The Tulsa, Okla., native first captured hearts in 1983 on the TV series Hill Street Blues. Now, the mother of two is one of the most prolific actresses in Hollywood, with memorable roles in movies like Crooklyn, Miss Evers’ Boys and last year’s all-black version of Steel Magnolias.
Woodard also left an indelible impression on pop culture juggernauts Desperate Housewives, Grey’s Anatomy and True Blood. In [12 Years a Slave], she portrays the real-life role of Mistress Harriet Shaw, a privileged slave of a New Orleans plantation owner during the mid-1800s. Here, she shares her thoughts on modern-day slavery, President Obama and her key to a lasting marriage.
For Steve McQueen… I would go to Kabul
and pull cable… I think he is a masterful filmmaker.
Slave narratives are… vital for us to
have our feet on balanced ground in the future. I think it’s a chunk of our
history that we are in denial about and that we don’t accept. And it is the
root, I would say, of our contemporary domestic problems. I am… an
African-American woman who grew up in the South. My people are from Texas and
Oklahoma, and my mother’s people were sharecroppers. And I always talked to the
old folks. So I came to this film with a lot of history.
Nobody ever says… “There are too many
Holocaust stories,” or “There are too many gangster movies.” But we tell three
stories about slavery and they want us to be done. I want my grandchildren… and
great-grandchildren to know that I had a big sense of humor and I didn’t let
people stand alone. Today… there are more slaves held around the world, sexual
and domestic, than even in the mid-1800s. But that’s all in the shadows, and
it’s right in our suburbs and everywhere around us. If you’re a racist…or not
is absolutely off the point that the manifestation of 300 years of a slave economy
is present in everyday life. If you’re going to deny that, you’re going to be
constantly wondering why you’re anxious and off the tracks.
My philosophy is… that life is good.
Good is the present, and good is the only real power. So every day I have to
spin myself into alignment with good. Barack Obama… was the most qualified
person to take the helm at such a perilous time. And he’s done absolutely
brilliantly with it, with one hand tied behind his back and with an absolutely
rebellious Republican Party.
Post-racialism… brought the boil up. And
now we just have to lance the boil, clean it out and heal the wound. People mistakenly
thought, Now I don’t have to feel like I’m carrying the weight of something that
happened when I wasn’t even alive. We are now forced into conversations. If we
don’t have them, we’re going to be really sick. Django Unchained is… to 12
Years A Slave what the Atlantic Ocean is to the Pacific Ocean. We need a lot of
oceans.
One does not negate the other, and one
occupies a different territory. And [they are] fed by different rivers. They’re
absolutely different genres; they’re absolutely different filmmakers. And
they’re different stories. Solomon Northup… wrote 12 Years A Slave and
published it five months after winning his freedom back from being kidnapped
and sold into slavery. All of us have a story to tell.
All we want is to be understood as human
beings. I find it odd… that although millions of black people have been born,
raised, worked, toiled, prospered, flourished and passed on in this country we
can only think of a handful of stories that has been made into films.
We never see these stories on the screen
the way we see dominant culture stories, whether they’re high or low comedy or
whatever. It’s absurd… to think that this time is some new awakening. But then
again, if films address black people twice in a year, it’s a renaissance! Laughs
Pictures like 12 Years a slave… give us a common language, a common emotional
experience, whether you’re British, West African, West Indian or American.
We haven’t… moved forward, because
everybody is fussing over and accusing each other of being racist or not. And
it has nothing to do with reality. Love… will demand things that are
impossible. Marriage is about putting both feet in the boat and rowing out in
the middle of the lake…. It is a partnership that you continue to grow. Oscar
buzz… That’s what Oscar does—it just buzzes. It is great to have it because
people will be more prone to go see the film.
Some are saying, “It’s so hard to
watch.” Well, it’s about perseverance and love. It’s beautifully tough
No comments:
Post a Comment