How Jaden Michael Transformed Into Young Colin Kaepernick

For Colin, I had Sour Patches,

'cause he told me his favorite candy were Sour Patches.

So in every set I would hide Sour Patches

so that I could, like, pick on them.

Hey, guys!

My name is Jaden Michael.

I play Colin Kaepernick in Colin in Black & White.

And here's how I prepared.

[upbeat rap music]

My first audition for Colin in Black & White

was in July of 2020.

The first audition for the show was a self-tape.

So, basically, you have to record yourself

doing the lines with someone

to read the other lines with you.

You send the tape over

and casting will watch it

and they'll judge you

and figure out if you're worthy.

There were a few scenes that we auditioned with

and that ended up going into the show.

One of them was the scene where I'm convincing the coach

to let me into the program

so I can become a better football quarterback

over the summer break.

Being a quarterback is all I've ever wanted my whole life.

Being a quarterback isn't just what I wanna be,

it's what I have to be.

I could feel it in my blood,

I was born to be a quarterback, something like that,

it was one of those lines.

And then there was a scene with Jake.

I'll catch up with you later, bro.

Yo, where we going?

I got to take care of something right quick.

All right?

You're gonna stay right here.

Why you always ditching me?

And I was like, you ain't a real friend.

You break my heart.

You ditched me for some other crew.

And Jake is like, yo, keep your head straight.

And I was like, [mimicking sobbing]

that's all I remember.

I don't remember.

That was the first audition.

And then there was a callback with Ava DuVernay

and Aisha Coley over Zoom in my living room.

And I was like, holy cow,

Ava's on my laptop.

This is so cool.

And then after that I had a physicality test.

So they wanted to see like,

if I can actually throw a ball properly,

'cause I'd never played team sports before.

So I had to call up my uncles

during the middle of a major pandemic or global pandemic,

and I was like, Hey guys,

you remember when you guys wanted to teach me

how to throw a baseball, right?

I need you guys to come through for that quick.

And then I had a Zoom meeting with Colin.

It was supposed to be 30 minutes

and it turned into like two and a half hours.

We were talking about, you know,

what it means to be black in America,

but also like lighter subjects, pop culture.

I found out that he and I were watching The Backyardigans

at roughly the same time, which was pretty funny

'cause I see him as so much older than me

and he's like, we shared pop culture together.

The film I shot before Colin in Black & White

was a movie called Vampires vs. the Bronx.

And the day it came out was the day before my birthday.

And I got a call from someone and my mom's like,

we have to go to this room over here

and have a conversation with someone.

And I'm like, mom?

And Ava DuVernay was on the phone.

She was like, so Jaden, you know,

I just want to say that I really appreciate all the work

that you put in towards the auditioning process.

And you know, I really admire your work ethic

and in my head I'm like, okay, I didn't get the role,

you know, she's being nice.

And then all of a sudden she's like, you got the role.

And I was like, hmm?

And she was like, yeah,

you're Colin Kaepernick in Colin in Black & White.

And as soon as I hung up, I started screaming.

I started screaming.

My mom started screaming.

My uncle started screaming

and then my aunt started screaming.

They didn't know why they were screaming.

We were just all really happy to be a part of the process.

[light music]

Three days a week for three months I trained all day.

I spoke to Colin and was telling him

something that I find really important

is really embracing the physical side of the show.

I don't want it to be fake, you know?

I want to do the work.

And I want to put in the work

because that will help me better understand

what it's like to be an athlete

and when I'm portraying the character I can properly,

I know what it feels like to put in the effort

and put in the time for your sport.

Let alone it was just three months of lead up,

but still it provides a good sense

of what is the dedication required to be an athlete.

I also want to look good though.

Like, you know, I want to look real.

I don't want someone to be like, Hey,

he palmed the ball there.

So the first month or two months before shooting

was just me practicing baseball, practicing basketball,

practicing football every day for several hours,

just trying to understand the basics.

Basically learning 18 years of sports in a few months.

We would wake up pretty early and we would go to a park,

got to get those legs warmed up and your arms warmed up.

And then we would do some like T-drills,

like football drills, L-drills,

just to get the body warmed up.

And then we would shoot around with basketball

for about an hour.

And then we would do baseball.

Baseball was really fun, like learning how to pitch,

because it's so much energy.

It's really a whole body workout.

And we would work on getting the right stance.

That was something I struggled with a lot in the beginning,

Colin was sort of an alien in the football realm

during his high school and college years,

because he would throw the ball really weird.

And he was also super skinny like I am.

And so coaches would question his ability

to effectively run routes

while there's like several guys chasing him.

And you know, it's unusual for a quarterback

to run out of the pocket.

It's only now that there are a lot

of dual-threat quarterbacks like Lamar Jackson

and Pat Mahomes.

He was one of the first to really bring

dual-threat quarterbacking to the NFL.

So for that reason, he was sort of shunned.

So I had to learn what is the proper way

to get out of the pocket and when to know when to run.

And also he would throw the football really weirdly

because he had been a pitcher for so long.

He threw the football like a pitcher.

So first I had to learn how to throw a football properly

and how to get the spin right.

And then I had to learn how to throw it like him

because he sort of winds up the ball and then throws it.

And a lot of coaches were like, we're concerned

'cause they're like, Hey,

you're showing that you're going to throw the football.

Like, you know, you're showing it off.

And ultimately what it ended up doing

is he became like one of the most effective pump fakes

in the league because he had this giant swing

and everyone's like, oh, he's gonna throw and he would fake.

I was never like a big team sports guy,

but suddenly my YouTube feed turned into

like Lamar Jackson throws 60 yard touchdown.

I'm like, whoa!

Something I would have never been interested in

like two months earlier,

Colin is an executive producer on the project.

So he was getting dailies and he was getting advanced cuts.

So he was seeing it as it unfolded actually,

while we were doing the training physically,

he would also get videos.

So he was seeing my progress and he was giving notes

and commenting on what needed improvement.

It was more like, you know, my new things, like, you know,

keep your arm down while you're throwing the ball.

Information from a professional football player

on how to play football.

That was definitely very scary because like the real guy

could very much fire me 'cause he's my boss.

So yeah, it was a little scary at first,

but he's an awesome, very humble person.

[light music]

I started working with Liz Himelstein,

who's a great dialect coach.

And she really helped me hone in Colin's dialect

and his cadence and his tone and the way he moves his mouth.

And she actually gave me the whole history

of why he sounds the way he sounds.

He's from Wisconsin,

but he has like a Southern accent, which is crazy.

And so Liz explained to me that during slavery,

there were a lot of slaves who decided to go to Wisconsin

and Northern states to escape slavery.

And they brought their Southern accents up to Wisconsin.

So his dialect is like a mishmash of a Southern accent

and like a Northern Wisconsin accent,

which was difficult, but very fun 'cause I love challenges.

Like every other syllable of every other word

he would highlight it.

I remember there's this one paragraph that he says,

we're really just focused on the game.

I had several of his interviews recorded

and I would just play it on my phone

whenever I felt like I needed to feel more like Colin

or I wanted to use more of his voice.

It's funny watching him grow up throughout the interviews,

like even from like 2014 to 2016,

he starts slowing down a lot

when he's talking in interviews,

he goes from someone who speaks very quickly like me

and slowly you can see his brain is calculating

and being very decisive on his words.

[light music]

Colin is very specific,

his facial structure is very interesting,

like the way he smiles,

it's very big and bright and he shows a lot of teeth,

which is not something I do.

And then also his eyebrows, you know,

his whole face is very flat when he's being spoken to.

But as soon as he's speaking,

his face sort of lights up and his eyebrows only move

in like two directions.

They go up and down.

They don't go like sideways as many of ours do.

They're not as expressive.

