Though James’ ascent has been relatively swift by industry standards, it didn’t exactly come out of nowhere. Growing up in the barren Toronto suburb of Scarborough, the glare of Hollywood couldn’t have seemed further away. But James, who admits he didn’t know how far he could take acting, began stacking his resume with roles in local indie movies and a recurring stint on Degrassi—a practical birthright for all young Toronto actors (and rappers). And while Canada has exported a number of leading men, they were often either rubber-faced comedians like Jim Carrey and Mike Myers, or chiseled white men like Ryan Reynolds and Ryan Gosling.

“I’d seen other actors go to Hollywood and have successful careers, but nobody who looked like me and who came from where I came from,” James tells Playboy. “That is definitely part of what has driven me in my career—realizing the things that I was doing and the ground that I was breaking as a young black actor in Canada, and what that would mean for a whole generation of young black artists coming from where I come from. I had never seen an example of what that would look like. I could never look at someone’s path and be like, ‘Oh, I’m going to follow that.’”

James’ big break was an unlikely twist of fate suggesting that he was destined for greatness. After the actor David Oyelowo spotted James in the trailer for the 2014 sports drama When the Game Stands Tall, he sent it to Ava DuVernay, who was in the midst of casting her Martin Luther King biopic, Selma. Though James only appeared briefly in Game, it was enough to convince DuVernay that he was perfect for the part of the young civil rights leader John Lewis. Off the strength of that performance, James earned his first leading role in the 2016 Jesse Owens biopic Race, and he was off to the, well, races.

Despite Toronto’s close geographical proximity to New York City, James couldn’t have been further away from home on a brisk night in October, when he was standing on stage at Harlem’s iconic Apollo Theater for the U.S. premiere of If Beale Street Could Talk, Jenkins’ gorgeously realized adaptation of James Baldwin’s eponymous 1974 novel. There he was, a kid from Scarborough, standing alongside Jenkins, the film’s cast and many of Baldwin’s relatives, who were on hand to introduce a film that is, at its core, a love letter to the neighborhood of Baldwin’s youth. Even today, James is awestruck by the experience.

“It was everything. Even being back in New York and talking about the film with people, there’s such an energy there, compared to when you talk about the film in other places,” he says. “To bring the film back to New York and back to the Apollo, it was an incredible feeling. A lot of the people there have a personal connection to Baldwin that not a lot of places have, so they really appreciated it in a special way. I can’t really describe what it was like having the Baldwin family there and showing it to everybody for the first time.”

In it, James plays Fonny, a young black man wrongly accused of rape in 1974 New York. The film jumps back-and-forth between timelines, as we see Fonny and childhood friend Tish (KiKi Layne) become lovers, intercut with her efforts to get him released from jail. It’s in the present-day scenes, in which James acts behind a pane of glass and is shot entirely in close-up, that the sheer magnitude of his talent and charisma reveal themselves. James’ face fills up the screen with a preternatural expressiveness, an intimacy and a grandeur that’s just uncommon in actors his age. I ask James where this skill comes from—does he just feel more deeply than other people? “I don’t think it’s that,” he says. “I think we all feel things deeply. Maybe it’s a part of how I was raised and my experiences. I feel like I’ve been really fortunate to go a lot of places and have seen a lot of life. It allows me to have a unique perspective.”

It was certainly enough to convince Jenkins, who, coming off a Best Picture win for Moonlight, could have had his pick of young actors to play Fonny. But after James learned that Jenkins was adapting Baldwin’s novel for his next film, he sent the director a couple of taped scenes from the script and asked if they could meet. Over lunch in Los Angeles, Jenkins explained his vision for the film, the color palette he wanted to use and who he had in mind to round out the cast (which ended up including Regina King as Tish's mom). Of course, James did some talking, too. “Mostly, it was me convincing him that I could play Fonny.”

After landing the role, James wasted little time delving into the source material. “I was blown away by the honesty, the abundance of love,” he says of Baldwin’s novel. “I thought, What a remarkable story, and what a remarkable writer. It was almost Shakespearean for me, in a way, and it’s just a work that you can allow yourself to get lost in.” Despite being written over 40 years ago, many of the themes that Baldwin explores in his book could very well be ripped from today’s headlines. Poverty in America’s urban communities, racism and mass incarceration still resonate, a fact not lost on James. “It’s incredibly unfortunate that these words were written in 1974 and are still relevant,” he explains. “That’s part of what drove me to wanting to tell this story—was realizing that importance and how much it would resonate today. It meant a lot for me to be the voice for these issues that are still an epidemic.”

As part of his research, James immersed himself in case studies of young black men who have been wrongfully imprisoned in America. One case that struck him in particular was that of Kalief Browder, a 16-year-old who was charged with Grand Larceny after being accused of stealing a backpack. During his three years imprisoned in Rikers Island, Browder was kept in solitary confinement and regularly beaten by prison guards until he was eventually released in 2013 for lack of evidence. He killed himself two years later. “Looking at his story and watching his interviews of his time in prison and the mental and physical toll that that would take on a grown man, much less a 16-year-old boy, really hit home with me,” James says, adding that he had a difficult time watching surveillance videos and interviews of Browder’s time behind bars. “The scariest part of Kalief’s story was realizing that he’s just one of a million people that this is happening to. There are so many people who would never get the Kalief Browder treatment, have documentaries made about him, have his own Wikipedia page. There are so many voiceless young men across this country that will never have that opportunity, and I felt a huge responsibility in being the vessel to be that voice.”

While Beale Street works as a social critique, it is a love story above all else, particularly black love, which James says we rarely see depicted in contemporary cinema. Tish and Fonny are a portrait of young romance trying not to suffocate under the external forces that are stacked against them. “To me, it’s a revolutionary act," James says of Jenkins’ portrayal of black love. “This film struck me as a unique opportunity to put a different lens on the African-American experience and what it means to be a family. I think that, unfortunately, Hollywood hasn’t allowed us to see the black experience in this way, to see black love in this way, to see black soul mates like Tish and Fonny.”

James was also struck by the relationship between Fonny and his best friend, Daniel (Brian Tyree Henry), who—in one of the film’s most devastating scenes—explains to both Fonny and the audience the horrors that await him in prison. “Young black men are so often emasculated for the purposes of cinema,” he says. “But to see them in that vulnerable state where they’re being so honest and so loving with each other, to be so open to admit that ‘I’m scared, and the things that I have to go through in life, they scare me, and I want to let you know that as my brother,’ we just don’t often see that.”

Over the course of our interview, James is stoic about his torrid year. I ask him how his life has changed now that he’s Hollywood’s golden boy, and he returns to those two key words. He’s “grateful” for the timing, and “fortunate” that he gets to give the world two pieces of art that he “put his heart and soul into.” I ask him what it’s like to count people like Oprah Winfrey, Barry Jenkins and Ava DuVernay as both colleagues and friends. He says he’s “grateful” to be able to have worked with them, and hopes to do so again down the road. In fact, the only time James cracked was when I asked him what his most surreal experience on the awards circuit has been. “I was at the Governor’s Awards, and in the middle of taking a selfie, I got photobombed by Tom Hanks. I think I was speechless. I couldn’t find the words to describe how I felt in that moment.” We can think of a couple.