Corey Hawkins Wants to Make It Easier for the Next Kid
In 2017, actor Corey Hawkins was filming a movie in Toronto when he got a call from the producers of the U. S. Open. The singer they had booked to perform at the start of the men's singles final had fallen through—would Hawkins like to do it? "I was like, 'So, you all want me to do what?'" he recalls. "They were like, 'Sing "God Bless America" while the planes fly over.' I'm like, 'Okay.'" Within twenty-four hours, on September 10, Hawkins was at Arthur Ashe Stadium, in Queens, belting his heart out. He didn't know it at the time, but among the 23,000 people in the stands sat Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Hawkins's performance was an informal audition for the film adaptation of the playwright's breakout musical, In the Heights.
For Hawkins, thirty-two, landing the role of Benny, a taxi dispatcher who dreams of building his own business, was serendipitous. In the Heights was the first musical he saw, soon after he'd moved to New York City to study drama at Juilliard. It's set in Washington Heights, the predominantly Dominican neighborhood in upper Manhattan, just blocks from the apartment in Harlem he shared with six roommates when he was starting out as an actor. The show is both a love letter to the people who live there and a sharp critique of the forces, most notably gentrification, that threaten their way of life.
Hawkins can relate to the story line. He grew up in Southeast Washington, D. C., and says so much has changed in the fifteen years since he left. It's as if someone dragged one of those big pink erasers across the capital west to east, carving a Caucasian path through a town once affectionately known as Chocolate City. He attended Duke Ellington School of the Arts, the elite magnet school that counts Dave Chappelle as an alum. Hawkins and his friends—"scrappy art kids," as he describes them, including The Handmaid's Tale's Samira Wiley—would gather after school at Busboys and Poets, a restaurant and bookstore that served as a de facto community center. Today, Busboys and Poets is a nine-location franchise with Black-history factoids posted on the walls for customers to ponder while they peruse the vegan brunch options. "Where I grew up, they're beautiful townhouses now, with yards and grass, homes you can barely afford," he says. "I'm like, Whoa, what is happening?"
At Juilliard, Hawkins was one of the few Black students enrolled in the drama school. "Juilliard was tough because we..." he says, trailing off as he searches for the words. "They didn't see us." In class, he would practice the accents of the international students from Britain and Iceland, but "no one ever really had to do our accents," he says. "We had the burden of teaching our teachers," only one of whom was Black. The pressure to assimilate nearly overwhelmed Hawkins. "There's a part of you that has to code-switch to be a certain way around the white folk," he says. Worse, "you think that's acceptable."
After graduating in 2011, he began winning parts in television projects and off-Broadway productions. In 2013, he made his Broadway debut in Romeo and Juliet, and he scored the role of a young Dr. Dre in the 2015 film Straight Outta Compton. He still remembers the time a producer pulled him aside to discuss the movie's characters: "They were like, 'Just so you know, these people are from the street. I know you went to Juilliard.'" The producer meant it as advice, but in effect he was questioning the actor's chops, while also suggesting that no one could embody both worlds.
Hawkins's résumé is evidence to the contrary. After In the Heights, he will star alongside Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand in Joel Coen's The Tragedy of Macbeth. "Just a bunch of hacks," Hawkins says of his collaborators, laughing. "Imma wipe the floor with all these newbies." He swoons over working with McDormand—"Jesus Christ. What? This woman can do no wrong!"—and especially Washington, whom he considers a mentor. "I appreciate him taking me under his wing and literally having chats, being able to pick his brain and watch him work," he says.
Hawkins may have accomplished his childhood dream of making it as an actor, but, he says, "it's still not enough." He's producing now and selecting projects that highlight new voices. He is learning the importance of paying forward one's success, whether it's "seeing Denzel create the foundation so that I can step in there and exist in that same space"; "watching Lin plant the seeds for Anthony [Ramos]," Hawkins's In the Heights costar; or remembering the way Miranda spotted a relatively unknown performer at a tennis tournament and took note. "It's about creating space for each other," Hawkins says. "Hopefully it makes it easier for the next kid to come around."
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