Moonlight with Barry Jenkins
Script Apart with Al Horner11 Elo 2020

Moonlight with Barry Jenkins

Adapted from an unpublished play by Tarell Alvin McCraney, Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight was a mesmerising three-part journey through the young adult life of Chiron, a boy grappling with his identity and sexuality, played by three different actors representing different stages of his adolescence. The movie was the first LGBTQ-themed film to win Best Picture, the first with an all-black cast to win Best Picture, and is regularly voted among the greatest films of the century so far.


Barry wrote Moonlight’s first-draft on a solo trip to Europe, after discovering echoes of his own life in Tarell’s story. Like the playwright, he had grown up in Liberty City, raised by a mother with drug dependency issues. As he explains in our fascinating and at times emotional chat, Barry didn’t know where his life and career were leading before this screenplay spilled out of him on that trip, putting him on a path to Oscars glory.


Here’s Barry – and an incredibly well-behaved puppy he adopted before lockdown – on the origins of Moonlight, the LGBTQ legacy of the film’s success, and why his original ending for the film might have resulted in the actor Alex R. Hibbert being eaten by sharks.


Script Apart is a podcast about the first-draft secrets behind great movies. Each episode, the screenwriter behind a beloved film shares with us their initial screenplay for that movie. We then talk through what changed, what didn’t and why on its journey to the big screen.


Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek, with music from Stefan Bindley-Taylor. You can follow Script Apart on Twitter and Instagram. You can also email us on thescriptapartpodcast@gmail.com.


Support the show

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jaksot(178)

Project Hail Mary with Drew Goddard, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller

Project Hail Mary with Drew Goddard, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller

Ground control to Script Apart listeners – today on the show, we’re blasting off into the cosmos with three formidable sci-fi storytelling talents. Phil Lord and Chris Miller are the writer-director-p...

26 Maalis 1h 36min

Bugonia with Will Tracy

Bugonia with Will Tracy

Today on the show – a conversation about Bugonia, with the film’s writer, Will Tracy. Nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay at the upcoming Academy Awards, the Yorgos Lanthimos-directed film is an bla...

15 Maalis 58min

Avatar: Fire and Ash with Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver

Avatar: Fire and Ash with Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver

Pandora beckons once more, guys. Amanda Silver and Rick Jaffa are back on the show today, spilling secrets from their screenplay for the recent third film in the Avatar franchise, Fire & Ash. The husb...

14 Maalis 46min

Train Dreams with Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar

Train Dreams with Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar

Today on the show, our short run of episodes about Oscar 2026 awards contenders continues with a story about grief and growth amid the final flickers of the old West. Train Dreams – adapted from a nov...

12 Maalis 59min

Weapons with Zach Cregger

Weapons with Zach Cregger

It’s officially that time of year again: Oscar season! We’re now just a few weeks away from the 98th Academy Awards and to celebrate, over the coming days and weeks we’ll be posting conversations abo...

24 Helmi 56min

The Plague with Charlie Polinger

The Plague with Charlie Polinger

The Plague is writer-director Charlie Pollinger’s unflinching portrait of childhood bullying in which the titular contagion is a skin rash that may or may not be real. Set in 2003, at an all-boys summ...

18 Helmi 46min

Rental Family with Hikari

Rental Family with Hikari

In Rental Family, the new Tokyo-set drama starring Brendan Fraser, writer-director Hikari poses the question: “Can fantasies and fictions ever fill the gaps left in our lives by the people we miss; th...

14 Helmi 52min

Hamnet with Chloé Zhao and Maggie O'Farrell

Hamnet with Chloé Zhao and Maggie O'Farrell

To record an episode about Hamnet, the new film from Chloe Zhao, or not to record an episode about Hamnet? That was the question – and a question I answered in a heartbeat when Chloe’s team reached ou...

2 Helmi 48min