Deon Cole hosts the 57th NAACP Image Awards on February 28th. Photo: Paramount+.
Preview:
‘Sinners’ took home the big prizes at the 2026 NAACP Image Awards.
‘Paradise’ and Cynthia Erivo were also among the winners.
The event took place Saturday night at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium.
Following the difficult, insulting moments of this year’s BAFTA Awards, the NAACP Image Awards, hosted by Deon Cole, which took place Saturday night at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium, were a chance to balance things out.
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And Ryan Coogler’s ‘Sinners’ proved to be the big winner, going home with 13 awards following a nomination count of 18. Star Michael B. Jordan himself won both a Best Actor award and was honored with Entertainer of the Year.
The ceremony also paid tribute to the late Rev. Jesse Jackson, with NAACP CEO Derrick Johnson and Samuel L. Jackson honoring the late civil rights activist, whose family was in attendance at the ceremony.
Chelsea Handler hosts the 31st Annual Critics Choice Awards. Photo: CCA.
Preview:
Winners of the 31st Critics Choice Awards included ‘One Battle After Another’ and ‘Hamnet.’
‘Frankenstein’ and ‘Sinners’ also took home awards.
The ceremony was hosted by Chelsea Handler.
Though there were few surprises among the big winners at this year’s Critics Choice Awards, where ‘One Battle After Another’ took home a three big trophies (Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay), the ceremony was nevertheless still a lively, energetic affair, hosted once again by Chelsea Handler.
Following a monologue from Handler that took shots at Warner Bros. CEO David Zaslav and paid loving tribute to Rob Reiner and Diane Keaton, it was on with the show.
(L to R) Leonardo Di Caprio and Director/Writer/Producer Paul Thomas Anderson on the set of ‘One Battle After Another.’ A Warner Bros. Pictures Release. Photo Credit: Merrick Morton.
Benicio del Toro as Sensei St. Carlos in ‘One Battle After Another.’ A Warner Bros. Pictures Release. Photo Credit: Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
Paul Thomas Anderson – ‘One Battle After Another’ – WINNER
Director Ryan Cooler and the cast of ‘Sinners’ at the New York Premiere. Photo: Warner Bros.
‘Sinners‘ follows twin brothers Smoke and Stack (Michael B. Jordan) as they attempt to leave their troubled lives behind and return to their hometown. Moviefone was in attendance at a recent press conference, which featured stars Michael B. Jordan, Wunmi Mosaku, Miles Caton, Delroy Lindo, and director Ryan Coogler.
1) Delroy Lindo Details How His Past Work Helped Him Prepare For ‘Sinners’
Delroy Lindo at the New York Premiere of ‘Sinners’. Photo: Warner Bros.
Delroy Lindo is no stranger to films with rich historical and cultural backdrops. He reveals how projects like ‘Da Five Bloods’ and ‘Malcolm X‘ helped him prepare for this role.
Delroy Lindo: I knew that there would be a research component. Ryan had sent me off the top, he sent me two books, Deep Blues by Robert Palmer and Blues People by Amiri Baraka. Amiri Baraka was Leroy Jones when he wrote the book. So I started there and then I listened to a lot of music. Cats like Sunhouse, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Ike Turner… I just steeped myself in the music. There was just an intense research component, which is consistent with how I’ve worked on other historical films.
2) Miles Caton Reveals How He Became Involved In ‘Sinners’
Miles Caton at the New York Premiere of ‘Sinners’. Photo: Warner Bros.
The character of Sammie Moore is a role that needed an actor who can also sing. Miles Caton proved to be the perfect choice. Here, he reveals how he became involved in the movie.
Miles Caton: I was on tour. I was singing background for H.E.R. And towards the end of that tour, somebody at the show had seen me perform and they said that this kid should audition for this movie. We got back home and H.E.R. calls me one day and she tells me, “Little bro, somebody in the crowd saw you perform and they think you should audition for this movie.” I had no idea what it was about or who was attached to it initially. And as time went on, as I sent in my first audition, I got little bits and pieces of information, and then I finally found out it was Ryan Coogler, and just the thought that I’d be able to work with him was just amazing. And then I found out it was starring Michael B. Jordan. And the way the process happened, everything kind of just happened so fast, and the further I got, the closer I felt like it was becoming a real thing. And after the audition process, I got home and Ryan called me from that Oakland phone number, and it literally said Oakland on it. I was like, “Hold on, bro. I don’t know anybody from Oakland, don’t got no friends from Oakland.” And I answered it. And he said he wanted me to be a part of the project, and that was it.
