'Blindspotting' stars Daveed Diggs, Rafael Casal are on a mission of empathy

Brian Truitt | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption 'Blindspotting' doesn't ignore real-world issues of race, gun violence "Blindspotting" stars and co-writers Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal discuss the timeliness of their film in regard to race, police brutality and guns.

WASHINGTON – Every time Daveed Diggs is driving and a police car pulls up behind him, he has an uneasy feeling, like that vehicle is a shark in the water.

The star of "Blindspotting" (in theaters Friday in select cites, including New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, California, Chicago and Washington, expands nationwide July 27) is fascinated to see the same fear in the audience, regardless of race, when Diggs’ character is walking home late at night and a cop pulls up like a horror-movie monster, shining a spotlight in his direction.

“I don’t know a black person who has not felt that when a police car has driven by,” Diggs says. And when audiences witness that scene, "I think a lot of people (who aren't black) are also feeling it for the first time in a very palpable way. You get the sense that people have never been in these shoes before enough to really know what that feels like.”

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With equal doses of comedy and drama – and an undeniably lyrical quality, with raps and spoken-word performances – "Blindspotting" tackles issues of race, class, gun violence, police brutality and gentrification with two Oakland best friends. Not coincidentally, the film stars and is written by two Oakland best friends: Diggs and Rafael Casal met at Berkeley High School and later became collaborators.

In the movie, Collin (Diggs) has three days left of his probation and he’s just trying to stay on the straight and narrow, though his mischievous co-worker Miles (Casal) presents an obstacle to that: He immerses himself in African-American culture while also enjoying white privilege, which exacerbates his wild streak.

Collin witnesses a cop (Ethan Embry) gun down an unarmed black man in the back, and as the days unfold, a wedge is pushed between these two loyal friends and they start to see each other’s lives in very real ways.

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“What we hope to do is hold up a mirror to the social climate in which we exist and just ask what you see, and what you are OK with and not OK with, and is this the world you’re happy with?” says Casal, 32.

"We always say that we wish this felt like a period piece," says Diggs, 36, who started writing "Blindspotting" with Casal 10 years ago. "We wish we could look at it and be like, 'Oh, man, remember 2009 when unarmed black men were just getting gunned down by police? What a crazy thing that happened often back then.’ But it’s the same."

In the film, one character defines “blindspotting” as “how you can look at something and there could be another thing there you aren’t seeing,” and Diggs and Casal presented the idea so audiences can examine – and fix – their own blind spots. “We all have them. We all have to just dedicate ourselves to doing the work, and that’s a hard thing,” says Diggs, holding court with Casal at Busboys and Poets.

The name of the D.C. eatery/bookstore is inspired by Langston Hughes, so it’s a fitting place to interview two wordsmiths who give the narrative a musical quality. In the film’s most powerful scene, Collin brandishes a gun, though it’s what he says that’s just as dangerous when confronting a “physical manifestation of demons that have been haunting him,” says Diggs, a Tony and Grammy winner for his dual roles of Thomas Jefferson and Marquis de Lafayette in the Broadway sensation "Hamilton." “Both the gun and the verse are techniques to get somebody to listen."

'Blindspotting' tackles race, class and gun violence in Oakland in "Blindspotting," Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal star as movers and best friends in Oakland dealing with issues of race and gentrification.

There’s a definite anger that “Blindspotting” shares with "Do the Right Thing," but the film also has shades of "White Men Can’t Jump," "The Big Lebowski" and "Moonlight" as well as "Get Out," another movie that tackles racism in an immersive fashion.

“It’s an exercise in empathy, right?” Diggs says of the common ground between "Blindspotting" and Jordan Peele’s acclaimed thriller. “At least you have an opportunity to feel a little piece of it and be like, ‘That’s not a good feeling.’ Just the awareness and understanding of that is huge.”

A former national slam poetry champion who was a regular on HBO’s "Def Poetry," Casal adds that “it’s unfeelable but it’s not unknowable. The important thing is just to normalize the conversation and give some vocabulary around it. Sometimes you just need something to point at and go, ‘That scene right there. That is my lived experience every day.’ ”