Buddy Guy would do just about anything for the blues. So when the guitarist and singer got the call for a role in Ryan Coogler’s musical horror period-drama “Sinners,” the answer was an easy yes.
Then the nerves kicked in.
“Man, I had goose pimples everywhere. I couldn’t hardly sleep that night after shooting and the night before,” Guy, who turns 89 in July, said in a phone interview from his home in Chicago. In his main scene opposite Michael B. Jordan and Hailee Steinfeld, in a bar after the film jumps from the 1930s to the ’90s, he said he almost needed a stiff drink.
“I never did drink alcohol until I met Muddy Waters and them, and they said, ‘If you drink a little schoolboy Scotch, Buddy, your nerves would be a little better off.’ And that wasn’t schoolboy Scotch during filming, that was just water, but I hoped they would bring me a shot because I didn’t want them to see me shaking,” he said with a laugh.
In the film, which has become a box office and critical smash, and a cultural phenomenon, Guy portrays the older version of Sammie Moore, a blues musician played by Miles Caton in his earlier years. (The plot revolves around the Smokestack twins, both played by Jordan, and their efforts to ward off vampires, who offer Sammie eternal life.) Guy said he hadn’t watched the entire film yet — “I’m afraid to see it because I don’t want to say if I’m bad or good” — but he’s hoping “Sinners” bridges the gap between younger audiences and the blues, and shines a light on the genre’s legacy.
“I saw a little clip of the movie and said, ‘Wow, this may help the blues stay alive.’ Some kid who never heard of the blues might wake up and say, ‘I better check that out,’” Guy said. “Blues has been treated like a stepchild ever since the big FM stations came out,” he added. He said he made a promise to Waters and B.B. King “that I would try to keep the blues alive because the blues is the history of all music.”
“Sinners” has become a critical smash, a box office hit and a cultural phenomenon.Credit…Warner Bros. Pictures