Sheepdog: Meet Steven Grayhm and Vondie Curtis Hall

 

TV GRAPEVINE / SHEEPDOG Responses by Steven & Vondie 

Tell me a bit about yourself and career. 

 

Steven: I started out on the stage, I went to the Royal Academy in England and sort of found my way through, you know, finding my voice as a filmmaker by making short films and then getting into film and television as an actor.

I was very fortunate for the last, you know, I guess 20 years to have a career in acting and then returned behind the camera, three or four years ago. I’m just really happy to be able to be a part of the entire storytelling process, whether that’s writing, directing, acting, and, and producing.

Vondie: I started as a musician and for me it’s been sort of the artist journey. I trained in opera and then I realized I didn’t want be a tree and so I started working on Broadway and did the workshop of Dreamgirls.

We worked on that for about a year before we finally got that on Broadway. And then I wanted to continue to do more, and so then I studied acting, with Ude Hagan for maybe about four years. And from that I wanted to be a storyteller, and I went to film school and started writing and continued my day job as an actor. I directed my first film from a script that I wrote in film school so it’s been an, an ongoing journey as an artist for me.

How would you describe your involvement in Sheepdog?

 

Steven: All encompassing. I went all in. I was, you know, again, just very fortunate to be surrounded by a team that trusted me to, to direct them, to guide them as the person to lean on, for the writing, for what was on the page and the script to be their scene partner.

It was an incredible honor and experience and I think being involved you know, in the research and development for such a long period of time really informs all the decisions that you make, especially during a really critical time when you’re on set.

So, you know, my involvement on this has been every ounce of who I am as a storyteller, but also as a human being. And, and I hope that I was able to bring out the humanity and the story was able to bring out the humanity in our cast and I think that that’s evident in their performances on screen.

Vondie: My involvement was getting a call saying, you have an offer for this movie and how quickly can you read the script?

And so I read it right away. I loved the script. I thought it was well-written, great characters and you know, as an actor, it’s like, what can I bring to this? I immediately said yes and then proceeded to try to do justice to the people that I knew, justice to Steven.

But Steven had a specific vision for his film. He’d spent so much time with it, developing it, rewriting, writing, rewriting, that I didn’t want let him down. I wanted to bring my A game and the collaboration I thought was great and it was wonderful to work with the director who, who was an actor and who in the scenes was the actor, not the director. It was great to sort of see the separation of the two jobs or of the three jobs, the screenwriter, the director, and the actor.

What were some challenges of playing the character?

 

Steven: I think, you know, one of the biggest challenges for me was getting it right. I’d spent so many years immersed in this world and this community both sitting in front of veterans and, and their families and mental health workers, gold star families and was just trying to honor their commitment to service and sacrifice by giving an authentic performance. And that’s what I hoped from our ensemble, our amazing cast. Everybody brought their A game and were just, you know, some of these performances are just stunning.

I mean, there was a lot of prep that went into it. We moved fairly quickly and didn’t deliberate too long, and thus we were always acting on instinct and I think that that really comes through in the performances because, you know, my directing style was only to do one or two takes to try to capture something that felt like things were always at stake. There needed to be something always at stake in every scene and every scene is not an island unto its own. It weaves into the next scene and reveals something further and further and further as you kind of like peel back the onion and I wanted the performances to encompass that as well, to not give you everything and the first time you meet the character, but you have to go on that journey with them to learn their story.

Vondie: I think that Steven touched on it, representing, you know, folks that I knew and representing folks that have been wrongly accused and imprisoned, losing your family, losing everything, and then trying to rebuild and rebuild your life. So that was a challenge to get it right. And if anyone saw this film, they would say, I didn’t feel him acting. I felt he was that character.