Unscene Pictures
Mishael Morgan as Lisa in Sway.
Currently wending its way through the film festival circuit is Sway, an intense dramatic thriller that stars Mishael Morgan (Amanda, Y&R). “It’s about a very successful leader from a predominantly Black community who is at the top of his game,” the actress explains of the powerful project, which takes its title from the main character’s nickname. “He comes from a low-income area, but he re-imagined his community and helped successfully gentrify it, with the inhabitants being part of the project and not being pushed out. He kind of sheds the light on structural discrimination and then shows a way to do it from the inside out. So, he’s garnered all this success from transforming his community where people are thriving.”
However, that prosperous boon is in danger of collapsing around Sway. “His life just kind of spirals out of control and there’s all these different secrets happening so you’re getting to see the man behind the mask and what he’s playing,” Morgan shares. “There’s a lot of things that are coming up and hitting him all at once and his life is kind of derailing all in one evening.”
Morgan plays Lisa, a woman who has a hidden agenda and is blackmailing Sway. “What I love about her the most is what I love about a lot of my characters — especially like [Morgan’s previous Y&R role] Hilary — is that Lisa is not always what she seems,” she notes. “She has another side, and she has a secret, so everything that she says and everything that she’s playing has nuances of a double meaning or a hidden agenda. Those are always the most fun thing to play because these characters are so much more complex and they’re so much more than they appear to be. I love playing characters that have a little more going on underneath the surface.”
Morgan and the movie’s star, Emmanuel Kabongo, have a strong off-camera affiliation. “We’re actually really close,” she says. “He has babysat my kids and has come over for Thanksgiving and Christmas and parties. We met in L.A. through another friend of mine. We went to a Louisiana-[style] crab boil and that’s how we met each other for the first time, cracking and eating crab. We just became really good friends after that and showed up for each other, but we’ve never worked together aside from helping each other with auditions and self-tapes. He’s been successful and has gotten a lot of roles, but he’s never been the lead in anything until this project. He really wanted to be the lead and show that he has some chops. I love him as an artist and I’ve watched a lot of his work, so I knew that he could play this character and he would completely rise to the occasion, and he did.”
In fact, it was Kabongo who invited his friend to be a part of the independent feature film. “Emmanuel’s the executive producer and he knew that I was interested in producing, so he approached me with it,” says Morgan. “He sent me the script and he asked me if this was something that I would be interested in doing. I read it all in one sitting and I felt like it was something that we could not only do together, but we could get done in the short amount of time that he wanted to do it. Because with his schedule and with other people’s schedules, he only had a short time to shoot it. He also offered me the opportunity to executive produce with him. I wanted to help him out with it as much as possible because not only is he an incredible actor, but it’s a great story. I love telling stories that have unexpected endings and different nuances and touch on real-life problems that are going on in the world. So, I got to hone my skill as an executive producer behind the camera, as well as do what I love to do in front of the camera. It was a really cool experience to wear both hats and be running around getting everything done, making sure everybody’s taken care of and also act in it.”
For now, a release date for Sway hasn’t been set. “We’re having really great conversations with some distributors, but we don’t have anything locked in as of yet,” Morgan notes. “There’s also so many different streaming platforms now and networks that have their own online spin-offs, so we’re talking to a lot of different people to find the right home for it.”
Unscene Pictures
