Usually when you’re an actor portraying a real-life figure, you want to do plenty of research to make sure you get it right. But when you’re playing a younger version of a sitting president and first lady, perhaps you already know too much.
Just ask Parker Sawyers and Tika Sumpter. The stars of Southside With You — which depicts Barack and Michelle Obama on their first date in 1989 — had to ignore the present and focus exclusively on the past, when their characters were co-workers at a Chicago law firm who didn’t yet harbor any White House dreams.
“I read nothing about Michelle, because it was their first date, and he barely knows her in the office. I didn’t want to know anything about her school or her family,” said Sawyers, who plays Barack Obama, during a recent stop in Dallas. “All we had to do was focus on the script, and we would find out things that way.”
In the screenplay by director Richard Tanne, law-firm intern Barack is an outgoing smooth talker — chain smoking and driving a beat-up Datsun hatchback — whose daylong excursion with an associate, Michelle Robinson, didn’t exactly begin as a first date. But as they crisscross the city from an art exhibition to lunch in the park to a community rally to dinner and a movie, their bond grows closer.
The conversation flows from backgrounds to ambitions to culture. Initially reluctant to let her guard down, she is won over by his easygoing confidence and intelligence, which matches her own.
“From the beginning, I wanted to do it and help get it made,” said Sumpter, who also is a producer on the film. “It was amazing to take two people who everybody knows almost everything about, and then see them when they were 25 and 28 years old, and going back to the origin story. These are two roles who any actor would want to play — so rich and fulfilling.”
Sawyers, 33, bears an uncanny physical resemblance to Obama, and has been joking around with impersonations for years. But he never expected the chance to play the president while he’s still in office.
“I’ve been working on that, thinking I’d play him in 10 or 15 years. And then this popped up,” he said. “It was more about dialing it back and being just a young man who’s in school, doesn’t have the weight of the world on him, doesn’t have kids yet, and he just wants to get to know this woman a little better.”
Sumpter, 36, said she became inspired by Michelle Obama’s strength and character during her research for the role, which helped alleviate some of the pressure of playing one of the world’s most powerful figures on screen.
“She was so focused on her own career, and I thought that was pretty amazing,” Sumpter said. “A lot of times in romantic movies, she’s chasing after the guy or crying in the corner, or her clothes are off in the first 10 minutes. It’s refreshing that the woman was a prize, and she knew she was a prize.”
Sawyers lives in London with his Lithuanian wife and two children, and said that international component to his own family helped inform his portrayal of Obama, who is from a biracial family with ties to various countries.
Sumpter said because the film mostly steers clear of politics, it has been embraced by audiences regardless of party affiliation since debuting at the Sundance Film Festival in January.
“It’s just a love story. I think a lot of people see themselves in these two,” Sumpter said. “The story is pretty universal. I think there’s so many different things that people can take away.”
So what do the Obamas think? The two stars haven’t spoken to them about the film, and aren’t sure when they’ll get the chance to see it.
“It was done with integrity and love and respect,” Sumpter said. “Hopefully they love it.”