Just learning all of that and mimicking them

and trying to replicate it,

which was difficult because I feel like

when you're playing like Jackie Robinson in 42,

or Martin Luther King in Selma,

these are people who we've seen through history.

It's not someone who we can directly compare to

while you're watching the show.

And as Colin gets older through the show,

his moves get a little bit more challenging.

And his athletic ability increases.

This is a story that's told over four years.

So I didn't want Colin to look the same

over these four years.

I really wanted him to grow and, and to change.

And so I fasted for the first month before shooting

just so I could shred a lot of weight

and I could look skinnier and smaller.

I was very mindful of my size.

I was always trying to stay small,

even though I was towering over my classmates.

I was still trying to keep my shoulders down

and my head small, you know,

I'm not playing Colin Kaepernick, I'm playing Colin,

I'm playing teenage Colin and this is the roots.

These are the kindling that create the fire

that we know today.

I wanted to start out with the character

who was sort of like a blackboard,

someone who's very innocent and impressionable,

and just starting to experience the world,

just starting to realize that there are faults in society

and that he is a target in his own community.

And as he grows up, his arms start getting bigger.

And I started eating more food and gaining my weight back

and working out a little bit more

just to gain some of that athleticism.

And some of that tone that you get as you grow up

and, you know, being mindful of my shoulders,

keeping those up, always staying high and tall.

And I think that contributed to his growth,

not only emotionally to his arc,

but also physically to his arc.

[light music]

Wardrobe is super important.

I did a show called The Get Down

and I played a gangster and I had these giant bell-bottoms

and they really made me feel like I was in the seventies.

You start feeling the strut and the stride.

And so wardrobe definitely makes you feel

like the character.

I always have stuff in my pockets whenever I'm in character,

it just helps me feel grounded to the world.

For Colin I had, oh my God, what did I have?

Oh, I used to hide Sour Patches.

'Cause he told me his favorite candy were Sour Patches.

So in every set I would hide Sour Patches

so that I could pick on them whenever.

So there's several moments in the show

where you'll just see me eating a Sour Patch

and those were just Sour Patches.

I chose Colin would choose to hide his stuff

in little corners of his room.

[Woman] Throw!

Come on, mom.

All right, guys, if want to know

how to have a complete and healthy breakfast,

Sour Patch watermelon.

In his pocket he had a bracelet that his mom had gave him.

Not that his mom actually had gave him,

but it was something that I wanted to contribute to that.

'Cause he spoke to me about how much he loved his parents,

even being an adopted child.

He had such a deep connection with his parents.

So I wanted to keep that sense of love and family

in his character.

[light music]

I looked up to him and I thought he was like a legend,

like he was a demigod or, you know,

someone who is big and powerful.

And once I got to meet him and really understand him,

it was like, oh wow, you're like me, you know, you're human.

You know, we share a lot of life together.

We grew up and we had similar experiences

or similar reactions to situations

and it was sort of like, wow,

I kind of have a similar backstory to you,

and you're Colin Kaepernick.

Preparing for Colin and really researching him

has changed how I look at the world and society.

I walk into situations differently

and I approach situations differently.

I had a good idea of who Colin was.

I was always involved in politics.

I've always thought it was important

to use your platform for change.

Seeing that an athlete,

some one who's usually looked upon as, you know,

stick to your craft, focus on your athleticism,

someone who would completely, you know,

go against that and speak up for someone

and risk it all for someone else.

I found that very admirable and respectable

and I immediately sort of fell in love

with what he stood for.

I feel like any character you work on

you have to fall in love with them.

And so it was very easy for me to fall in love with Colin

because I knew what he was saying.

And I knew where he was coming from.

And I understood his motivations and his politics.

I think I have a great understanding

of exactly why Colin, not stood up, but took a knee rather.

But also emotionally, I feel like it's made me

someone who's definitely more dedicated

and has a lot more drive.

Something I learned from him was just, he was relentless

and he never gave up.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

This is how I prepared for Colin in Black & White.

[light music]