Candyman’s Vanessa Estelle Williams on Her Character’s Tough Journey

Nia DaCosta’s Candyman is a sequel to the 1992 authentic, however most of its characters are new to the story. The massive exception, in fact, is the McCoy household: artist Anthony—only a child in the course of the occasions of the primary movie—and his fiercely protecting mom, Anne-Marie. Vanessa Estelle Williams reprised her function as Anne-Marie within the 2021 film, which hits Blu-ray in the present day—and in a latest interview over video, io9 received an opportunity to ask her about it.

It’s been almost 30 years since audiences noticed Anne-Marie dramatically reuniting together with her toddler son after he was kidnapped from her Chicago house by Tony Todd’s sinister Candyman. From an actor’s viewpoint, Williams mentioned choosing again up with a personality she final performed three many years in the past was a novel expertise.

“It’s a rare opportunity to be able to investigate where your character is today. It was really fulfilling and marvelous, especially because of who the creative team was, to see where we were going to take the character and how we were going to make [the story] relevant for the day,” Williams mentioned. “It was so keenly handled in terms of speaking with such clarity about what gentrification really means, and who it affects and how it affects them, and what violence in the community really means for a little boy—and what happens to that little boy? Colman Domingo’s character is completely traumatized and it becomes, you know, violence begets violence and is an ongoing thing. The story, now in the hands of [these Black creators], became more authentic and more relatable in terms of like, yeah, this is what would actually happen—the point of view, and who’s telling the story, greatly matters.”

Anne-Marie’s presence is felt all through the movie; Anthony, performed as an grownup by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, sees his mom’s identify flash on his cellphone display screen, and she or he’s talked about in conversations he has along with his girlfriend, Brianna (Teyonah Parris). But although Williams is simply onscreen for one pivotal scene, the actor nonetheless took the time to flesh out the story of what Anne-Marie’s been as much as since 1992. “You know, she moved on up ever so much, given her limitations in terms of education. But she’s making a lower-middle-class, working-class living as a nurse’s assistant. She’s got knowledge, she’s able to move her child singlehandedly without, necessarily, a consistent man in her life. I’d like to think that she’s had some relationships, some healthy relationships,” Williams mentioned. “But certainly when we meet her in the ‘90s, she’s a single mom trying to make it. She’s courageous enough as a parent to allow her child to not have to, like, be an engineer or an attorney or something like that; [instead, he’s working] in this uncertain kind of field, being an artist, and that he is able to be a successful artist is mind-blowing, against all of these odds, against all of their humble beginnings.”

While it might sound to the viewer that Anthony and Anne-Marie are considerably estranged in DaCosta’s film—he dodges her calls and “forgets” to point out up after they have plans—Williams has a extra nuanced perspective on their relationship. “I think that when we meet Anthony, he’s in sort of an artistic crisis, which is the reason why the Candyman gets summoned,” Williams mentioned. “I didn’t get the sense that they were estranged. I just think that he didn’t see her as much as she wanted him to. Like, if you think about him being her whole world, certainly the star of her world—and he’s got this new woman. This big, big, big life. So it’s easy for a mom to feel sort of outside of that: ‘Those aren’t my people. I’m not at all fancy like you are now.’ So that was more my take on it, not that he was estranged necessarily, but that he didn’t see her enough or as much as she would have wanted to. Certainly, he was putting her off in this particular time that we meet him in the movie because of what was going on in terms of the Candyman being summoned and all that he was moving through in terms of what’s going on with his body and his life.”

Williams is keen on her character, a survivor not simply of supernatural evils but additionally a life that hasn’t been very straightforward, to say the least. “Anne-Marie is the bomb. She’s my hero. The unfortunate thing for her and many mothers in this case—and that’s all Black mothers, no matter what your socio-economical standing is—is that we as mamas cannot protect our children from these systems, these Candymen, these evils that are set up to kill our boys and our girls. That’s the trajectory that Anne-Marie goes through,” Williams mentioned, “In that heartbreaking scene between the two of them where [Anthony] asks, ‘So why did you lie to me?’ Well, she’s been lying to protect him, and she’s been hoping never to have this conversation, never to have to speak to this—and the monster returns. That’s the sort of metaphor that’s so impactful for me, for the Black community, that we talk about the metaphor of what the horror of Candyman really is. They speak to that in Lovecraft Country [too]. We can tell this horror story where people are dying, but the horror that we can’t walk away from when we leave the theater is a sustaining thing that is really bone-chilling.”

Candyman, beforehand obtainable on digital, hits DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K Ultra HD in the present day.

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