Here are some photos of David Oyelowo outside of the ITV Studio a few days ago in London. He was promoting Selma in Britain – it was just released there on Friday. As I keep saying, I loved Selma, flaws and all. I thought Oyelowo was a revelation as Martin Luther King Jr. and I didn’t have a problem with some of the historical liberties taken by the script. Oyelowo’s MLK was brilliant because we got to see Dr. King not as an untouchable, towering and “safe” icon. We saw him as an exhausted and “dangerous” revolutionary who made mistakes, fought with his wife and at times struggled with the miniscule progress being made. Which is just as Oyelowo wanted for his portrayal. Oyelowo spoke to The Guardian about the film, and let me just say… David Oyelowo all day long. I’d much rather hear him talk about race (as opposed to Bendy). You can read the full piece here. Some highlights:
The portrait of Dr. King in ‘Selma’: “If all we showed was Dr King giving speeches and leading marches, we would basically be making a case for going to watch a good documentary… What we usually do to great men and women is relegate them to homogenised heroism. Their words and actions become soundbites and images in a way that gives us an excuse not to act bravely in our own lives. We might look at King and think, ‘Well, I’m not him. I didn’t say ‘I have a dream.’ But to see yourself in them makes it possible that you’ll be stirred towards becoming the greatest version of yourself. We all take out the bins or sit around in our dressing gowns. To put someone on a pedestal renders them untouchable – and subhuman. It gives us an excuse not to act as they did.”
Colorblind casting: “When I looked to heroes I wanted to emulate, I constantly found myself mentally jumping over the pond. I had read that Denzel Washington had told his agent early on: ‘Give me everything that Harrison Ford is turning down.’ That stuck with me…The only way I get a leading role in a studio picture is if Ryan Gosling can’t play it, which is clearly the case with Selma. If this was a non-colour-specific character, it wouldn’t be me. It just wouldn’t.”
The problem of only black artists talking about race: “It’s because films like Selma are so rarely made that we end up putting them under the microscope. One, maybe two, a year. As a white person, you don’t have that. You have the gamut. No one says to Oliver Stone: ‘Another film about Vietnam? White characters again?’ Benedict Cumberbatch is never asked, ‘What, you’re playing another historical character?’”
Defending Benedict Cumberbatch: “Everyone has ended up ignoring the issue Benedict was talking about and focusing on that one word. It’s actually stopped us talking about race. Look, Benedict is a good friend. He was simply expressing, as someone who has no dog in the fight, that his friends are getting better opportunities in the US than here. That’s something worth examining. Instead, we get hung up on terminology.”
The N-word: “I must say I hate the N-word, particularly when black people use it about themselves. It’s like chitlins: the offal that was a delicacy for slaves. It’s the small intestine of a pig. People get so used to eating something substandard that in order to survive they have to take ownership of it. But it doesn’t change the fact that it’s still the most disgusting part of the animal!” He’s raising his voice now for the first time during our conversation. “Just because you’ve reappropriated it, that doesn’t detoxify it. That’s how I feel about the N-word.”
He talks about God a great deal and how his faith has always been important to him, and how God told him he would play MLK in Selma. It’s nice that he took another opportunity to defend Benedict too, which David also did at the Selma premiere. David riffed on language for a while during that part of the interview, talking about his four children and how they’re mixed-race (his wife Jessica is white). He said he recently had a moment of panic when he referred to his kids as “biracial” and thought “Is that what we’re saying? Is it ‘biracial’ or ‘mixed race’? Do I love my kids any less if I use one or the other?” I think both are pretty acceptable? I prefer mixed race.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
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