Veteran theatre director Nadia Latif, who makes her feature directorial debut with the adaptation of 2004 Walter Mosley novel \u201cThe Man in my Basement,\u201d tells TheWrap that production delays due to the pandemic and the double strikes actually improved the final film.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were stopped by the pandemic. We were stopped by the strikes,\u201d Latif said. \u201cBut actually that in itself was, I think, a blessing, because we got to just spend more time with the material, with music, with art, with films, with books.\u201d<\/p>\n
More from TheWrap<\/strong><\/p>\n In \u201cThe Man in My Basement,\u201d Nadia Latif\u2019s adaptation of Walter Mosley\u2019s novel, when a mysterious man (Willem Dafoe) approaches Charles Blakey (Corey Hawkins) to rent his basement for a generous sum, Blakey is drawn into a chilling reality involving his own family\u2019s hidden history.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n The extra preparation time allowed Latif to send research materials to her cast. Dafoe praised the approach as crucial for understanding his character\u2019s perspective.<\/p>\n \u201cAll the stuff that you sent me in that period when I knew I was going to do it was beautiful,\u201d Dafoe said. \u201cIt was like an education for me to approximate what my character\u2019s point of view might be, which is not from my experience. I\u2019m not sure I would have known how to get the proper point of view.\u201d<\/p>\n For Hawkins, the extended prep helped him connect with the character\u2019s stillness and internal struggles. \u201cHis stillness was really challenging to me,\u201d Hawkins added. \u201cShe definitely gave me the confidence to go forth and be uncomfortable. Be comfortable with being uncomfortable.\u201d<\/p>\n By the time production finally commences, Dafoe and Hawkins were ready to go.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we turned up, I felt like you guys all knew those characters really well,\u201d Latif. \u201cYou were just like, \u2018Yeah, I\u2019ve been sitting with this for a minute.’\u201d<\/p>\n The post \u2018The Man in My Basement\u2019 Director Nadia Latif on How Pandemic Delays Became a \u2018Blessing\u2019 for the Film<\/a> appeared first on TheWrap<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source ca.news.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Veteran theatre director Nadia Latif, who makes her feature directorial debut with the adaptation of 2004 Walter Mosley novel \u201cThe Man in my Basement,\u201d tells TheWrap that production delays due to the pandemic and the double strikes actually improved the final film. \u201cWe were stopped by the pandemic. We were stopped by the strikes,\u201d Latif […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1956684,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[363697,363699,363695,363698,363696,309391],"class_list":["post-2000987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-corey-hawkins","tag-latif","tag-nadia-latif","tag-the-man-in-my-basement","tag-walter-mosley","tag-willem-dafoe"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Ryan-Reynolds-Dwayne-Johnson-Tessa-Thompson-and-More-Set-Panels.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2000987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2000987"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2000987\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1956684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2000987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2000987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2000987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/div>\n