3) Wunmi Mosaku Says ‘Black Panther’ Was Part Of What Made Her Want To Work With Ryan Coogler
Wunmi Mosaku at the New York Premiere of ‘Sinners’. Photo: Warner Bros.
When asked what it is about Ryan Coogler that made her want to say yes, she reveals that ‘Black Panther‘ was a big part of it.
Wunmi Mosaku: I think Black Panther is on in my house at least once a month. For me, I shouldn’t say this as someone in the MCU, but I was not an MCU fan. I didn’t think it was for me. It just wasn’t part of my radar. And then everyone said, “Go watch Black Panther,” and I was like, “Okay, everyone’s going to watch.” I mean, the whole world is going to see Black Panther. I went to see it and I was like, “Oh, this nuance and this heart in a superhero movie. I’m torn. Am I Team Killmonger? Am I Team Black Panther?” I saw and understood them both so deeply, and I felt like it was a revelation that you could tell stories that meant something to someone like me who is not a comic book fan or a superhero fan and make me feel really seen, excited, hopeful. I just felt like a bridge between the diaspora, the continent. I felt like all of a sudden as a Black Brit, African-American culture, African culture, Black… I felt united, and I felt really like it blew my mind, because I didn’t expect Marvel to do that. So that was the first thing I watched, and then I watched everything, and again, just really moved by the heart. There’s always heart,there’s always truth. There’s always US, ancestry, reverence, connection. There is no divide. The first time I really understood the idea of Pan-Africanism was through Ryan. I thought there was a divide, an then I realized there wasn’t. And that was all because of Ryan.
4) Michael B. Jordan Explains How ‘Sinners’ Is A Love Letter To His Grandparents’ Parents
Michael B. Jordan at the New York Premiere of ‘Sinners’. Photo: Warner Bros.
Michael B. Jordan reveals how he was able to stay on the right path while working on ‘Sinners’ and how it is a love letter to his great-grandparents.
Micahel B. Jordan: I think one of the great things about filmmaking is, just acting in general, is going right up to the cliff, going right up to the edge of uncertainty and unknowns and then just jumping off and things that are outside of your control. So I think being prepared, knowing the characters inside and out, and then developing up until a point where you’ve done all you could, and now you just have to walk the walk each day. And I think that that uncertainty kind of keeps you on your toes and keeps you locked in; you’re kind of prepare for anything. And when you’re dealing with an incredible cast and you’re in this incredible world, it really builds the illusion and allows you to be locked in and dialed in the entire time. So we shot down in Louisiana, so when you’re out there on those sugarcane fields and those cotton fields, and that’s where your ancestors were, and that’s where my grandmother, my great-grandmother, that was their day-to-day. So when you walk in those spaces and you carry that type of energy and that history with you, these characters, this movie was almost… it was a love letter to my grandparents parents, to my great-grandmother and my great-grandfather. And because you only know your grandmother as being an older woman. And you forget like, “Oh wait, my grandma was 25 at one time, she was 28?
5) Ryan Coogler On Finding The Perfect Balance Of History & Mythical Elements
Director Ryan Cooler at the New York Premiere of ‘Sinners’. Photo: Warner Bros.
Ryan Coogler details how he was able to balance the historical setting of the Jim Crow era in Mississippi and the heightened mythical elements that makes ‘Sinners’ so unique.
