Loving Director and Stars on the Couple Who Changed Interracial Marriage Laws

Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga in Loving.

The KCET Cinema Series launched its sold-out winter season at ArcLight Cinemas Sherman Oaks on October 18 with a screening of Loving. Written and directed by Jeff Nichols (Mud, Midnight Special) the film tells the story of Richard and Mildred Loving, an interracial couple whose marriage was deemed illegal in their home state of Virginia. Ultimately, their case made it to the Supreme Court, who ruled in 1967 that states could not bar interracial couples from marrying.

Nichols and stars Ruth Negga (Mildred Loving) and Joel Edgerton (Richard Loving) joined KCET Cinema Series Host Pete Hammond for a Q&A session following the screening. A portion of the interview appears below and has been edited for length and clarity.

The KCET Cinema Series is generously sponsored by the E. Hofert Dailey Trust. The winter season runs through December 13 and is now sold out.

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Jeff Nichols on making Loving.

The thing is, no matter what type of movie I really wanted to make, no matter what things I felt were in my wheelhouse, as a filmmaker or lent themselves to my aesthetic, the reality is this is not my film. This is not my story. This is Richard and Mildreds story, so in all instances, we had to represent them. I had to, first off, find out who they were, as best as I could. Find out about their nature, the essence of who they were and then try to lay that out in a narrative form and in a film format that supported that story.

Now, it helped that their story does actually match up with my wheelhouse as a filmmaker and does actually play my aesthetic preferences, but, ultimately, I just wanted to make a film that represented them.

Jeff Nichols on the documentary that inspired Loving.

Ged Doherty and Colin Firth had a company called Raindog Films and they had seen Nancy Buirskis documentary, The Loving Story, and got in business with her to turn this into a narrative film and they were the first producers on the project that approached me.

They had a pretty good pitch in that they just sent me Nancys documentary, which was so well thought out and so delicate.

When Nancy was making that, she unearthed this archival footage from the 1960s. A documentary filmmaker named Hope Ryden had gone to see them before their case had made it to the Supreme Court to interview them and there was black-and-white footage and color footage. It was integral to that documentary and integral to our making of the film. Youre able to watch it and watch this very elegant, beautiful, but at the same time, earthbound, blue collar woman enunciate her feelings about her husband and their marriage. Then you get to watch this other man, this man who is completely incomparable of enunciating his feelings in front of the camera and looks like theyre torching his feet on fire when theyre in front of the camera. It is an open door right into their hearts and their lives.

So, when Colin Firth calls you, you listen, but when he calls you and shows you this documentary, its an undeniable choice.

Alano Miller, Terri Abney, Ruth Negga and Joel Edgerton in Loving.

Jeff Nichols on casting Ruth Negga and Joel Edgerton.

Joels casting actually came after Ruths, so Ill talk about Ruth first - it works that way in my chronology. Before I went to make Midnight Special, I was out in L.A. taking meetings for Midnight Special and Francine Maisler, my casting director, who has been with me since Mud, who is phenomenal, she said, lets have some casting sessions - because I had kind of looked around and I just hadnt seen Mildred walking around on screen yet. Sarah Green, my producing partner, and Francine and I, we sat down and had a very brief casting session, only a few people, and Ruth was the first person to walk in the door. I wasnt familiar with Ruths work. She sat down. We didnt really speak very much beforehand. She started doing these scenes and it was very similar to what you saw on screen. She obviously had been studying this documentary as much as I had been studying it. She had the posture, the facial expressions, the voice. It was pretty uncanny.

It wasnt until the audition was done that I was speaking to her briefly and this Irish accent came out. At that point, it was too late. She was already cast.

It was remarkable. You guys saw it. If you go see the documentary, it becomes more impressive, I promise. She really inhabited this person.

Then, on the other end of things, I was working with Joel on Midnight Special thinking about Richard Loving. Joel has a bit of a physical resemblance. Hes blondish. I thought, if he lost a little bit of weight, and we cut some male-pattern baldness into his hair and gave him bad teeth, itd be pretty close.

That was kind of in the back of the mind when we started working together. Second, and, I guess, also important, I just fell in love with the guy. I loved working with him. Hes extraordinarily intelligent and easy to work with. Third, and more importantly, I watched how he broke down a dialect for that film. He was a Texas state trooper. I live in Texas, so I was a pretty good student of that voice and accent. I saw him take a clip from the Errol Morris documentary The Thin Blue Line - we took a detective from Vidor, Texas out of there - and he broke that voice down so beautifully and was able to apply it. I knew that with all of this archival footage of Richard, that he would have enough source material to really build Richards voice, which is a strange voice. Its hard to understand him a lot of times. It has this odd coastal influence. In Virginia, this accent, they say a-boot rather than about. Strange things. Had I gone out and just cast an American actor with a nice Southern accent - they do exist - I just wasnt sure that they would do the mechanical work necessary to get this voice right because I wanted Richard and Mildred Lovi

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