In “King’s Ransom,” Loretta Devine plays Malcolm King’s (played by Anthony Anderson) protective financial secretary. When the wealthy businessman goes missing, it’s Devine’s character who alerts the police and begins the search. “King’s Ransom” isn’t the first time Devine has worked with funnyman Anthony Anderson. “Anthony is a wonderful guy. I love him. I met him when I was on ‘Urban Legends’ almost eight years ago. I’ve just watched him sprout out. Even in the beginning he said, ‘I’m going to be huge!’ He just has endless courage and confidence and I love that about him,” said Devine of her “King’s Ransom” co-star.
“King’s Ransom” marked Jeff Byrd’s directorial debut. The first-time director let his cast have a lot of freedom, and improv was encouraged. Devine described her director as very easy to work with. “Jeff is pretty easy going but I think he really has a set idea of what he wants. He usually lets you do what he wants first, and then he’ll let you loose on a couple of takes.”
The plot of “King’s Ransom” involves a couple of people scheming to kidnap businessman Malcolm King (Anderson). Asked if she’d ever done anything crazy in real life, Devine acknowledged that she had indeed though, of course, her crazy act was in no way comparable to coming up with a kidnapping scheme. “The only thing even close to this was in pre-college. I used to do competitions and I didn’t make it to the semi-finals. I took the list down and put my name on it and I won. It was a like dramatic interpretation. I just believed I should have won so I took the list home! I retyped it and I put my name on it and I was terrified the whole time but I made it through,” confessed Devine.
Loretta Devine will next be seen in the ensemble drama, “Crash,” also directed by a first time feature film director. Paul Haggis wrote and directed the hard-hitting, pull no punches look at racial tension and stereotypes. Set in Los Angeles, the story involves strangers from different ethnic backgrounds literally crashing into one another on the city streets.
Devine describes her experience on “Crash” as intense. “It was so crazy because I worked the very first day. I was there the first day and the director - who is also the writer - had never done it before, so it was scary. It was such an intense movie, too, and I think Paul had such a specific idea of how he wanted it to be. It reminded me a little bit of ‘Grand Canyon,’ the whole thing of people in LA coming together when there’s a crash and that’s when you meet. It’s really an incredible movie.”
One of Devine’s most difficult scenes in the movie involved sitting across a desk from Matt Dillon. Dillon plays a police officer trying to get an insurance company representative (Devine) to help his critically ill dad. Devine recalls her experience working with Dillon as simply wonderful. In fact, the most difficult thing about the whole emotionally intense experience was the fact that director Haggis wanted to do a lot of takes. "The hard thing was that Paul was endless. We did it a million times, a million different ways," said Devine.
Dillon, Devine, Sandra Bullock, Don Cheadle, Brendan Fraser, Ryan Phillippe, Terrence Howard, and Ludacris are just a few of the actors who have roles in “Crash.” Devine said that with such a big cast of characters, audiences may have a difficult time keeping track of the story. “I think that people can get lost if they’re not really paying attention because there’s so many characters and they’re coming from all directions. And so, you have to really, really watch it. But I think it’s really incredible,” said Devine.
