TIFF press conference: How Idris Elba learned to love his horse on Concrete Cowboy

By Linda Barnard

Idris Elba didn’t let a horse allergy stop him from bonding with his steed to bring to the screen Concrete Cowboy -  a father-son drama set among Philadelphia’s Black urban cowboys. 

Elba took some ribbing from fellow cast members about his initially tentative cowboy skills, especially from real-life Philly cowboy Jamil “Mil” Prattis, who has been riding out of the 100-year-old Fletcher Street stables since he was a kid. 

Idris Elba in Concrete Cowboy. Hey, who doesn’t look good on a horse?

“It goes beyond just learning how to ride a horse,” said Elba, at a virtual media conference Sunday a few hours before the movie premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.

“Very quickly, you have to have a bond with the horse.”

 Elba and co-stars Caleb McLaughlin (Stranger Things), Lorraine Toussaint (Orange is the New Black) and Jharrel Jerome (Moonlight), as well as producer Lee Daniels and director/co-screenwriter Ricky Staub, prevailed.  

 Professionally trained movie horses helped the new riders feel more at ease. So did the real-life urban cowboys who co-star in the film, including Prattis.

 Elba said he and Prattis, who had never acted before, leaned on each other to ensure each was as authentic as possible. For Elba, that meant looking at home around the horses and in the saddle. 

“But if I’m honest, I was watching Mil and them guys, watching how they talk to their horses and how they relate,” said Elba.

Adapted from Greg Neri’s 2009 novel Ghetto Cowboy, the film is a first screen role for McLaughlin. He plays Cole, the troubled 15-year-old son of Elba’s character Harp, a Philly cowboy who has to learn to be a father to his estranged son.

 McLaughlin said he was initially intimidated by working with Elba. Although he said he’d been homeschooled most of his life, he likened the experience of making the film to being in his senior year in high school. 

 “Being on this set was definitely something that I’ve learned a lot, I’ve grown,” he said.

 “I was blown away by this father-and-son love story,” said Daniels, the film’s producer, who was captivated by the idea of “Black cowboys in the hood.”

 When he found out screenwriter and director Ricky Staub was white, he had to give it some thought. “I pondered and then I said, I’m in,” said Daniels, who praised Staub’s filmmaking skills and devotion to the story.

 “This cat knows what he’s doing and so I opened myself up to him,” Daniels said.

 Staub learned about the Black cowboys when he saw one driving a horse and buggy past his Philly office window in 2012. It was a striking image, he recalled, and when he learned the Fletcher Street stables were a mile away, he began to do some research.

 It’s not just cowboys who ride out of the Fletcher Street stables. Toussaint plays one of the female riders, a character inspired by a real person at the stable, several of whom were on set.

 She said these women were much more glamourous than you’d expect, with nails done and lots of bling. “I love that Ricky wrote these women into it a very real and profound way,” said Toussaint.

 Daniels says drama is historic for its subject.

“We ain’t seen nothing like this,” said Daniels. “This is something that’s new. We have never seen a cowboy movie that takes place in a city.”