Video: ‘Them’ Star Deborah Ayorinde on What It Took to Film THAT Scene

Deborah Ayorinde made big splashes in such recent buzzy titles as Netflix’s Luke Cage and the films Girls Trip and Harriet. But those roles didn’t prepare audiences for the physical and emotional depths she explores in her most recent project. Amazon Prime’s Them aired earlier in the spring, and it immediately became a worth-of-mouth hit.

And then Them‘s fifth episode kicked that reaction into the online stratosphere.

In that episode, we finally understand the trauma that Lucky Emory (Ayorinde) fled North Carolina to escape. The sequence, albeit brief, holds an enormous emotional impact on its viewers. You want to look away – and many emphatically did – but I could not. It’s a difficult and challenging moment carried by Ayorinde’s gut-wrenching performance.

But Deborah Ayorinde ‘s performance as Lucky extends beyond that single infamous scene. She navigates the tricky terrain of micro… no, macroaggressions, racism, and post-traumatic stress disorder in 1950s Compton. Ayorinde’s stellar performance illustrates a woman haunted by her past but remaining strong and defiant because her love for her family supersedes everything else. 

Here, Ayorinde talks to Awards Daily about filming the intense and emotionally draining first season of the planned anthology series. On what did she draw to make Lucky so authentic? How did she put herself into such a heightened emotional state during filming? What working relationships did she form with series creator Little Marvin and co-star Ashley Thomas? And, yes, what was it like filming that infamous Episode 5 sequence?

Them is now available to stream on Amazon Prime.