Jharrel Jerome On Realizing Boots Riley’s Singular Vision of ‘I’m a Virgo’

You have never seen anything quite like Boots Riley’s I’m a Virgo. Centered around the coming-of-age of a thirteen foot young man in Oakland, California, Virgo effortlessly weaves the themes of social unrest with curiosity, heart and whip smart visuals and colors. Jharrel Jerome gives his most relaxed, natural performance as Cootie, the young man who looms large but still needs some growing up to do.

When you realize that Virgo’s first season is seven half-hour episodes that unpack and question urgent matters with humor…you won’t why every other comedy doesn’t try to do the same thing. Riley packs the frame with so much color, sound, and absurdity, and it reaffirms that he is one of the most playful directors working today. It all packs a strong punch without being heavy handed. Jerome was thrilled to work with Riley before even getting the script in front of a camera.

“It’s amazing how Boots fits almost five to ten conversations into one moment or one scene,” Jerome says. “Unpacking a script or even a scene is like unpacking Boots’ brain. When you speak to him, it’s not always a linear conversation that has nothing to do with what you started talking about–that’s the beauty of his brain. He knows how to navigate that. For me, having talks with Boots, we talked a lot before we got it on its feet or even before we got to set. We talked a lot about the physicality and voice of Cootie and how to inhabit the behemoth of him.

It’s called I’m a Virgo and not I’m a Giant or I’m a Thirteen Foot Tall Man. He wakes up that way every morning the same way that we wake up, so he’s so used to it. When we talked about that my entire trajectory of the character changed, and I realized that it was less about his body and more about the naiveté within him.  This kid is nineteen, but I think he’s thirteen. When you think about being held inside, you think about abuse or bad circumstances, but Cootie is safe and he’s well-fed and well read. When he goes outside, that gets stripped down, because the social aspect of a person is just as important as intelligent they are.”

When Cootie begins sneaking out with his new batch of friends, everyone always brings up his height first. You think a thirteen foot man has never heard, ‘Wow, you’re tall!’ before? When we put those labels onto people, our expectations become all about that. Everything is about their reaction instead of talking to Cootie about who he is.

“I hadn’t even related that with my own life experience as someone in the industry,” he says. “Sometimes people will say to me, ‘Oh, you’re an actor. You’re in movies.’ From then on, what is our relationship? What are your intentions with me? As soon as Cootie walks outside, whether they want to bring him in with love or push him away with hate, everyone’s reaction is, ‘Wow, this man is giant!'” Boots is so smart because in a lot of ways that is the inner struggle of a Black man in this country. A man walks outside or into a room because he isn’t accepted for something like the clothes he’s wearing. Maybe the tattoos on his body. Cootie is such a symbol for a lot of things that Boots wanted to accomplish.”

I couldn’t talk to Jerome without bringing up the physicality of the part of Cootie. How do you perform in a scene when you are so hunched over like that? In wider shots, where we see Cootie’s entire body, he’s bent at the waist, and we are presented with the notion that Black people in America are made to feel like they don’t fit in public spaces. Jerome expands on what it felt like for him.

“The physicality was the most stressful part,” Jerome admits. “Most of the time I am hunched over. Around mid-season, they talked about bringing somebody in to make sure that I wasn’t doing any damage to my back or even a masseuse, because I would be bent over like that for two or three hours at a time in one position. On average, an actor has a stand-in, but we didn’t do that very much on this since my body height mattered in terms of getting the shots right. My size and my eyeline all mattered. I could maybe stretch when they were setting up a shot, but it’s tricky because I had to throw some tools out as an actor. The breathing, the meditation, the preparation. You’re distracted by measuring tapes around your body. There was no eye contact at any given point, so all the bonding came from time off set.”

As Flora, Olivia Washington and Jerome have palpable, natural chemistry. When they begin flirting with one another, she stares directly into the camera, and we cannot help but smile. Her eyes blink slowly or she looks up at us, and we can’t help but feel powerful. No wonder Cootie fell so quickly.

“Olivia is such a force, and we all felt that from her tape,” he says. “It was all in her face. I use my face a lot, so you have two strong faces going at it. Off set, she and connected so deeply, and we had a lot of personal conversations about what we were doing. We had that big scene in episode four, so we made sure that we were on each other’s page and each other’s time. We were shooting in the Deep South for six months, so, at one point, it felt like camp. We were constantly around with each other, and then it all started to fall into place.”

Carmen Ejogo and Mike Epps, as Cootie’s aunt and uncle, only want to protect Cootie from the outside world, because they know how the world will react to him. Epps’ Martisse gives Cootie constant grief for banging up their house, while Ejogo’s Lafrancine keeps her voice steady and calm as she tries to level with their younger ward. It reminds me so much of how you take individual things from your parents but they can be so different from one another.

“The think about working with Mike [Epps], especially, is that his comic timing is impeccable,” he says. “In terms of working with him, that was all from him. I had fun almost catching his waves in our scenes together. Carmen [Ejogo] is such a thesbian and she’s so grounded, so you have that going against Mike bouncing. I didn’t spend that much time with them off set, so a lot of it came from our natural instincts on set. That’s why there is such a carefree spirit between us three.”

Is everyone asking about the ending? You do not make it to the end of Virgo and not scream at the screen.

“We always get two questions,” Jerome says. “The first is about what is going to happen, but then everyone flips out when they want to know what’s going on with the rash. No answer on this end.”

I’m a Virgo is streaming now on Prime Video.