Teyonah Parris and Tessa Thompson for the New York Times.

Teyonah Parris and Tessa Thompson, “Dear White People”
Justin Simien’s provocative, crowdfunded satire “Dear White People” (Oct. 17) is set at a fictional Ivy League college where the melting pot of race politics boils over into a campus riot, when a controversial college radio show inspires a racist party. At the heart of the scrum are two dueling African-American women, Coco and Sam, played by two rising stars, Teyonah Parris and Tessa Thompson.

 
“The things we represent are totally opposite,” said Ms. Parris (above right, with Ms. Thompson), a native of South Carolina and a Juilliard grad best known for playing Dawn, Don Draper’s secretary, on “Mad Men.” Ms. Parris’s brash, aggressive Coco pragmatically attempts to exploit stereotypical expectations as she hopes to land a role on a reality TV show.
Ms. Thompson, a Los Angeles native with extensive television credits and roles in features like the indie “Mississippi Damned,” plays Samantha, a biracial, righteously indignant radical who hosts the radio show of the title. “Dear white people, stop dancing,” she decrees, adding: “Dear white people, the minimal requirement of black friends needed to seem not racist has now been raised to two. Sorry, but Tyrone your weed man does not count.”
Whereas Ms. Parris’s Coco is animated by a steely, hard-won cynicism, Ms. Thompson’s Sam is full of impassioned, intellectual, abstract outrage, but they aren’t so different at their cores. Both actresses deliver multilayered performances that undercut expectations, as each character strikes a public pose that’s more extreme than her private thoughts.
“A lot of what Sam says is not exactly a true representation of how she sees the world, and that’s true of Coco, too,” Ms. Thompson said, noting her character’s love of Taylor Swift and fear of Cosby sweaters. “To feel that something’s wrong in your gut and not really know how to respond to it — that’s where we leave them.”
During the film shoot, the two actresses became close friends. Since then, they have auditioned for the same roles and wished each other luck, which seems to be working. They reconnected in Atlanta, where Ms. Parris was filming the new LeBron James-produced Starz series “Survivor’s Remorse,” set in the world of professional basketball, and Ms. Thompson was portraying the civil rights activist Diane Nash in “Selma,” Ava DuVernay’s civil rights drama set to open Dec. 25 in the heart of the Oscar season.
It’s a heady time for two rising talents, but recently, in the wake of Michael Brown’s killing in Ferguson, Mo., and the #iftheygunnedmedown Twitter campaign, Ms. Thompson said she and Ms. Parris have been talking about how events “really changed the context of ‘Dear White People.’ ”
“Sometimes, we see a shallow version of the African-American experience which is so deep and vast,” Ms. Parris said. “I was excited that the film speaks on issues that never get spoken about and isn’t banging you up against the head with them, but making you laugh and feel a little uncomfortable.”
Ms. Thompson agreed: “This is the kind of work I’ve been aching to do, that I can do forever.”