Spike Lee announced Topher Grace's role as David Duke in his forthcoming film BlacKkKlansman on Wednesday at CinemaCon.
BlacKkKlansman tells the real life story of Ron Stallworth—who is played by John David Washington—Colorado Springs’ first African-American detective. In the late 1970s, Stallworth went undercover and managed to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan by posing as a white man on the phone. His partner Flip—played by Adam Driver—who was a white officer, would pose as Stallworth during the Klan's meetings. The two eventually reached the highest levels of the hate group and managed to slow its quest to take over the city.
"They had to at all times believe they were communicating with one person," Stallwoth told KTSM in February. "Many of (the Klan members) are not the brightest bulbs in the socket. There's a lot lacking. So they did not recognize that they were talking to one person on the phone and another person in person."
The film is being distributed by Focus Features and is being produced by Get Out‘s Sean McKittrick and Raymond Mansfield, Jordan Peele, Spike Lee himself, and Shaun Redick. "It's very surreal," Stallworth told KTSM when asked about the film. "My wife and I periodically pinch ourselves and say, 'Can you believe this?'"
The film is currently slated for an August 10, 2018 release, almost exactly one year after the Charlottesville, North Carolina "Unite the Right" white supremacist rally that took place last year and resulted in the death of 32-year-old Heather Heyer.
"It's only right that this movie gets made," Stallworth's wife Patsy Terrazas-Stallworth told KTSM. "And if it touches just one person, then he's succeeded."
