Bet You Didn’t Know: Secrets Behind The Making Of “Antwone Fisher”

Foster Parents

We all remember how terrible Antwone’s foster parents and relative were portrayed in the film but Antwone says in reality there was more to the story. When he was asked how accurate the portrayal of his foster parents were, this is what he had to say:

I was kind to them in the movie and the book. I was kind to them. They are worse.

Antwone said the most difficult part of shooting the film was watching the scenes with Malcolm Kelley, the boy who played a younger Antwone. In that same interview, he described how he dealt with it.

I wrote it so that was one hurdle. Derek’s parts were not bothersome to me, to see him perform his parts. It was Malcolm Kelley’s parts that were hardest for me. In fact, some of those days I didn’t even stay on the set. I would leave when he to do his scenes, or I would just not come to the set that day…When Denzel says, “We are doing this for Antwone,” we are all talking about the boy that I was who didn’t have a voice and who was unprotected. We’re not talking about the young adult who Derek played because I was free to make decisions then and I chose to not get help early on, due to my shame. But I did have power to do something for myself. When I was a kid I had no power at all.