If you’ve seen Ava DuVernay’s deeply emotional film Origin, you were likely greatly impacted by its story about caste and the negative impact of hierarchy and prejudice. It’s a deep, educational and heart-pounding story about the creation of Isabel Wilkerson’s book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, and it left me feeling inspired and like I’d learned about how to make the world better. Jon Bernthal felt a similar way, and when I interviewed him about this film, he told me about what he took away from working on Origin, and the lessons he’s passed on to his kids.
In DuVernay’s film on the 2024 movie schedule, Jon Bernthal plays Isabel’s husband Brett, who tragically died early in the process of Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents' creation. Bernthal starred opposite Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor’s Isabel, and the two portrayed the beautiful and meaningful relationship between Brett and Isabel, which showed the author’s significant other consistently defying the caste system. While speaking with me about what he personally learned about his character as well as caste, Bernthal said:
