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For six hours a day, five days a week, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson and Tarik “Black Thought” Trotter can still be found in the halls of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, working on bits with Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon and leading the show’s house band, The Roots, for their 13th year running. (The band itself has been around for three decades.) But the hip-hop pioneers, friends since high school, also spend this time getting an education in the entertainment industry, and it’s apparent they pay attention in class.
The initial forays under their Two One Five production company resemble those of the savviest Hollywood veterans. In February, Trotter debuted the original musical Black No More off-Broadway with John Ridley. In March, Thompson took home an Academy Award for Summer of Soul, his celebrated documentary and directorial debut about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival. Next up, Netflix and the Obamas’ Higher Ground will release the documentary Descendant on Oct. 21, the duo’s first production set outside the music world. The project tells the story of the last known ship to bring slaves to America. Zooming from respective corners of 30 Rock in mid-September, the collaborators — who finish each other’s thoughts in a way only childhood friends do — discuss their evolving priorities, creative tussles and why winning an Oscar can feel like “surfing in a tsunami.”
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You two have been collaborating since you were children. What’s the key to sustaining a long-term creative partnership?
AHMIR THOMPSON I always question that thing acts do when success is on the horizon and they go solo. Tarik and I knew early that you need a team to bounce the ideas off of. It’s probably the equivalent of an open marriage. You can go out on your own, get your rocks off and do other things creatively, but you eventually come back home.
TARIK TROTTER The Roots is a collective, and I don’t know that it’s the formula for everyone. But it has worked for us and has kept us together.
Any collective is going to butt heads from time to time. What was your last big disagreement?
THOMPSON There’s never been a Hatfield–McCoy scenario. (Laughs.) And I’m not even trying to present this as a rosy scenario because Tarik can attest that on damn near every Roots album, I’ve quit the group for like six weeks. But I come back, afro pick in hand, like, “OK, what part do I play?” We’re at the age where we’re way too mature and have way too much therapy hours clocked to not know how to communicate.
Hollywood really likes to put people in boxes. Being so associated with music, have you found it hard segueing to other content?
TROTTER Music-related storytelling is obviously going to be our strong suit. But if you spend time building credibility, which I think we have, branching out into other territories comes naturally. Our first few projects at Amazon, Disney and iHeart were music, then there was Summer of Soul, but our next project, Descendant, is the first thing where music is not the foundation.
THOMPSON In the same way people only use 10 percent of their brain, I think people have only utilized music to maybe 5 percent of its potential. Having that musical pedigree will aid us in a way other creatives wouldn’t know. That’ll make us better storytellers.
That sounds like the difference between a Black Woodstock — the version of the doc that was originally pitched and had less regard for the Harlem Cultural Festival’s musical relevance to the time — and Summer of Soul, which was the doc you made. Am I right?
THOMPSON I had no experience going into it. And my producer told me, “Let’s treat this like a DJ gig. How would you do it?” So I made Summer of Soul as if it were a DJ gig. That’s a kind of a perspective that I don’t think a traditional filmmaker would have thought of. So, yes, clearly a musician made Summer of Soul. I feel like there will always be a musicality to whatever project we take on.
How did Descendant, the doc about the last known slave ship to come to America and the town its surviving passengers settled, become your first non-music-related project?
THOMPSON My connection to it is literal. Only 1 percent of African Americans can recall their ship, their family name and their origin. But I had made an appearance on Skip Gates’ Finding Your Roots and found out my great-great-great-grandfather, Charles “Cudjo” Lewis, was on the last ship and started AfricaTown. Skip continued to give me updates, and eventually I got an email that they were doing a documentary on AfricaTown. It’s absolutely a duty for me. I want to know everything about what he went through and what he developed.
Higher Ground got the rights to the film. Does that come with a call from Barack and Michelle Obama?
THOMPSON Oh, we’re tired of him calling. (Laughs.) No, really, he had cold-called me during the Sundance part of Summer of Soul. They’re old friends of ours now.
How did your incoming calls change in the wake of the Oscar?
THOMPSON It was surreal. But timing is everything, and what really helped me was the amount of silence that I experienced during the quarantine part of the pandemic. We started this band straight out of high school. It has been nothing but chaotic and constant thinking since. After the Oscar, it was jarring because it was cold call after cold call — Steven Spielberg, Elton John, Oprah Winfrey and on and on. It’s like surfing in a tsunami. You have to have your head on straight because, that first month, I wasn’t comfortable. So I went off the grid to relax in Mexico, even though not doing anything is hard for me.
How have you processed the moment that preceded your win? The Slap dominated post-Oscar conversations for quite a while.
THOMPSON The one person who was truly unaware of what was happening was me. I was sitting next to [Attica director] Stanley Nelson. I was up against the guy who taught me what a documentary is! Even without that, you’re not in the right mind state. Either my life was going to change or I was just going to have a great party at Jay-Z and Beyoncé’s. I was so far away from what Will [Smith] and Chris [Rock] were going through. When I won, nothing over the next 72 hours was even real. That’s as close to a high that one could get without taking a pill.
Development can be a long and frustrating process. What’s the learning curve been like?
TROTTER We’ve learned that there’s no rubber-stamping it. You can’t phone it in, and that means carving out the time and putting the right amount of focus in each project. We have to be considerate of what our brand is going to be associated with.
THOMPSON We’ve learned to think critically about what our art is. Oftentimes, artists do the art, but no one critically thinks about what a lyric means or what an arrangement means. The same goes from a scripted standpoint or a directorial standpoint. Knowing how to dissect these things and how to explain it to other people is only going to make us better.
You’ve had a long run with Fallon on both The Late Show and The Tonight Show. How has it informed your careers?
TROTTER It’s been a huge platform. And talk about proximity — we’ve met everyone. The best of the best come through these halls.
THOMPSON We love our job at The Tonight Show, and we use our creativity to the hilt. But the best part of it has been never letting any opportunity pass — always watching every writer, producer, comedian, chef, whatever. It’s been an Ivy League education.
Interview edited for length and clarity.
This story first appeared in the Sept. 28 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
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