Fifty years after the Selma to Montgomery marches, celebrated civil rights leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Martin Luther King Jr. is remembered through memorials, museums, and a national holiday. But a biopic, which has been in the works for years, is only now seeing the light of day. Actor David Oyelowo, who plays Dr. King, talks about the incredible resistance to “Selma,” the continuing struggle of African-Americans in Hollywood, and his favorite apps.
Actor David Oyelowo as Dr. King in Selma.
(Credit: Atsushi Nishijima)
The film seems to focus more on the man than the legend. Was that a conscious decision? It was absolutely necessitous. This is a historical figure around whom there are copious amounts of documentaries and books and specials and TV films. But the one thing, in my research, that they don’t have as much of is who the man was behind the speeches, behind the iconography, behind the holiday that is named after him. But at the end of the day, why make a movie if it’s not going to be revelatory? If it’s just going to be stuff you can find in a documentary, then just go watch a documentary. So I was more interested in who the guy is at home with his wife, taking out the trash, putting his kids to bed, and having doubt, fear, shame, and guilt about what he was like as a husband, a friend, and a father. These are all things tha… [Read more]
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