Actor Jay Will marveled many of the nation’s most hardened and influential critics alike when he portrayed Rob Peace in the poignant and powerful film of the same name. Will jumped at the chance to star in the real-life story of a Black scholastic prodigy who defied the odds by leaving Orange, New Jersey, and securing a full scholarship at Yale University.
Will effortlessly reels audiences into Rob Peace with his charisma and resonating screen presence that centers on the life of this wunderkind, Robert DeShaun Peace, whose life never seems to resemble his surname. Peace’s life is complex and often frantic because he is compelled to oscillate between elite American academia and the harsh realities of his blighted neighborhood.
“I related to this guy. I felt like he [is] my connection to my family, my connection to my mom, my connection to my my environment, my connection to those dreams that I had when I was a kid,” said Will, who was raised in humble origins in South Carolina and qualified to attend Julliard, one of the world’s most prestigious performing arts schools.
“[I was like] ‘Mama, I’m gonna buy you this. I’m gonna get you there. You can get out of here. One day, it’s going to be better for you …’ You know, ‘we are going to make it out,’ ” he said.
Rob Peace is enthralling because despite his awe-inspiring academic achievements, Peace is burdened by innumerable personal hardships and adversities. One, Peace has to deal with the incarceration of his father (played by Academy Award-nominated actor Chiwetel Ejiofor who also directs this film). Meanwhile, his mother (played by music legend and Oscar-nominated actress Mary J. Blige) urges him to prioritize himself and ensure his vast potential to change the world comes to fruition.
Worse, Peace is emotionally kidnapped by his father to raise the money to get him out of prison, thus leading this young genius down a wayward path of criminality while at Yale. Peace is also burdened to try to use his education in molecular biophysics and biochemistry to find a cure for the cancer that is killing his dad.
Will said he used his own experiences of dreaming big — while navigating life’s adversities — to play the titular role in Rob Peace.
“I knew that I had a lot of parallels with Rob [Peace] once I read the script. But you know, the juggling of those emotions really had to do with more of just how it’s a human experience,” Will said.
Small but powerful indicators let Will know that this movie belonged to him. Coincidentally, Will has the same middle name as the man he portrays, “DeShaun.” Additionally, Will went to the movies as a child with friends and a mentor to see Ejiofor’s masterpiece performance in the Oscar-winning film 12 Years a Slave. Will remembers being transfixed as the credits rolled and the screen went black, knowing he had just found his raison d’être, his reason for being.
“I thought to myself, I want to do that. I want to I want to know how to do that thing. I want to bring that same type of … strip that ego, as much as I can, just through my own stripping of ego,” Will explained. “Fast-forward, I want to get into the acting thing. I go to school, graduate, and [the] first lead role is from [the] same guy [Ejiofor] that really sparked that [desire to act] in me.”
In the gripping emotional roller-coaster that is the Rob Peace film, Will’s evocative performance resembles what he felt from his idol, Ejiofor, a decade earlier.
