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Gabrielle Union is playing a very different character than what fans are used to seeing in “The Inspection,” and it may possibly be one of her most difficult onscreen roles yet.
The veteran actor and LGBTQ+ advocate portrays Inez French, the mother of a son whom she kicks out of the house at 16 for being gay. The film opens in theaters Friday. Based on the story of filmmaker Elegance Bratton, “The Inspection” follows Inez’s son as he turns to the Marines to find belonging and finally acceptance from his mother.
When Bratton approached Gabrielle Union about executive producing “The Inspection,” she was on board. But when Bratton told her he envisioned her playing the role of his mother, she hesitated. The stepmother of a trans daughter with Dwyane Wade, budding queer icon Zaya Wade, Union said that the energy the role tapped into was too close to the hate her daughter and her family had already experienced.
“Part of the difficulty is as a family, we live it, and it’s the parts that cause the most pain and heartbreak,” she said. Union explained that because of that it was “hard to find common ground” with Inez. As a mother, Inez is cruel to her son Ellis French, portrayed by Jeremy Pope. In the film, we see her openly disgusted by her son, to the point of placing newspaper on the couch in her home before allowing him to sit. When he tells her he’s enlisting in the Marines, Inez is skeptical but holds on to hope that his identity will change. Sexuality, of course, doesn’t work like that.
“The more her child claimed their identity, it became very much about self-preservation, and she bartered with her child, thinking, ‘If I reject my child, I’m protecting them somehow. If I abuse my child, I’m somehow saving them,’” the actor said of Inez.
Union said she and Pope spent a lot of time embracing each other and holding hands because of the intense scenes that would take them to “a dark place.”
Zaya gave Union her blessing for playing the role as well as some advice on how she should approach the story.
“As a parent, you try to be like, ‘Well, the person that kicked you really likes you,’ and that is wrong, but it’s just to kind of keep the hope alive that maybe someone will turn…
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