Brian Banks’ Mother Talks About the Movie and the Fight to Save Her Son

The true story of Brian Banks, an All-American high school football player who spent a decade behind bars  wrongly convicted of rape and eventually exonerated, opened at theatres over the weekend and is quickly becoming a recommended feel-good film for late-summer moviegoers.

Banks, his mother, Leomia Myers, and actress Sherri Shepherd who plays Myers in the movie shared their insights last week at the National Association of Black Journalists’ annual convention in Miami.

“As African-American parents and a mother, we’re always told to keep your child involved in something. All their lives they were involved in sports, church, sports, school…summer school,” Myers said. “And, I did that, and he had never been in trouble. So, I did all the right things, and then this happened. And, I was ill-prepared for it. I did not know what to do.”

Banks was a star football player in Long Beach, California with NFL scouts monitoring his athleticism when he was arrested by police for allegedly raping a schoolmate. He was 16 years old. Myers remembers her emotional devastation.

“I did not know, as a mother, to say to Brian when the police arrested him, ‘Just wait…don’t say anything, don’t say anything to anybody,’” she stated. “But I also told him to always tell the truth and that’s exactly what he did.  He told the truth to the police officer, and they in turn told him, ‘Oh, just tell us the truth and you will go home’ which was farthest from the truth.”

The trial revealed a broken justice system.

Myers said, “It’s more than just that 90-minute film that you see…the court proceedings were very, very hard for me. A lot of times I would sit on the bench outside the courtroom and just cry…it was just so painful. A lot of times I thought I would get a chance to see him, and they would cancel it, and I wouldn’t see him.”

The Actors in the Movie

Banks spent 10 years behind bars. Actor Greg Kinnear portrays the attorney who led the California Innocence Project’s effort to free Banks. During those years, Banks’ dream of a career in the NFL were all but dashed, and his family suffered throughout the injustice.

“My youngest son was very emotional the first time he saw his brother,” Myers recalled. “He just broke down, and he said, ‘Momma, I cannot go again’ so his life kinda spiraled out of control while Brian was incarcerated.”

Shepherd’s portrayal of Myers is earning rave reviews.

“As a mother of a little Black boy…everybody who knows me knows about my son, Jeffrey, and how much I talk about him,” Shepherd remarked during the panel. “He could have been Brian, and to hear the pain of Leomia because she could not shield her son from these experiences, and she couldn’t protect him, and that’s our first call as parents.”

And, it’s a call Myers readily answered.

“What I knew to do was I loved my son, and I was willing to do anything to help him,” she asserted. “Whatever it took, I was going to help him because I knew he was innocent…and he should not be going through what he was going through. It’s a painful experience, and I wouldn’t want anyone else to go through it.”

According to the LA Times, ‘Brian Banks’ which is an indie film produced by Bleecker Street brought in $2.1 million which is close to the number analysts predicted. “Fast and Furious Presents: Hobbs and Shaw” continued to win at theaters with $25.4 million for the weekend.