Ashanti, Lucas Jade Zumann, and Director Julia Verdin Talk Homelessness Crisis In No Address
A journey of struggles, community, and resilience, the drama No Address follows a group of people experiencing homelessness and how they come together. Pop Culture Planet’s Kristen Maldonado spoke with Ashanti, Lucas Jade Zumann, and director Julia Verdin about how the film impacted them.
“For me, when I hear stories that touch my heart it always stirs me to want to do something about it,” said Verdin, who comes from a background of social justice filmmaking. “I do a lot of volunteer work. In doing that, I've come across a lot of people living on the streets, experiencing homelessness. Hearing different stories of how different people got there really impacted me.” She called out the growing number of people experiencing homelessness following the pandemic and wanted to use this story to show that it could happen to anyone.
Verdin continued: “[There’s] also the sad reality, with growing information and a tough economy, that a lot of people are one step away from being homeless. It's something that we, as a society, have got to come together on and try and find a solution. My goal with this film is to open people's hearts to know that there are a lot of people out there on the streets that didn't choose to be there, didn't deserve to be there, but are there through bad circumstance.”
Ashanti plays Violet, a veteran who finds herself a part of the homeless community, in No Address. “This is a character that I've never played before. [It’s] something completely different for me, so I definitely wanted to […] dive in and show this is something that the world is going through,” she said. “It's just so weird to me that you can have a billionaire living on one side of the street and then someone else on the corner that can't afford a sandwich. I feel like that's really wrong.”
“It is extremely disheartening whenever you hear [of] a veteran that is struggling and not being heard or considered or not being helped or not being able to utilize resources. These people are giving up their lives and putting their lives on the line for us and then, when they're done, they just spit them out and leave,” Ashanti continued. “It's really a mental thing, so for me, this was an opportunity to use my platform to put the message out there. [Be] more compassionate and have more empathy and more love.”
When it comes to research, Verdin brought in numerous resources for her actors, including a homeless expert and interviews from their documentary Americans With No Address that inspired this film. “It's different for everybody so being able to speak with a myriad of different people and find out what it was that brought them to be where they are was really necessary. We all got together with the help of our consultants who were very experienced in both dealing with people struggling with mental illness and drug addiction and PTSD. [We used] them as a resource while we were shooting but also they took us out,” shared Zumann, who plays Jimmy. “We were able to visit the longest stretch of homeless encampments in the United States and […] speak with some of those people. Approaching those people, as well as this topic, with sensitivity was of the utmost importance.”
Joining the No Address team opened their eyes to a lot they weren’t aware of. “Before becoming attached, I was relatively familiar with the infrastructure that's in place to take care of people. The homeless shelters that are available, the different financial resources that are available to them, but I was not entirely privy to the actual vulnerability and fragility of the system. The root causes for those issues are all over. You can see them within the community. You can see them in politics,” explained Zumann. “But the actual bringing of awareness to the issue is what we can rely on to enact change to create a better, stable infrastructure for those people. So I was surprised by how many holes there were in our support system, in our net.”
Verdin was surprised by “the amount of resilience, courage, and hope” that she saw from people experiencing homelessness. “The way that they would all really help each other” was something they made sure to include in the film. “We decided as a cast right off the bat that the connection between us being reminiscent of a familial connection was very necessary because that's what each one of these characters were missing,” said Zumann. “Jimmy's protective instincts over Lauren (Isabella Ferreira) off the bat was to give you a little bit more of a direct analytical take on him trying to extend care to himself vicariously through the people around him. He wasn't capable of taking care of himself the way that he wished he could subconsciously.”
It was important to Verdin to find actors that were going to be “passionate advocates” and truly care about the issue. “Our humble hope is that this film will touch a cord with people and help to gain a better understanding that there's no one one size fits all solution to this problem,” she expressed. “We all have to come together as a society to find a fix for it.”
No Address premieres in theaters on February 28.
