Kara Young vividly recalls the excitement surrounding the off-Broadway run of Aleshea Harris's play Is God Is in 2018. The revenge drama captivated audiences at New York's Soho Rep theater from February through May that year. Young, then performing in another production, was determined to see it. “I was lucky to get a ticket,” says the two-time Tony Award winner, describing the buzz that eventually led to a London transfer in 2021. “It blew my mind. Those characters have stayed in my spirit since 2018.”
The story remains as powerful on screen. Harris adapted her Obie Award-winning play into a feature film, marking her directorial debut. The epic follows twin sisters Racine (played by Young) and Anaia (played by Mallori Johnson). As children, they were disfigured with burn scars after their father set their mother on fire. Raised in foster care, they protect each other. Racine, the Rough One, navigates the world more easily than Anaia, the Quiet One, whose face bears their trauma.
They believed their mother dead until a letter arrives. She is on her deathbed, paralyzed from the attack, and makes one request: “Make your daddy dead.”
Harris explains the mythic quality of twins: Racine and Anaia communicate silently and verbally, questioning their own capacity for violence. The play began with a simple prompt: what if she created a Greek tragedy with people who look and talk like her? “That prompt just opened a thousand doors in my mind,” she says.
Though not initially intended for adaptation, Harris drew inspiration from films like Kill Bill and Set It Off. After Tessa Thompson’s Viva Maude production company and producer Janicza Bravo approached her, Bravo suggested Harris direct the feature.
“There’s so much nuance inside of it and so much humor,” Harris says. “I can’t even imagine the assignment for someone else, of trying to take this wild, wacky story and keep a hold of its tone, keep it unapologetic and keep its grimy, off-Broadway, punk roots.”
Harris succeeds. The film has a raw feel as the sisters road-trip through the US South to find The Monster, their father. They piece together their family’s past and understand his horrifying manipulation. They also discover their own capabilities and divergent dreams after decades of survival.
“There’s a justice around the rage to complete the mission,” Young says of Racine, who has protected her sister. “When we crack her open, it’s really about cracking open the points of no return.”
Anaia’s rage manifests as sadness and loss. During the trip, she questions whether they should fulfill their mother’s request but stays by her sister’s side. Johnson says, “At the end of the day, [Anaia] just wanted to be a normal girl. She just wanted a dad, she wanted a mom, she wanted a good relationship with her sister, and she wanted to feel like she belonged.”
Vivica A Fox plays the mother, whom the twins call God. Harris cast Fox, who starred in two of Harris’s film references. “I knew that we could call her God and people would buy it,” Harris says. Fox, a first-time director herself, understood Harris’s position. She had a 2:30 a.m. call time for prosthetics. “It was a four-hour process, but it really helped me get into character,” Fox explains. God is in her final days, physically tired but excited to see her daughters. “She’s the catalyst for sending them on this revenge mission.”
Sterling K. Brown plays the sociopathic Monster, a chilling inversion of his heroic image. Harris wanted to play with his gentle demeanor. “In the script I wrote ‘he’s like Barack Obama,’” she says. “It’s giving suburban dad. Sweet, charming, soft.” The Monster embodies real abusers who maintain social status through charm.
At its core, the story is about the sisterly bond. Young and Johnson navigated their characters’ co-dependence and differences through rehearsals and living together. “The core of our connection came from me and Kara being bonded in real life,” Johnson says. This adds softness to the rage. Johnson adds, “These characters are literal embodiments of all of the nuance of what it means to be a Black woman in America and how we have to navigate ourselves in our journey for our own justice.”
Is God Is is now in US cinemas, with UK and Australia dates to be announced.
