Exclusive Interview: Pop Culturalist Chats with American Refugee’s Erika Alexander and Derek Luke

Erika Alexander and Derek Luke are two of the stars of Blumhouse’s American Refugee.

The must-see psychological thriller follows a family who seeks shelter in a neighbor’s bunker after the American economy collapses and the nation is put under martial law. They quickly realize that the danger inside is potentially greater than what lies outside.

Pop Culturalist was lucky enough to speak with Erika and Derek about American Refugee, how they approached the tension between their two characters, and reuniting with Blumhouse.

PC: To start, could you introduce us to the film and your characters in American Refugee? Erika, do you want to kick us off?
Erika: Sure! American Refugee is a fantastic film by Blumhouse. I’m in it. Derek’s in it. Sam Trammell’s in it. We’ve got a great young cast. We have Peyton [Jackson], Zamani [Wilder], Jessi [Case], and Vince [Mattis]. They’re all wonderful.

It’s about a family who has to haul ass away from their own home to go into a neighbor’s bunker. The whole world around them—at least the American economy—has collapsed, and the nation goes under martial law. They find out that not only is there danger outside, there is danger inside, because all of the problems they had from the outside go inside with them. They’re going to have to work it out or it’s not going to be a good thing.

I play Helen. Helen is a doctor. Helen has her medical training, which will be useful, but she’s also a mother and wife. She’s angry right now because of a lot of things that she’s going through. She’s going to bring that into the bunker too.

Derek: I play a guy who has fallen from his wife’s grace. He’s right in the middle of that. He’s forced into survival for himself and his family. The world is upside down. We can all relate to that from the last year and a half. The bunker is a form of quarantine but to the tenth. He’s trying to keep his family together even though the world is falling apart.

That’s a parallel narrative for almost every generation. You’re trying to figure it out. I thought he was interesting because he’s in a situation where he’s forced to suppress something that he naturally would be—and that’s a protector. But for his family’s well-being, he’s put in a position where he has to think about survival and co-existing with others.

PC: You’ve both done it all throughout your careers. What was it about this particular script and character that stood out to each of you?
Derek: For me, I like the genre. There’s a merging that’s happening. It’s not just horror. Erika mentioned this before. It’s horror with the hybridity of science and culture. That’s what makes music interesting. It’s when two odd genres come together. I like that. I like culture and voice. You see these two families that wouldn’t normally interact interacting. For me, it was the family theme, the suspense genre, and my past.

Erika: Derek’s right about the mashups. There are mashups in storytelling. If you look at Wicked, it’s a mashup where they made the Wicked Witch of the West the protagonist and not the villain. We see it from her point of view. That was really smart to start to spin things on their heads because a lot of these young people have seen a lot. Their expectations are high.

They get bored very quickly. But if you put two things together that normally don’t go together and you do it successfully, people go, “Oh, man! Wow! I can do that.” That challenges everything. We’re in a time where we’re going to challenge story structure and how much we can take. We apparently can take a lot of things going on at the same time.

PC: Great answer. When we’re introduced to your characters in the film, they’re struggling with their relationship, and we see that throughout the course of the film. How did the two of you collaborate on building that tension and backstory that we see on screen?
Erika: Just spend a day with Derek. You’ll have that tension. [laughs] He’s a very interesting young man. He loves to talk about things. He loves to introduce things in conversation to see what you’re going to say about them and then he sits back and goes, “Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.” Because he’s thought about a lot of things and he’s grown up differently. In fact, I was very surprised to hear about how he doesn’t really look at a lot of pop culture, so a lot of these things are new to him.

I would make jokes. He’d go, “What’s that?” I’d wonder, “Is he taking the piss? He doesn’t know what this is?” No, he doesn’t. I think he wants to keep himself in a more innocent state, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. He doesn’t want to be influenced by that world and take on all these things. He might have also been protecting himself and limiting what he wanted to experience as he came into this space.

I don’t know if I’m right about that, but whatever it was, it was interesting to be around him because I haven’t met any Black men like that. It was a wonderful experience. We came in and vibed during our collaboration. He has his faith. I’m a preacher’s daughter. I’m also agnostic.

We were curious about each other. It’s good that we were not afraid of each other. Believe it or not, sometimes you come in and you’re afraid of the other person. We established that we were curious about each other and we had our boundaries, but we were not afraid to touch, not afraid to eat with each other, not afraid to joke and bump up against each other and then come back and be very happy to see each other the next morning.

PC: In addition to that dynamic, we see this intense power struggle that emerges between all of the characters. Which dynamic was your favorite to explore and why?
Derek: That’s interesting. My wife would ask me, “If that was your son, what would you do? What would you say? What would you tell him?” Here’s what a mentor said to me recently. He said, “Derek, there are a lot of protests happening, but what do you want?”

I sat there and I was quiet. He said, “It’s okay to protect, but you should also know what you want.” What he was basically saying was he was giving me a license to think. In the story, my character was forced to be in a situation where he had to think. He had to think because there was more at stake than just him. It’s his family. If we think about that theme universally, as a human race, we could be in a better place.

PC: That’s a great answer. You’ve both worked with Blumhouse in the past. Can you tell us about how the production company has shaped and impacted the industry, specifically the horror genre?
Erika: I worked on Get Out. At the time, I had no awareness of Blumhouse as a force or an entity. I have to say I have more of an understanding about it now. What’s great about it is the mashups. They understand that mixing suspense with thriller, sci-fi, zombies, and human drama is valuable. They have made a whole business model out of it.

It’s a great use of storytelling. It’s giving different people opportunities to be in those movies. Because they’re not leveraging 20 to 30 million dollars and using the same talent over and over again. We’ll get new voices. We’ll get new people starting their careers. We’ll get people who have careers getting re-energized and leading people to look at them in a different way. This is all good.

Frankly, I hope that the salaries start to go up. The conversations around doing these at such a low budget have to be addressed. If you’re doing well, it should be something that’s passed on to the people who help build it.

Derek: Wow, I like that. Re-energize salaries. All of us. It’s a new audience. Blumhouse is capitalizing on that and what I’m hoping too is we have more diversity in those genres. That’s important. You may or may not notice it, but behind Erika is her poster. What’s interesting is that the creator and the collaborators are coming together in different ways than we’ve seen before. It’s like Andy Warhol and Basquiat. You need each other. One platform helps another. People are finding out that so-called urban audiences—or whatever audience you want to say—they’re really spending dollars. It’s important.

Make sure to follow Erika (Twitter/Instagram) and Derek (Twitter/Instagram). Watch American Refugee on EPIX today.

Photo Credit: Eric Williams (Derek Luke) // Priscilla Grant (Erika Alexander)