Jeymes Samuel (aka The Bullitts) is a multi-hyphenate in the truest sense of the word: He’s a producer, having worked with Jay Electronica and Kid Cudi; a genre-melding musician, collaborating with Talib Kweli and even Lucy Liu (you read that correctly); an executive music consultant, on 2013’s The Great Gatsby (after being hand-picked by Jay-Z, no less); and a director, first releasing the 2013 short Western They Die By Dawn, starring Michael K. Williams, Rosario Dawson, Jesse Williams, Harry Lennix and Erykah Badu, and now, his first feature film, 2021’s The Harder They Fall. But most of all, Samuel is an enthusiast — which brings us to the present day.

The cast is impossibly star-studded: Jonathan Majors, Regina King, Idris Elba, LaKeith Stanfield and Zazie Beetz. Jay-Z produced it and also recorded two new songs for the soundtrack. The Harder They Fall is one of Netflix’s latest and greatest action flicks, a Western dreamed up by Samuel. For a classic genre film, the movie is anything but: Forget all about your preconceptions, The Harder They Fall isn’t your average tale of vintage Americana.

In this installment of “Director’s Cut,” we speak to Samuel about all the ways The Harder They Fall will surprise you. Buckle up, cowboys.

​​These. People. Existed. What an incredible film. When did your love of Westerns begin? 

As a child growing up in the United Kingdom, they were always on TV, always in the background. Serials in the daytime, and then, come the evenings, they’d show the movies. My parents were always watching them: Rawhide, Champion the Wonder Horse, Bonanza, reruns. I’d be watching these things in the ’90s. Westerns were just a permanent fixture on the TV, and I loved them. I loved every single thing about the genre, even the questions I had that didn’t make any sense. Like, ‘Why does the screen go skinny at the end of the movie?’ Before widescreen TVs, TVs were square. So in the last scene, the screen would go thin as [the characters rode] off on the horizon because the sides used to be cropped to fit our televisions. But at the end, they needed to fit the credits, so they’d squash the whole frame. It’s such a beautiful part of the Western that I use in The Harder They Fall, as an homage to how those films looked. 

And the older you get, the [less] representation you see. You don’t see anyone that looks like you, and when you do, they’re always [enslaved]. Any person of color — Mexicans, Blacks, Asians, Native Americans — was treated less than human. Women of any color were always subservient. So, after a while, I [started discovering] all these people of color — these amazing men and women of all ethnic backgrounds that lived in the Old West. That became my love.

Is that when you started learning about the Rufus Buck Gang, Stagecoach Mary and the other characters in your movie? 

I learned about Rufus Buck Gang and Cherokee Bill when I was 13, 14. I learned about Gertrude Smith later. I love [that] Gertrude Smith ran with this girl, Dolly Mickey, and there’s hardly any information about them. I could give them my own history. But I’d be arguing with people at school, like, “These people existed,” and they’d be like, “No.” Stagecoach Mary. Cherokee Bill. Bass Reeves, who is the inspiration for The Lone Ranger. 

I constantly did things that would speak to Black people, people of color and women in the Old West. And then, 10 years ago, I made a short film, They Die By Dawn, and I had a slew of heavyweights in it: Michael K. Williams, Rosario Dawson, playing all Black cowboys that really existed. [It wasn’t] far from what The Harder They Fall is, just [on] a smaller budget. I funded [it] myself. I’ve always been obsessed with [Westerns] and equally obsessed with broadening the scope we look at that genre through. 

They Die By Dawn and The Harder They Fall are almost exceptions to the way most people view the Western canon. They think it’s mostly white narratives, the Clint Eastwood of it all. But you weren’t trying to make the greatest Black Western you could make. You were trying to make the greatest Western. What did you gain by freeing yourself of the label?

[The Harder They Fall] isn’t a Black Western in any way, shape or form. A Western, in and of itself, is literally just a description of the place and the time it is set. But even that can be fudged. Hell or High Water, with Chris Pine and Ben Foster, is a Western. There’s nary a horse in it. A Black Western is almost, like — the media will marginalize something to the nearest, closest hanging fruit. A prestigious award ceremony will come out and be called the “Black Oscars.” It’s really jarring. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance isn’t a white Western, Shane’s not a white Western. Winchester ’73 isn’t a white Western. The Big Country isn’t a white Western. But when Black people are in something, [it’s a] “Black Western.” 

It’s just a Western. And before it’s a Western, it’s a movie. People tell themselves they don’t like Westerns. You ask and they’re like, “I don’t really watch Westerns. They’re not my thing. But I’ll watch The Harder They Fall.” So Westerns are your thing! You’re just not being fed the nutrients you need. When it dropped, The Harder They Fall was the No. 1 thing on Netflix. It’s apparent everyone likes Westerns. They’re just not given the nutrients. It’s all storytelling. You like stories, don’t you? 

