Profile | Rebel Ridge star Aaron Pierre on projecting calm, and Barry Jenkins’ part in his journey
Pierre talks about using ‘trickery on my brain’ to play a character who stays calm as he is confronted by Don Johnson’s racist police officer
Before Aaron Pierre wanted to act, he wanted to be the fastest man in the world.
Growing up in West Croydon in London, Pierre was drawn to track and field. He thought gold medallist sprinter Maurice Greene was the coolest man on Earth. Pierre ran the 60-metre, the 100-metre and second leg of the 4x100 metre relay.
“Something that’s been instilled in me is to be calm in high-pressure situations – dude, one of which is the relay second leg,” Pierre says, speaking by Zoom from his flat in Los Angeles. “When the whole school is out and you get that baton, you’ve got to just focus on one foot in front of the other.”
How fast Pierre can put one foot in front of the other is a point of interest not just because of the pace of his career. (This December, he will be the voice of Mufasa in Barry Jenkins’ Mufasa: The Lion King.) It is also because for a guy who can move really fast, the 30-year-old Pierre, as an actor, has startling power in stillness.
In Jeremy Saulnier’s Rebel Ridge, a taut, suspenseful thriller that debuted on September 6 on Netflix, Pierre plays Terry Richmond, a former Marine who, while biking, is stopped by police and has a bag of money – bail money for his cousin – confiscated.
What follows is a tense and evolving stand-off with the rural town’s corrupt police department and its chief (a terrific Don Johnson). And until he isn’t, Pierre’s Richmond is unyieldingly patient and unthreatened.