The following story contains some spoilers for I Love Boosters (2026).
LAKEITH STANFIELD LOOKS right at me, but doesn’t say a word. This happens a few times.
“Shhhh,” he mouths, raising a single finger to cover his lips. There’s an ever-so-slight grin on his face, and his eyes are in a soft squint. The first time, it’s because I’ve asked about 48 Hours in Vegas, an upcoming film in which he’ll play former NBA star Dennis Rodman at a particularly debaucherous time in his life—but which he clearly cannot talk about. It happens again a bit later. The mouthing, the finger, the slight grin, and the soft squint. It didn’t take long, but we’ve developed something of a shorthand.
This firm but undoubtedly easygoing nature is exactly what I expected from Stanfield, an actor who’s made the laid-back and cool into his signature. Led by a pair of wildly expressive eyes, he doesn’t just have one of those faces you instantly recognize—he’s got an unflinching vibe unlike anyone else appearing on screen today. Maybe that’s still trickling down from his breakout role as cool-as-a-cucumber Darius on FX’s surreal hit comedy Atlanta, but there’s something about every LaKeith Stanfield character that just reads chill. One would imagine someone always projecting such a specific zen feels the same way in real life. So, what’s his secret?
“Never show, at any given moment, just how much you're quaking inside,” the 34-year-old actor says after taking a beat to look inward. In keeping with the visual aesthetic of his latest movie, I Love Boosters, he’s seated in an entirely monochromatic pink set, while he wears a brown jacket, a belt with a huge buckle, and a baseball cap. He continues: “I'm actually not always very calm. I like to establish that as my base a bit, because there's a lot of chaos happening.”
I Love Boosters marks a reunion with Sorry to Bother You director Boots Riley. There are a lot of words that could describe the energetic, loud, and uniformly colorful second collaboration between actor and director, but interestingly, “calm” certainly isn’t one of them. In fact, it’s the juxtaposition between the two—Riley’s maximalist style and Stanfield’s constant chill—that makes them such a perfect fit together. Riley, who’s always had a ton to say, seems to find in Stanfield a powerful muse.
Stanfield likes to think of what he’s doing as performing a magic trick.
“You want to find all the great people involved that can help you pull off this trick,” he says. “We all come together, and we say, ‘All right, we're going to plan it. We're going to do this.’ And then you do the thing. And then we set it up: boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. And then we perform this trick.”
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TO DESCRIBE STANFIELD’S character in I Love Boosters, which primarily follows a shoplifting crew led by Keke Palmer, would in and of itself be a spoiler. So, to be as delicate as possible, I’m going to give it to you piece by piece. The next few paragraphs here are filled with some major, out-of-this-world spoilers, so read on at your own risk.
When Riley first pitched the role, Stanfield says, he told him something very particular and without any context at all:
"Hey man, the next thing, I want you to play a Demon,” he recalls. “And yeah, it's a fucking Demon."
At the time, Stanfield had no idea what that meant. Once you see the movie, it becomes clear that Riley meant what he said. Stanfield’s character, who appears a few times early in the film—looking typically cool—as a potential love interest for Palmer’s character, is credited on IMDb only as “Pinky Ring Guy.” And about halfway through the film, he’s revealed to be—yes—a literal demon. And he’s not just any literal demon—he’s one who sucks the souls of his partners out through sexual acts, one of which is depicted on screen in an extremely elaborate flashback sequence that involves prosthetics, practical effects, and The Thing-style puppetry that Stanfield himself was operating. It also involves cunnilingus. So, yes, he played a fucking demon.
“I had a controller, and then I had this little pump thing, and I'm pumping and juices are flying,” he says, noting also that his wife, model Kasmere Trice Stanfield, was on set that day and appears in the scene with him. “It's crazy. I got to be both a puppeteer and at the center of it, and also put on a prosthetic myself. It was very fun, very strange, and also slightly disgusting.”
Taking on such a role almost blindly would be quite the leap for any actor. But Stanfield and Riley have a bond that goes deeper than most—executing a part like that wouldn’t be possible any other way.
“Some of it's telepathic, some of it's literal language, and some of it's gesticulation, body movement, dance perhaps,” Stanfield says. “That's what I love about our communication—it can take place on any plane or all planes simultaneously, and we still understand and read and trust each other.”
Sorry to Bother You and I Love Boosters both tell stories that are big, exciting, and allow Riley to create a world that feels singular to his vision, while also letting his talented casts truly cook. Stanfield shares almost all his scenes in Boosters with Palmer and the two truly shine together, while the movie gets additional life from star performers like Taylour Paige, Don Cheadle, and Demi Moore.
But Riley isn’t only here to play. Anti-capitalist messaging is always front and center in his films, hidden beneath those glorious sets, monochromatic colors, and, yeah, soul-sucking fuck demons. That image may not carry the most subtle metaphor in the world, but Stanfield sees it as a parallel for modern relationships that aren’t quite the healthiest.
“You’ve got to heal yourself before you try to get around others,” he explains. “Do your best to be in your best light so that way you're emanating that. And then you don't have to be such a vampire and a demon. Maybe you can be an angel.”
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AFTER APPEARING IN three films last year (Roofman, Die, My Love, and Play Dirty), he’ll next take on the Taylor Sheridan-penned military thriller F.A.S.T. and a stoner comedy called The Wrong Girls. He calls the two projects polar opposites.
“I like to be able to play and be all over the place,” he says.
F.A.S.T., which stands for “Forward Assist Support Team” and required significant training with military personnel, didn’t film at Sheridan’s famous 6666 ranch (where projects like Yellowstone often shoot), but he visited the super-producer’s home during production. “Taylor Sheridan's the man,” Stanfield says. “He's got this huge farm and all these animals and just like this crazy scope and vision and great mind. He’s just a really good writer, man.”
Sheridan is only the latest major name Stanfield can add to an impressive list of collaborators that includes Jordan Peele, Rian Johnson, Josh and Benny Safdie, Shane Black, Derek Cianfrance, Lynne Ramsay, and, of course, Riley.
“I want to work with Ryan Coogler,” he says. “He’s making great things. I like Michael B. Man, I want to work with him too. Antoine Fuqua? Shouts out to him. Ava DuVernay? I want to work with her again. Nia DaCosta… There’s a lot of great people doing beautiful things. I would love to work with all of them.”
One more idea: A reunion episode for Atlanta, which later this year will celebrate the 10th anniversary of its premiere. “One day I hope we come back all old, and do an episode for everybody, and the whole cast has gray hair now,” he says. “What's Paper Boi up to? What's Darius doing? If it was even all real. Was it even all real?”
You can see the excitement in his eyes as he discusses future work, both existing and hopeful. However, that Stanfield calm remains. But at the end of the day, it’s his tranquility that reels audiences in—everything that follows is a bonus.
And might that draw him back, once again, to Riley? “His next idea? It's crazy. It's amazing,” Stanfield says. “Oh, my God. Watch when you hear about this.” But can we count on him being in it, and making it three-for-three with the director?
Probably should’ve seen the answer to that one coming: One more “Shh.”
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