People say, “I don’t like Westerns because I don’t relate to them,” but then they’ll watch a movie set in space.

You watch Chewbacca! Do you relate more to Baby Yoda? Do you relate more to Baby Yoda than Regina King in a bowler hat? The fact of [the] matter is you do relate to Regina King in a bowler hat. You do relate to Idris Elba on horseback. You do relate to LaKeith Stanfield using the word nincompoop. You can relate to it. You just haven’t been fed it before. And now we’ve fed ’em.

You’ve had the idea for The Harder They Fall for more than a decade, and you had to film during the pandemic. Was there ever any question as to whether this was going to be made?

There’s no way The Harder They Fall wouldn’t have been made. I would have made it on iPhones. I funded They Die By Dawn myself — and it was still a big production. I had one other investor, but we both did it without commercial return. There was no version of events where The Harder They Fall wouldn’t have been made. I assembled a supergroup before [everything]: I brought James Lassiter and Jay-Z on board. Idris Elba. Regina King’s agent, Lorrie Bartlett, was always riding for The Harder They Fall. She was The Harder They Fall’s main champion, and introduced me to Regina, and then we had Regina. My mom always says, “nothing happens before its time,” but in the words of Victor Hugo, “nothing could stop an idea whose time has come.” The Harder They Fall’s time had come. 

In Westerns, women aren’t viewed as full people. They’re always only prostitutes, damsels in distress or shrinking violets. The Harder They Fall has an incredible batch of very strong women whose desires aren't tethered to their relationships with men. How did you reframe and revise how women are portrayed in Westerns? 

Well, here’s the thing: We actually didn’t reframe or revise it or reimagine it. Hollywood did. What we’ve done is restored the truth. Unforgiven is a great film. It won best picture [at the 1993 Oscars]. Gene Hackman won best supporting actor. Every single woman in that movie is a prostitute. Really? There are towns where every single woman is a prostitute? And I love the movie. So we didn’t reframe it. I just wanted to give a broader [picture]. You can have the best car in the world, a Bugatti. Take away one of the wheels, and you’ve got the worst car that ever existed. You’ll crash before you hit the corner of the street. If you remove a brick from a built house, one brick, the whole structure is now in jeopardy. When you remove the woman from a narrative, from a genre, you have a three-wheeled car. Remove women from the genre, you really have no genre. So it was important for me to show our women in the light that I see them: not subservient, not beholden to some male character. Show these people as the Gs they are. It gives me a better film. 

I love that all the women in The Harder They Fall are completely different from each other. Cuffee is completely different from Mary, and Mary is completely different from Trudy Smith. They’re all different, but they’re all amazing. When all the men are fighting with guns, the two women face off. [They] throw their guns aside and say, “let’s go,” and fight. Fisticuffs. Not this shooter-shooting-shooting stuff. It’s all those things. That’s why I needed to make the movie in the fashion that I did.

There are a lot of Easter eggs in the film. The train is named after the unimpeachable Chadwick Boseman. There’s the Carter and Carter General Store, named after Beyoncé and Jay-Z. Regina King makes a Malcolm X reference. 

Every single store, every single signage in the movie, every single one, means something. We had to. I had to name that train after Chadwick, our angel that we all watched. He was here with us, and then he was taken. So I had to. It’s empowering. It’s empowering having Regina King and LaKeith Stanfield [in the shot] and, in the back, Chadwick’s name [on the train]. 

We’re filmmakers. You need Easter eggs. Some are personal to me. Some allude to what’s going on with the storyline and stuff. 

It makes the film interactive — brings the story into our lives — and isn’t that the point?

It’s what good stories do. And then you can watch the film again and find all of these Easter eggs. The amount of people that have called me about the CeeLo [Green] record “Blackskin Mile,” because there’s a huge Easter egg in the lyrics in that song. Someone will figure it out eventually.

 What makes a great Western?

The Harder They Fall is a compelling story because the protagonist and the antagonist are the same person. They’re doing the exact same thing. It’s a cycle of violence. And to show two grown Black men, meeting at the end — the standoff scene — the guns are actually their eyes, and the tears are their bullets. It’s the ultimate showdown. You have two Black men facing each other off, and it’s seen as this macho thing, but that macho thing is unrealistic. And so they face each other off with tears and words. It’s such a beautiful and powerful thing to me. These two men exchange words in the end scene. They talk. And they’re not enemies. It’s unreal. It was in my head, but to have it become real, to have Idris Elba turn up with Jonathan [Majors], and they’re both going at it is the most amazing thing to watch.

This interview has been edited and condensed.