Photo: Andscape

They Fight, the sports bio pic based on the documentary is about Walt Maningan, a boxer who was just released from jail. Trying to build his life back up, he ends up sleeping at a community center. It order to earn his keep, he helps coach a youth boxing team make its way to a national championship competition . It had it world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival.

I talked to André Holland, who plays Walt Manigan, Wendell Pierce who plays Slim, and director and co-writer Sheldon Candis about avoiding the sport bio-pic tropes of having a big monologue and the art of subtlety, what it was like working with the young actors who play Peanut and Quincey, Anthony B. Jenkins and Toissaint Francois Battiste, and how they even gave them notes, and why Slim though Walt coming to him gym was a divine act and if Walt felt the same way.

They Fight premieres July 17th on Hulu.