In the biographical drama ‘Rob Peace,’ Chiwetel Ejiofor reframes a life

PARK CITY, Utah (AP) — Chiwetel Ejiofor had read Jeff Hobbs’ “The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace” years before Antoine Fuqua asked if he might consider writing and directing an adaptation.

The book, which explores the complex life of a brilliant boy who grew up in the crime ridden and blighted East Orange, New Jersey, was written by Peace’s old Yale roommate. His story did not fit neatly into familiar tropes about rough beginnings, incarcerated fathers or overly simplistic ideas about success and “getting out.” This was a person who wanted to remain tied to his community, to his father, and also to succeed in his schooling and athletics (water polo) first at St. Benedict’s Preparatory School in Newark and then at Yale where he studied molecular biochemistry and biophysics.

Nine years after he graduated from university, in which he spent time teaching at his old prep school, traveled extensively, considered grad school and made money selling marijuana, Peace was killed. Some of the narratives chalked it up to the fact that he went back to where he came from. Ejiofor said Peace’s mother told them that in the aftermath of his death, television crews came and filmed the garbage on the streets instead of the community.

But Hobbs and, subsequently, Ejiofor saw something more complicated and nuanced about the flawed idea of “social mobility” and about the “confluence of race, housing, education and the criminal justice system.” And, most importantly, he felt like he hadn’t seen these ideas engaged with in film.