Name: Danielle Brooks
Notable past credits: Brooks, who first broke out in “Orange Is the New Black,” first came to Sundance in 2019 with the film “Clemency.” She was nominated for an Oscar in 2024 for her role in “The Color Purple,” and was in Los Angeles last week revealing this year’s slate of Oscar nominees.
Sundance project: “If I Go Will They Miss Me,” written and directed by Walter Thompson-Hernández. The film follows Big Ant, who is just out of prison and struggling to reconnect with his wife, Lozita (Brooks) and young son.
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The film is based on a short Thompson-Hernández made in 2022, which Brooks was a fan of, so when her team told her there was a script for the feature she was interested in meeting.
“I liked how he spoke about his characters. Also, they are based on real people, and I liked that aspect,” Brooks says. “When I read the script, I was like, ‘ooh, this is a role no one has ever seen me play.’ And I just wanted to champion what his vision was, because ultimately it’s to highlight who we are as people, the humanity of who we are, how difficult life can be, how we are trying to get over our traumas and love our loved ones, but we don’t always get it right. And what do we do in those situations, particularly for my character, when you love someone, but you know that it’s damaging to you and your family. So I was down to tell that story.”
Brooks saw the finished film for the first time while flying to L.A. for the Oscar nominations, and it left her in tears.
“I was ugly crying. I couldn’t stop the tears. There’s that thing when a movie hits you, like, ‘OK, I can control it. That was a sweet moment. Thank you for letting me have that release.’ But with this movie, it was like, ‘No, no, you have more to it.’ [The tears] just kept coming,” Brooks says. “And I was like, ‘What is happening to me?’ So immediately I texted my therapist on the plane and I was like, ‘I think I need to talk to you.’”
Her conversation with her therapist helped her work through her close relation to her character, Lozita.
“The thing about what we do as artists is we share, we understand that what we do is truly a mirror to society, and it can do a disservice not only to the world, but to ourselves if we’re not honest with ourselves on where we are in our lives,” she says. “But we also don’t want to overshare. So I was trying to figure out the balance of when people ask me how I relate to her, without getting too deep.”
Brooks was also reflecting on how this trip to Sundance she’s feeling more confident in how she’s presenting herself from a fashion and beauty standpoint.
“I’m at this point where especially in 2026 this year, I’ve set a goal to be intentional about everything that I do. And that’s even in clothes,” she says. “I don’t want to hide anymore in the sense of making myself small. I want to be bold. I want my clothes to feel bold. And I think a lot of times I didn’t feel that I could do that because either maybe I wasn’t comfortable in my body at the time, or because I just felt like the clothes weren’t really matching my personality and how I felt. There’s multiple reasons for that, but now I feel like having a stylist that I trust, who understands me and what I want to showcase, I feel comfortable. I feel like, yeah, I’m here.”
