The Best Of Enemies Behind The Scenes Interview Taraji P Henson (2019)

THE BEST OF ENEMIES producers are Emmy Awardâ winner DANNY STRONG (Game Change), FRED BERNSTEIN (An Interview with God), MATT BERENSON (The Boy), ROBIN BISSELL, DOMINIQUE TELSON (Welcome to Pine Grove!), TOBEY MAGUIRE (The Fifth Wave) and MATTHEW PLOUFFE (The Fifth Wave).

Bissell’s behind-the-scenes creative team includes Director of Photography DAVID LANZENBERG (Peppermint), four-time Oscar-nominated Production Designer JEANNINE OPPEWALL (L.A. Confidential), Editor HARRY YOON (Detroit), Costume Designer J.R. HAWBAKER (The Revenant), and Composer MARCELO ZARVOS (Wonder).

“The Southern way of life …”

By 1971, Durham, North Carolina had long been known for its textile mills and tobacco farms, Duke University and the historically African-American North Carolina Central University. It was a city blessed with natural beauty, and there were old family fortunes in both the black and white communities.

Some called it “Magic City.”
But there were deep racial divisions in Durham, and class divisions within the races, so intractable that at times it seemed only a miracle could heal them. Repressive Jim Crow laws were being challenged by activists across America, while the mandates of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 were being resisted by whites clinging to the status quo. Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was set to join with Durham’s activists on April 4, 1968, the very day he was assassinated in Memphis, where he’d stayed on to support striking sanitation workers. He’d been to
Durham earlier, though, to give his blessing to lunch-counter sit-ins initiated by young activists.

C.P. Ellis was raised to believe in the old ways. He’d accepted the myth that if African Americans like Ann got a fair shake, he’d have even less. Instead of recognizing their common ground, he embraced
the Klan’s idea of “the Southern way of life” and all its toxic symbols. The Klan’s motto “not for self but for others” resonated for him as he recruited and trained future members in the Klan’s Youth Corps. There
was no hint that C.P.’s outlook would ever change.

And yet, in 1971, it did.
In the final moments of an exhausting charrette, Durham’s top Klansman tore his membership card in two. Like everyone in attendance that night, charrette leader Bill Riddick was stunned. “Other than some things my children have done, C.P. tearing up his card was the greatest feeling I’ve ever had in my life,” Riddick said 47 years later. “None of us had any idea this was going to happen. We had succeeded in getting the leader of a group to re-think his position. It took my breath away.”

Writer-director Robin Bissell, who grew up in suburban Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was unaware of the charrette or any of its participants until 2005, when he came across a brief item about C.P. in Time
Magazine. The former Exalted Cyclops had died, and Time marked his passing on the “Milestones” page. Those few stark facts were Bissell’s introduction to a tense tale that would dominate his imagination for more than a decade. “My first thought was ‘how did that happen!,’” Bissell recalled, referring to C.P.’s transformation.

“The item was just three or four lines and left me with so many questions.” Bissell found answers and historical context in Osha Gray Davidson’s book, which primed him for Diane Bloom’s award-winning documentary, An Unlikely Friendship (Filmmakers Library, 2002). Bloom’s film featured the real-life C.P. in his later years, chastened by the fall-out from his shocking charrette vote, but never regretting it. Bloom had filmed C.P. and Ann together and their bond was obvious.

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