It was the confluence of mutually agreeable circumstances that brought Aspen Kennedy to his first leading role in the inspirational film The Forge. Or, as Kennedy articulates frequently, his journey has been divinely inspired, and his faith ushered him to this point of playing a listless and directionless young man whose life is transformed in unexpected ways.
The Memphis, Tennessee-born Kennedy was seemingly born to entertain and edify through his performances. He started modeling as a teen, and he would watch movies over and over until he could recite them verbatim. Initially an aspiring basketball player while attending Jackson State University, a serendipitous encounter led him to enroll in his first acting class. That’s when he gave up the game in favor of his true love.
In The Forge, Kennedy plays the son (Isaiah Wright) of a single mother who is estranged from his father, which is similar to his real-life circumstances growing up in Memphis. Isaiah has just graduated from high school but is languishing in stagnation because his life is devoid of goals, ambition inspiration and, most of all, God. This changes once his mother, played by Priscilla Shirer, vows to kick him out of the house if he doesn’t procure gainful employment. What transpires next changes Isaiah’s life forever.
The overarching theme of the film is discipleship. However, you live with your mom, you’re 19 years old, and you have no direction. And then you pair up with a gentleman from the community, and he becomes a mentor to you. Talk about the importance of mentorship and what that means for our youth.
Yeah, it’s so important. We have so many distractions and so many people are looking for answers, are looking for hope, and looking for guidance. But just to have somebody who’s saying, “Hey, learn from me, come under me.” So just to have someone in your life say I got you just to learn from their mistakes or just to learn things you don’t know is really important.
So talk about the process you went through in order to get to forgiveness with your own father.
Kennedy: Yeah, it’s, it’s very interesting. God, he works in, like people say, mysterious ways. This is 2018 or 2019. Like I said, I didn’t grow up with my biological father. And, I have a half-sibling, my other, which is my father’s son. I was on the stair climber and God said, “Hey, I want you to reach out to your dad and forgive him.” For me, I’m just like, I’m not angry at him. I’m not bitter because growing up in Memphis, so many of my friends, we just didn’t have our father. So it was normal.
And so, I reached out, I typed it in my notes. It was somewhere along the lines of, “Hey dad, this is Aspen. I’m not sure what caused the division between you and my mom, but I want to let you know that I
love you and I forgive you.” And he responded and he apologized. And it was a thing where again, that being in that moment, God wanted to work that out in my heart.
