The Klan member. The bigoted politician. The slur-spouting athlete. A staple of cinematic evil, roles steeped in racism have never been a simple undertaking for the performers tasked with playing them.

While audiences have always loved a good villain, the on-screen depiction of racism carries perhaps more weight today than in previous eras. After all, this is a time when President Donald Trump’s vitriol is an accepted presence on Twitter feeds; when NPR publicly defends its labeling of that same president’s rhetoric as racist; when we’re just two years removed from the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia; and when mass shootings perpetrated on any given day instill persistent fear and anguish.

Does art inform how we identify prejudice in our own lives, and do the stories we tell on-screen exacerbate or salve the pain? PLAYBOY spoke with seven actors about their racist roles to examine how we represent hatred in art, the risks and nuances of understanding such mind-sets and the power in reflecting the current state of America.