Bokeem Woodbine doesn’t really do interviews. “I’m low-key Bokeem, seldom seen,” the actor tells VF with a gravelly laugh, delivering his words like a rapper about to drop into a cipher. “I prefer to do my job and keep it pushing.”

Woodbine has kept it pushing for the past three decades, breaking out in 1994 with supporting roles in Spike Lee’s Crooklyn and Doug McHenry's Jason’s Lyric. The next year brought Dead Presidents, the Hughes brothers’ acidic crime drama about young Marines wreaking havoc in the Vietnam War, then crashing back into civilian life. Woodbine has a penchant for scene-stealers with a hypnotic kind of darkness, from the villainous Mike Milligan in Fargo to the smooth but violent pimp in Queen and Slim, and the playfully nefarious Shocker in Spider-Man: Homecoming.

His next role, in A24’s The Inspection—writer-director Elegance Bratton's  autobiographical drama about Ellis, a homeless gay man who decides to join the Marines—falls right into this lineage. Woodbine plays Laws, a training command instructor charged with turning a gang of aimless recruits into polished Marines. He’s an equal opportunity sadist, but he starts by specifically targeting Ellis (Jeremy Pope) once everyone in the camp finds out he’s gay.

As soon as he read the script, Woodbine was determined to play the part. At the time, he was shooting the first season of Halo and was planning to take a four to five month break, as he usually does between projects. (“I’m spoiled,” he jokes.) He would have had to pass on The Inspection in order to continue his post-project luxuriating, but decided to leap into it instead. “I wrapped out Halo on a Friday, and I was on a plane to Mississippi on Sunday to do The Inspection.” 

He was particularly drawn in by the chance to work with Bratton, a first-time feature filmmaker who had crafted a beautiful, deeply personal story. Once on set, Woodbine was charmed by Bratton’s infectious enthusiasm, coupled with the fact that he would occasionally present his cast with ideas and earnestly ask for their input, a sign of newcomer naivete, Woodbine says. “Imagine a great musician who composes a beautiful piece of music,” Woodbine begins. “All the members of the orchestra have their individual instrument, and he’s saying, ‘Okay, if you guys all follow this piece that I’ve written out and play your instruments at the right time, we can make this beautiful song. What does everybody think?’ I think we’re lucky to be in the band, man.”

Woodbine was also drawn to the film because of the purgatorial nature of Laws’s job. He has essentially devoted his life to inhabiting the torturous world of Parris Island, breaking in young men and sending them into the military. Woodbine was curious about digging into the psyche of the type of man who does this work over and over again, but never goes out into the field himself. “You’re preparing [recruits] to lose limbs, to experience the horror of war,” he says. “How can you ask somebody to go to war when you yourself are not in that situation, necessarily?”

Doing the same job day in and day out is also completely antithetical to the freelance lifestyle of an actor. “I’m a vagabond, I’m a wanderer,” Woodbine says. “I’ve always been curious about people who can find peace and serenity in the stillness.”

Though Laws is a frequently unsympathetic character, Woodbine found an empathetic way into him by loosely basing the character on a friend who was a former Marine and fought on the battlefield. “These experiences stay with people, particularly Black men,” Woodbine says. “You go to war and come back to the States and there’s still a strong element of disenfranchisement, segregation. It was such a bitter, bitter realization after you’ve been shot and stabbed, and killed and maimed people for your ‘country.’ You come back and you still have to put up with a whole other war to be recognized as a man.”

Thematically, that’s the battle that Ellis is fighting, struggling to adapt to an aggressive, homophobic environment. Pope, who plays Ellis with heartfelt clarity and depth, goes toe to toe with Woodbine in a number of scenes, gamely facing off against the man who is among his many saboteurs across the camp. “[Pope] is one of the most giving actors I’ve ever had the privilege to work with,” Woodbine says, putting the rising star in a league of young talent that includes  Tom Holland and Daniel Kaluuya. 

The Inspection is a film full of breakout performers, all of whom are being led by Woodbine’s Laws. Woodbine can relate, having played soldiers early enough and frequently enough in his career that he felt fairly knowledgeable about Marine life going into the film. But when asked if he participated in any of the rigorous training alongside his castmates playing recruits in order to bond and get fully into character, Woodbine’s answer comes swift and firm. “Hell no!” he says, laughing. “I did my time.”