Kyle Meredith With...

Kyle Meredith talks with Willem Dafoe, Corey Hawkins, Anna Diop, and director Nadia Latif about turning Walter Mosley’s novel The Man in My Basement into a psychological thriller where race, trauma, and grief haunt every frame. The story follows Charles Blakey (Corey Hawkins), a man on the verge of losing his ancestral Sag Harbor home, who agrees to rent his basement to the mysterious Aniston Bennett (Willem Dafoe) for the summer—only to find himself pulled into a chilling reckoning with history, family ghosts, and the root of all evil. Dafoe digs into acting as “pretend” courage, why first days on set still terrify him, and how genre lets hard truths sneak up on an audience. Latif reflects on making her feature debut and weaving her own story of loss into Mosley’s text, while Hawkins details playing Charles’ transformation opposite Dafoe in a basement where time itself bends. Diop speaks to how horror and thriller connect with Black history in ways straight drama can’t. From prosaic lines that ring like bell