Taylour Paige on Starring in Kendrick Lamar’s Short Film !!We Cry Together!!: *It Was the Right Time, Right Place, Right People*

 

When Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers, Kendrick Lamar’s fifth studio album, was released on May 13, one of the album’s standout tracks quickly became “We Cry Together,” as much for its raw subject matter as its slightly irregular format. (The song sounds more like a radio play or rap battle than it does a traditional hip-hop offering.) Taylour Paige (Zola, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom) assumes the role of Lamar’s star-crossed lover his trigger and his muse and today the hyperreal song has come to life further with the worldwide debut of a six-minute short film of the same name.

The short film based on the album’s eighth track, in which a quarreling couple communicates both everything and nothing, was produced by Lamar’s creative collective pgLang and shot with live audio and no cuts in a single take a fitting approach for an album rendered in blues and Blackness, woven with elements of both trap and free jazz.

“We Cry Together” (the song) was recorded in February 2020, and the accompanying short film was shot weeks later in mid-March, just a day before quarantine was mandated in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Directed by Jake Schreier, Dave Free and Kendrick Lamar, “We Cry Together” (the film) premiered in a limited, week-long run (one screening per day, with phones collected in advance) at the Laemmle Royal Theater in West Los Angeles in June. Since then, it has qualified for Oscar consideration in the best live-action short category.

What is it about “We Cry Together” that demanded a short film treatment in your opinion, as opposed to being a music video in the more traditional sense? What feels cinematic about this song?

I think beyond being a short film, it’s an experience; you’re like a voyeur in this couple’s life but it also reflects what the world sounds like. Whether it be arguing with your sibling or people on the internet    I don’t think there’s a container for it, it just is.

How many takes of this did you ultimately do? Were you moving through each reset rapidly to maintain the rawness, or was the process more calculated and drawn out?

Music is a frequency, and the way you shift through various moods in the song — especially in one take — sounds like you’re alchemizing anger and trauma into sex and passion, and all these different things. That’s something that really struck me about the album in general, but especially this track and now this short film. As an actor and performer, what was it like for you to have to move through those myriad feelings in the span of six minutes?

So liberating. Again, the people that are for me are the mad ones, the ones committed to truth-telling and presence, and honesty. Honesty doesn’t always look pretty, and it doesn’t always look perfect.

I think I was drawing from personal experiences in relationships, but also my experience with the world and how frustrating it is. Like, what is going on here? What are we doing? What are we talking about? What are we prioritizing? We don’t relate to each other, we can’t really hear each other. It’s just hysteria. I feel like on the day [of the shoot] I was like, ‘Please God use me as a vessel to just let all of that come through because I feel like we’re all at capacity.’ This was over two years ago when we were all kind of scratching our heads about the world we’re living in. And now, even two years later, I think we’re at our breaking point even more.

Are there any moments in particular that you and Kendrick talked about really playing up and emphasizing during rehearsals? Did you choose certain elements to punch up or depict in a certain way to send a message?

I don’t remember in particular but he’s such a feeler so allowed us to kind of find (those moments). As much as we rehearsed on the day of the shoot, it was more about the blocking so we had the freedom to do whatever came up. I found that I was very emotional very angry and then almost apathetic.

How is the release of this film pushing the narrative of the whole album and its rollout forward?

It’s performance art. I think for me personally, you hope the art you put out reflects the world we live in. In the same way that, to me, a good healer is someone that helps you remember the tools you already have within to heal yourself, I hope when you’re watching it, you’re thinking about your relationships, how you show up, how you talk to someone.

It’s been two and a half years (since we filmed) now. But even then I knew it was special and it would resonate for so many. I know the way that I felt while I was doing it like this is validating because all I have to do is show up as me and be real.