Skylan Brooks was only about 13 years old when he scored his first leading role in the film called The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete. The movie from acclaimed director George Tillman Jr. (Barbershop series, Notorious, and, most recently, The Hate U Give) told the uplifting coming-of-age story of two inner-city kids named Mister and Pete who, after their mothers are taken away by the authorities, are left to fend for themselves, evading police and less-than-agreeable folks in their neighborhood while waiting for news about a child-actor casting call. Brooks played the titular Mister opposite Ethan Dizon's Pete and, what's more, stood his own against his co-stars Jennifer Hudson, Jordin Sparks, Anthony Mackie, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, and Jeffrey Wright. Indeed, both Brooks and Dizon earned Oscar buzz that year for their performances in the movie. To say that's quite an achievement for a young actor would be an understatement.
This year, about a decade after The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete, Brooks is leading a new film called Outsiders, a sci-fi thriller about a teen named Jaylen, who gets blamed for the disappearance of his girlfriend Amira (Clark Backo) — who had, in fact, been abducted by aliens — during a raucous house party. As a result, Jaylen must race against time to investigate the history of extraterrestrial occurrences of his small town in order to clear his name while protecting himself from the prejudicial attitudes of the town's residents and law enforcement, most of whom are convinced of his culpability.
Skylan Brooks Has Been Steadily Busy
Of course, Brooks has been a steadily busy actor between The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete and Outsiders, from a string of short films and a small role in Antoine Fuqua's Jake Gyllenhaal-led Southpaw to a supporting turn in the dystopian superhero movie The Darkest Minds and a leading role in Baz Luhrmann's Netflix musical drama The Get Down — again, an impressive resume for the actor who's only 23 years old.
"The amount of work I've put in, it's even hard for me to think that I've done this much. Sometimes, it takes someone to remind me, 'Hey, you know you've been doing this for a long time?'" says Brooks in our interview ahead of Outsiders' wide release. And when asked, after being in the business for more than a decade and having worked with such big names, if he still feels a need to prove his worth as an actor, Brooks said: "100%."
Outsiders wouldn't be the first movie to mix genre filmmaking with social commentary. In fact, Jordan Peele's directorial breakout movie Get Out effectively used horror to explore larger conversations of systemic racism, cultural appropriation, and representation (or lack thereof) in film. In a roundtable interview with The Los Angeles Times, Peele said Get Out's "Sunken Place" was a metaphor for "the prison-industrial complex, the lack of representation of Black people in film, in genre." In Outsiders' case, it's science fiction that becomes the vessel for director Delmar Washington's social commentary. "What the movie does really effortlessly is taking [social commentary] out of the personal scope and putting it in such a broad spectrum where it's kind of like you're looking [at it] from the outside-in, and without judgment," says Brooks when asked if the heaviness of the movie's themes sparked any initial hesitation to "go there" as a young Black actor. "Because of that, it made it easy. It wasn't [a story] where I felt taken aback by it."
On Working With Delmar Washington on Outsiders
"He made this fun. He made it fun to shoot the entire film," says Brooks on collaborating with Washington, who is incidentally making his feature directorial debut with Outsiders. "That's rare because, even for me, I'm very professional, and I'll come [to set] ready to go and very focused, but [Jaylen] is very young]. He's in high school. He's learning to have fun." For Brooks, playing Jaylen was almost like living out a teenaged high school life he never had. "I was homeschooled [starting] in the 10th grade, so I got a chance to do the parties. It was really fun, and [Delmar made it fun], and he really took my mind off of the serious notes [of the movie]."
Indeed, once the party ends, and once Amira is abducted by aliens, the movie immediately shifts in tone, and it becomes a crescendo of anger, desperation mixed with determination, and even fear. But underlying the social commentary and sci-fi elements, Outsiders is, at its core, a story about family. One of the most heartbreaking scenes in the movie is at the police station: Jaylen, one eye swollen shut and blood and bruises all over his face as a result of a minor car accident, is being interrogated by the town's police chief (played by A Walk to Remember's Shane West); meanwhile, in the station's reception area, Jaylen's mother is pleading with the receptionist to see her son. It's the powerlessness of Jaylen and his family in an institution that is determined — perhaps even designed — to separate them.
Most Challenging Scenes To Shoot In Outsiders
"There are two scenes that I remember," says Brooks which were most challenging to shoot. "[The first] is a scene where I'm actually getting into an argument with Taryn [Manning's character, Jaylen's half-sister's aunt], and the scene gives more backstory about Jaylen's family and why they moved. And that one was tough because it was the most emotionally charged. [The second] is the scene where Jaylen is showing evidence [of the town's history of alien abductions] to his sister, and he's hoping that she believes him."
"I'm very blessed," Brooks says at the end of our interview. "I'm very appreciative to be working with everybody that I've ever worked with and more, and even being in this conversation with you right now." In terms of what's next for the actor and what he envisions for himself: "I want to create things that are in my own [mind] and really take the time to flesh it out because I know how long it takes to [create] these characters and to be a part of production and what it takes to do this kind of work and this craft. I'm at a point where I can finally say: this is what I've achieved, and this is what I want to achieve for myself."
Outsiders is available in select theaters and on digital March 11, 2022.