Ryan Coogler: Wunmi [was] talking about Pan-Africanism, and that was a concept that I was always taught and steeped in being from Oakland, California, which was a birthplace at a Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. And all the Gen Xers and the millennials in that area, the Panthers were our uncles and aunts. But the idea of Pan-Africanism was kind of drilled into us, because it became an international organization. You’ll go all over the world and see organizations fighting for self-determination of human beings that were inspired by the Black Panther Party. And when you look at California where we are and we kind of the furthest outpost–Oakland is of a place that’s where Black culture is the dominant culture of a city. And it was a big deal for me to get back to the continent to research for Black Panther. But I got to the continent before I got to the American South and really contemplated a place that my ancestors had been for over four centuries. And it was a more recent place for us than, so there were a lot of questions that I had with myself as to why I hadn’t done that yet, and I had to unlock the reality that there’s a lot of shame involved with that, with Black people who are products of the great migration. You know what I mean? Obviously your ancestors, they migrated from something, usually for the concept of greener pastures, but also you realize things were left behind in that place that was home for so long. And for me, when I realized that these people who were living in this backbreaking form of American apartheid denied the right to vote, denied the right to own anything, and kind of condemned to being a sharecropper, that was all that could be in the 1930s. And every weekend they would affirm that humanity at these juke joints or at church the next day, a lot of times at both. And that art that they were making, it ended up changing the world. You know what I mean? It ended up creating club culture and discotheque culture and also just the concept of pop music. And I realized that this was a mythical story that had never been given the mythical context, if that makes sense.
Two brothers (Michael B. Jordan) return to Clarksdale, Mississippi, in 1932, now wealthy and intent on opening a juke joint in their hometown. But as they open the doors of their new establishment, sinister forces begin to converge upon them and their community.
Currently available to watch on HBO Max and a serious contender in this upcoming awards season is the box office smash hit ‘Sinners’ which was written and directed by Ryan Coogler (‘Black Panther’) and stars Michael B. Jordan (‘Creed’) playing the dual roles of twin brothers Smoke and Stack.
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Moviefone recently had the pleasure of sitting down in-person with director Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan to talk about their work on ‘Sinners’, why Coogler was passionate about making this movie and the themes he wanted to explore, while Jordan discussed his approach to playing the Moore brothers and how he made the two roles distinctively different.
(L to R) Director Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan talk ‘Sinners’.
You can watch the full interview below or click on the video player above to watch our interviews.
Moviefone: To begin with, Ryan, can you talk about why you were so passionate about making this movie and the themes you wanted to explore as a filmmaker?
Ryan Coogler: It started with my relationship with my uncle James, who was born in Mississippi, lived there until he was 20, and then moved to Oakland and married my great-aunt, Sammy Lee, who the character Sammy is named after. It was important for me to explore blues music, Mississippi, the Delta Blues and juke joint culture because it was so important to my uncle. It’s kind of passed down to me, and I wanted to do a deep dive on why that music was so important really to a global popular culture. But I also wanted to infuse it with everything in cinema that I loved that I hadn’t had a chance to do yet in my previous films. That’s where the supernatural and the genre elements come to play. As far as the themes, the biggest theme was freedom. You know what I mean? This idea of it, how elusive it can be, how sometimes it can’t be bought. That was the central concept of freedom in these people that are under such great oppression and having to be able to affirm that humanity in a place and a time when it was very difficult.
MF: Finally, Michael, can you talk about the challenges of playing twin brothers and how you were able to make those two characters so distinctively different?
Michael B. Jordan: There were so many challenges. There’s been versions of twins that have been done, and some better than others, and trying to figure out how to make this one a memorable one or just make it work and feel honest. I remember as a kid watching movies like ‘The Parent Trap’, you know what I’m saying? Just as a kid, your imagination, whether you’re pretending you got superpowers or pretending this or whatever, the idea of like, man, if I had a twin, what would I do? Or how would that be? I think being able to imagine that because Smoke and Stack are the same, but they’re completely different. They make up one person. Having Smoke and how he handles his childhood trauma was important and Stack and how he handles his childhood trauma. They had the same experiences, but they have two different perspectives on it. For Smoke, he internalizes a lot of his. He doesn’t talk a lot. He doesn’t want to talk about his pain. He wants to bury it deep and kind of hold onto to that. I know people like that. So, to be able to tap into that in a real way. But Stack is different. He smiles and uses his charm, and he talks his way through his pain because he can’t dwell on it for too long. So, to tap into your childhood trauma and building those characters from the ground up was crucial to build that foundation for me to do the rest of the work and the other things, the layers on top of that like wearing a shoe that is too small for Stack because he’s always moving around. He just never really standing still. As a performer, as an actor, it’s something that I didn’t have to think about, but it helped me be agitated in times and physically be not still. But also, I wore a size too big when it came to Smoke because I wanted him to feel like he couldn’t move a lot and he wanted to be rooted and implanted into the ground. So those were layers to it. The different grill caps that I wore, when I had a certain gold front in, it changed the way I would hold my mouth and speak and my cadence. Smoke spoke few words and slow. Stack was a fast talker, so he was always smiling, always wheeling and always dealing. He’s always selling something. Those are some of the things that I tapped into to kind of help make them a bit different. Just the storytelling, the other characters around Smoke and Stack that allowed me to play off of with Annie and Mary and those dynamics and just a rich world that was created for these characters to blend into.
