out after all of that time and carrying all of that emotion. He didn’t know how he would react if it was any type of physical contact. The whole dam might burst open. He wasn’t really ready to do that right then. Of course, I’m gonna grab you, though. I’m gonna do it. [Laughs] It was my choice, and Greg was in on it too.