As “Sinners” continues to bask in its recently earned Oscar nominations, the director Ryan Coogler and leading man Michael B. Jordan are sharing all-new details about the fictitious Smokestack Twins, their lore, and what all they got into before the events of the movie take place.
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If you haven’t seen the movie by now (fix that expeditiously please and thank you), it follows the infamous identical twins, Elijah “Smoke” Moore and Elias “Stack” Moore as they return to their hometown of Clarksdale, Miss. in to start a new chapter in life in 1932. Their goal? To create something for Black people, by Black people in the name of ownership and authority. Thusly, “Club Juke” is born. However, an evil presence is looming that threatens their grand opening and eventually turns what shoulda been a momentous occasion into a fight for survival.
After many viewers saw the film, there were swift calls for a second iteration of sorts, whether that be a sequel film or a prequel that follows exactly what the twins—who had come back from Chicago and were gang-banging with Al Capone prior to them coming back to Mississippi—were up to. But while Coogler has been adamant that “Sinners” is a standalone piece, he and Jordan did give fans a little bit more insight into Smoke and Stack were up to all those years.
Sitting down for a new interview on his “In Proximity” podcast, produced through his production company Proximity Media and released on Monday, the duo pulled back the curtain on what exactly led up to the twins heading up to Chicago, getting involved in their respective relationships (Stack with Mary, played by Hailee Steinfeld and Smoke with Annie, played by Wunmi Mosaku) and more.
In the most eye-opening moment, Coogler shared that the twins separated for a time before going to the North and detailed how they got there.
“They killed they father, hid out at Mary’s mom’s place, then went to New York to join the military. [They] went to fight in France, came back, and they went back home for a little bit. While they were home, that was when they came back and Mary was older. So that was when Stack and Mary happened after war…She was like a younger sister to them. Smoke and Mary’s mom didn’t love that,” Coogler said.
He went on to say that there was “a three year run where the twins had basically broke up” with Smoke and Annie getting a house and building their lives while Stack and Mary headed to Little Rock, Arkansas to do their thing. What brought the twins back together was the death of Smoke’s infant daughter (this is alluded to in the film) and that drives their decision to go to Chicago and get infiltrated into the gang culture.
Speaking to their Chicago chapter, Jordan admits that that part of the story is where details are a little “loose,” but offered up the fact that the work the twins were doing were jobs that “Capone didn’t want to do himself because [rival gangs] would know it was from Capone.”
“Amongst that, they started to figure out who the major players were, the Italians, the Hans. You hear them talking about the different types of gangsters that were running Chicago and they figured how to take advantage of the situation and get out of there and start our own sh*t,” Jordan said.
The Oscar-nominated actor later went on to describe Stack as the “true uncle” and Smoke as the dad, grandpa or old man of the group.
The full episode is available on YouTube or wherever you listen to podcasts.
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