Two brothers (Michael B. Jordan) return to Clarksdale, Mississippi, in 1932, now wealthy and intent on opening a juke joint in their hometown. But as they open the doors of their new establishment, sinister forces begin to converge upon them and their community.
Director Ryan Coogler and his muse/partner Michael B. Jordan are now five for five. Following ‘Fruitvale Station,’ ‘Creed,’ and the two ‘Black Panther’ entries (yes, we’ll stand up for ‘Wakanda Forever’ despite anti-MCU sentiment in the critical community), ‘Sinners’ is another outright winner for the filmmaker and star, and even better, it’s a wholly original piece of material that’s also ambitious, audacious, and at times even transcendent – not to mention a wildly smart genre hybrid.
Once again, Coogler and company have taken populist entertainment – this time mixing the horror genre with the historical drama – and infused it with social commentary, spiritual themes, action beats, and an almost poetic tribute to the time-bending power of music. The film has its flaws, but so much of it works so well, from the cast to the music to the incredible production design to the overall atmosphere – that you’ll walk out of ‘Sinners’ feeling like you’ve seen one of the most unique movies of the year.
As ‘Sinners’ begins, an opening narration tells us that some people have such a powerful gift of making music that it can “pierce the veil” between the worlds of the living and the dead. With that, we see a bloodied and beaten young man, who we will come to know as Preacher Boy Sam (Miles Caton), appear at the door of the church where his father is pastor. He’s carrying the broken neck of a guitar, and his father admonishes him to “leave those sinning ways.”
The movie then flashes back to “one day earlier” in the town of Clarksdale, Mississippi. The year is 1932. Returning on this day to the area’s Black community are brothers “Smoke” and “Stack” Moore – the “SmokeStack Twins” – both played by Michael B. Jordan. With their expensive suits and car, as well as the wads of cash in their pockets, they immediately stand out from the impoverished community of laborers and sharecroppers around them. Smoke, who’s tougher and more business-minded, and Stack, who is more jovial and reckless, are back in town after spending years away, first fighting in World War I and then finding their way to Chicago, where they allegedly made their fortune working for Al Capone.
Their first action upon returning to Clarksdale is to purchase an abandoned mill outside town from a man who may or may not be a KKK leader (“The Klan doesn’t exist anymore,” he unconvincingly tells them). They aim to turn the mill into a juke joint and open it that night, with entertainment to be provided by old blues musician Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo) and the twins’ cousin, Preacher Boy Sam, for whom the word “soulful” doesn’t begin to describe his ability to sing and play the blues.
‘Sinners’ unpacks its story and characters – which include Smoke’s former flame, Annie (Wunmi Mosaku), who knows magic and who shares a tragic past with Smoke, as well as Stack’s old girlfriend, Mary (Hailee Steinfeld), who is part Black but looks white enough that their relationship might well have caused a scandal – in leisurely, novelistic fashion. But it’s never anything but fascinating to watch, thanks to the sharply drawn characters and pungent dialogue in Coogler’s screenplay, his fluid direction, Autumn Durald Arkapaw’s stunning cinematography, and the textured, incredibly detailed production design by Hannah Beachler. Then there’s the music – a combination of Ludwig Göransson’s original score and old blues standards that is as haunting as it is evocative.
It’s that music – particularly the music performed by Preacher Boy Sam – that attracts not just a boisterous crowd to Smoke and Stack’s juke joint that night but fuels one of the most incredible sequences you’ll see in a movie this or any other year. Music, we’re told, will bring together the spirits of both the past and the future – which it does in a breathtaking sequence that ricochets through both the history of music and the Black experience in one gloriously kaleidoscopic dance of images that is almost transcendent in its power.
