Cast members from the Broadway and Netflix productions of American Son will conduct a live watch party on Twitter June 11; join in beginning at 8 PM ET with the hashtag #AmericanSon. Kerry Washington, Steven Pasquale, and Jeremy Jordan have announced they will take part, with director Kenny Leon and playwright Christopher Demos-Brown slated to join as well.
The play follows a separated Black mother and a white father who reunite in a police station in the middle of the night after their son goes missing. Washington says she’s noticed a “resurgence” of the title in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests demanding justice for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and more killed at the hands of police.
“I just want us to be in conversation with each other,” the Emmy nominee said on Instagram. “We’re going to come together and watch the film; we’re going to laugh together, and cry together, and think together, and be part of the solution.” After the live tweet session, Washington will speak with Kimberlé Crenshaw, founder of the African American Policy Forum and the Say Her Name campaign, via Instagram Live.
American Son, also starring Eugene Lee, arrived on Netflix November 1 last year, with all four members of the Broadway staging reprising their performances for the screen.The filmed version is among 40+ titles in the streaming service’s newly launched Black Lives Matter collection; the category also includes the Oscar-winning Moonlight, the Michelle Obama documentary Becoming, and Ava DuVernay’s 13th and When They See Us.
