Deitrick Haddon is an award-winning gospel singer, writer, director and star of ALLBLK’s faith-based dramatic film, The Fallen, which is about a praise and worship leader who is finally on the verge of putting his long-deferred dreams back on track.
Haddon discussed making the film, and his experience getting into character.
How did you get involved in this film?
For my role, I had to write myself in it because nobody was knocking down my door and trying to ask me to do a role. I’m a firm believer that if nobody’s knocking down your door, do it yourself, and don’t wait for somebody to do it for you. Unfortunately, we don’t get a lot of these opportunities in the gospel community, and I’ve made my name and my living in the community.
I did this movie 12 years ago called Blessed and Cursed, and I did it by taking my recording budget, flipping it, and making this movie with it. People told me that it couldn’t be done. Somebody told me I’d need about $2 million to get it done, and somebody else told me you know that I needed $6 million. All I had was $150,000, and I was able to flip it and have enough for the film. So The Fallen is the sequel to that movie because it gained such a big audience, and people are still watching it on YouTube like crazy. It has around two million views. So now we’re here, and I wrote my own movie.
How was it playing the role? Was it difficult getting into character?
This Dwight Hawkins character is very easy for me because my life kind of parallels his life. He’s a gospel singer, and I’m a gospel singer in real life. He started in church, I started in church, and [I’m] still in church. He was signed to a major record deal, and the same thing happened to me. I was on there for 12 years. He ran into some relationships and the same thing for me. It’s just me kind of tweaking the character a little bit, because I’m not as crazy as Dwight is, but I’m crazy though. I’m not an angel. I made my mistakes. But Dwight, he went all the way there.
This film shows what happens every day is a true story. One thing about my films, I want to keep them as authentic as possible. People have asked me if this film is faith-based. It’s faith-based, but it’s in-your-face faith-based. … We’re not making bubblegum faith-based movies. We’re not sugarcoating the issues. I like to keep it as authentic and raw as possible, for that shock value to get the message across.