But the music attracts other forces from the realm of the dead as well…and since the trailers already give it away, it’s okay to say here that the juke joint soon finds itself under siege by a trio of vampires, led by Remmick (Jack O’Connell), who quickly go about turning the customers and the Moores’ dwindling band of friends and family into creatures of the night. “It’s better this way,” says one character who has been transformed late in the film, suggesting that Remmick is creating a new species for which boundaries of race, color, and gender have no meaning.
That’s just one of the intriguing ideas that Coogler springs on us during the course of ‘Sinners,’ and if anything this densely packed film has almost too many of them. Questions of race, identity, history, violence against Black bodies, and the power of art flow liberally through the film, which is by turns exhilarating, frightening, erotic, distressing, and poignant. The introduction of a supernatural terror halfway through a historical drama is a bit abrupt, and the third act feels both rushed and drawn out as the climactic confrontation with the vampires leads to a fistful of additional endings and mid-credits sequences (a bit of an MCU hangover for Coogler, perhaps). But even when it wobbles slightly down the stretch, ‘Sinners’ doesn’t feel like any other movie you’re likely to see anytime soon.
In a career already full of sparking performances, ‘Sinners’ may contain Michael B. Jordan’s best work yet. Assisted by seamless visual effects, he delivers two fully-rounded performances as Smoke and Stack, differentiating the two brothers with subtle changes in tone, speech, and body language, while firmly delineating the deep bond between the two.
Smoke has been hardened by the world, doesn’t believe much in magic or the spiritual, and has no time for fun; he thinks that accumulating power (mostly in the form of cash) will give him freedom. Stack is much more hedonistic, given to flamboyance in his clothing, spending, and behavior, and much more in tune with earthly pleasures. Both men’s beliefs are tested and both are deeply changed by the end of the film, and it’s a tribute to Jordan’s incredible skills that you always feel you are watching two separate personalities on their own journeys.
While ‘Sinners’ showcases Jordan’s accomplishment, the rest of the cast is just as powerful. 19-year-old Miles Caton is a real find, providing not just a complex performance as Sam but a singing voice that is nothing short of awesome, providing a credible basis for the film’s mystical view of music. Delroy Lindo is nothing short of great (as usual) as Delta Slim, the blues player at the other end of his career who has seen it all. And while the vampires are not given as much ground to develop as characters, Jack O’Connell’s Remmick is a deft combination of malice, charisma, and temptation, with the story showing how these monsters can still be stirred by music as well (especially in one eerie sequence involving an Irish folk song).
Importantly, every woman in ‘Sinners’ also gets her due, from Wunmi Mosaku’s no-nonsense Annie to Hailee Steinfeld’s Mary, both of whom are courageous, confident, sexually liberated, and capable of moving on from deep tragedies in their lives. Mosaku’s performance is full of texture, compassion, and depth, while Steinfeld succeeds in nailing the role of a woman who is trapped between two worlds but knows which one she feels more at home with. Also notable is Li Jun Li (‘Babylon’) as Grace Chow, who runs grocery stores in town with her husband Bo (Yao) and is as deft in handling her business with both Blacks and whites as she is in fighting vampires.
‘Sinners’ is a luscious, genuinely cinematic experience that deserves every inch of the IMAX screen you should see it on. Even if we wish the horror elements were introduced a little more organically, and even if the film’s closing sequences don’t work as effectively as they could, one can still feel Coogler’s earnest, heartfelt search for truth throughout: What makes anyone truly free? Love? Power? Money? Talent? What does it mean to be free if you know that freedom is merely a façade?
These are the questions ‘Sinners’ raises and leaves one pondering as the credits roll. This thoughtfully conceived, masterfully executed epic doesn’t provide all the answers, but instead brings the viewer on a journey that is haunting, terrifying, emotionally resonant, and powerful in its exploration of community, shared experience, and how the incursion of evil can threaten to rip those apart.
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What is the plot of ‘Sinners’?
Two brothers (Michael B. Jordan) return to Clarksdale, Mississippi, in 1932, now wealthy and intent on opening a juke joint in their hometown. But as they open the doors of their new establishment, sinister forces begin to converge upon them and their community.
