← The Person Who Believed In Me
The Person Who Believed In Me
Hollywood REJECTED This British Actor as MLK for 7 Years | David Oyelowo
01:01:42
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A
I didn't know I was the first black person to be afforded that opportunity. That character was the pinnacle of society. Me being afforded that is a threat to the status quo. Hi, my name is David Oyelowo, critically acclaimed actor.
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B
This is my boy, the incredibly talented award winning actor, David Oyelowo.
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A
Yeah, that's chill. You really caught me with that picture. I will never forget she said, I think you could do acting professionally.
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B
She built a ladder for you.
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A
You call it a ladder, I call it access. But ultimately it was belief. I watched over the seven years it eventually took us to make that film. How perspective is key in storytelling. That film went on to be in every school in America.
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B
Wow.
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A
Power is a huge component of this industry.
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B
Where do you get the confidence to call it out? Because a lot of people wouldn't utter those words for fear of not getting work that they want.
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C
In this podcast, we sit down with some of the world's most successful people who reveal a person that believed in them before the world did. The conversations are deep, raw and relatable. Special thanks to our friends at Canva for believing in us. Canva has a two part mission. Build one of the world's most valuable companies and then do the most good you can with it. They give their product free of charge to schools and nonprofits because they are on a mission to create equal opportunities that empower people all over the world. And finally, please like and subscribe this video. And if you're listening, please consider rating our podcast.
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B
I would like to begin, as we always do, with this.
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A
Oh, yeah, that's Jill.
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B
Tell the audience who that is and who it is that believed in you.
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A
So, Jill Foster. Gosh, you really got me with that picture. Jill Foster was my teacher at what we call sixth form college. So when I was around about the ages of 16, 17, thereabouts, it's the equivalent of high school, early high school here. And Jill was my theater studies teacher. I was a very shy kid, having come back from Nigeria. I was born in the uk, but we lived in Nigeria from the age of, from when I was six to 13, moved back to the UK and I really struggled with reintegrating back into British life, in all honesty. And it manifested in a kind of shyness. And what actually happened is that my pastor's daughter, who I became obsessed with, invited me to a theater group that I only went to because I really liked her and I discovered a joy of acting. And that was at the age of 15. And that's what led to me taking theater studies as a subject. And I met Gill and I was doing the classes and she always paid me. And maybe this is more retrospectively now, but I loved her as a teacher and I felt very seen by her as a person. And she was incredibly encouraging to me and of me. And she. I will never forget. I was going into a summer where there was not much gonna be happening. I was just gonna be home with my family. And she recommended that I consider joining this youth for my summer break, the National Youth Music Theater. And I didn't even know what that was. And I remember going into her office, she giving me this pamphlet. There was an amount of money you had to pay for it, which I just didn't have. And my parents were not really interested in anything to do with the art, so I couldn't go to my parents for that money. I actually ended up applying to the then Prince's Trust, which I think Jill actually made me aware of. And they ended up paying for me to join the National Youth Music Theater. And she helped me with my audition for it. I got into it. I met Jessica there, my eventual wife. She was 17, I was 18. And that's where my sort of curiosity slash love for acting became solidified, was at the National Youth Music Theatre. Cause we did this production of the Threepenny Opera at the Edinburgh Theatre Festival, we did it on Broadway, and we ended up doing it at the Lyric Hammersmith in London. And it was the point beyond which I thought, hmm, I like this more than I care to admit. And Jill is responsible for all of that.
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B
Jill said you had a remarkable ability to read and interpret a text at an early age. And it proved to her that you could make it. So take me to that story. I believe it's outside of a tube station, where she cornered you and said something you won't forget.
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A
Yeah. So having done the National Youth Music Theater, that was fun. I now was tasked by my parents to go do the proper thing, which is to do the proper degree that's going to get me the proper job, which is to be a lawyer. And I. Because I knew deep down that this is not really what I wanted to do, I took a year break. So I did an art foundation at the London Guildhall School of Art. You can see a pattern here. You know, the acting, the arts, the arts, the arts, the arts is what I really wanted to be doing. So I was basically putting it off. And I was outside Holloway Road tube station in North London, Islington, and I bumped into Jill and she said, david, I wouldn't say this to any of my other students, I think you could do acting professionally, and I want you to really consider that. And she looked at me in a way where I could tell this wasn't just conversation. It wasn't just, oh, hi, Jill. You know, how are you doing? Oh, you know, by the way, have you considered acting? She really pinned me down. And I said, oh, well, thank you. And she went, no, and I would love to help you with that. And I said, what do you mean? Like drama school? You know, drama school is something I think you would benefit from. I didn't know what that was. I didn't know that there was a school you go to to learn acting. And she was true to her word. She helped me with all of the applications. I found out you have to audition for these drama schools. She helped me with my auditions, and I. Eventually, a scholarship to go to the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts.
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B
She built a ladder for you.
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A
Yeah.
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B
There was an interest which she knew she could tap into.
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A
Right.
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B
Without her, you're not doing what you're doing today 100%.
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A
There's no version of that. Because the fact is, she saw something in me I had not seen in myself. I. I didn't know what youth theatre was. I didn't know about applying for funds to get to the youth theater. I hadn't really done an audition before outside of trying to get into a school play. So the technique of that was something I learned from her helping me. I didn't know what a drama school was. I didn't know you could get scholarships to go to drama school. It was not. I didn't have access to. And, you know, you call it a ladder, I call it access. But ultimately, it was belief. She believed in me, and it was such a profound belief. I didn't understand what her belief was based on.
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B
Right.
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A
Cause even what you just say there about technique or whatever that was. I was a latchkey kid. My kids were my. Sorry. My parents worked very hard to keep me and my brothers, my two younger brothers. And so I watched a lot of television, and I clearly was just internalizing story and acting and character and good films and bad films and good TV and bad tv. And I think I was applying that when I suddenly had the opportunity to tell stories. But I had no technique. I couldn't articulate to you what I was doing. It was something that. The combination of my experience of watching stories and who I was and my ability to convey that was something she was able to give words to. And I constantly found myself Going, okay, thanks. You know, and it wasn't until I went to drama school, I went, oh, I actually, I actually there is something I have that is now meeting up with technique and is producing something I Is now becoming tangible.
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B
Jill is still very active teaching.
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A
Yeah.
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B
I also think there's. I don't know that you'd have met your wife had it not been for Jill.
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A
No.
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B
Right. You also told my producer that if there was another person you could talk about, it would be Jess. Right?
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A
Yeah.
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B
Sometimes, you know, when people come and they talk about their mother and father, it feels predictable. Or the wife. But for you, help us understand and explore how your relationship with her, beyond the romantic and intimate, has amounted to a belief that mattered.
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A
Well, in the same way that I would not be doing what I'm doing, certainly not the profession that I am doing without Jill. There is no version of me achieving what I've achieved without Jess belief in me. And the first dramatic and discernible example of that was. We got married in September of 1998. We went to Penang, Malaysia, for our honeymoon. It was literally all the money I could scrape together for that very elaborate trip for us at the time. And we came back with zero money. But I came back to an answer phone message from a teacher I'd actually had at drama school. His name was James Kerr, offering me a play on the equivalent of Off Broadway in London. But it was as exciting as that was, it was gonna be for just £50 a week expenses. It didn't even come with a wage. It was just money for food and to get you there and back from wherever you lived. And you could argue that as a newly married man, the move was not to take a job where it's just expenses. And Jess and I talked about it, and she said, I think you should do it, and I've got you. I've got us. And she took on a waitressing job with an incredibly misogynistic boss who every day, Jess would come home with horrific stories about how she was being cheated at work to the point where I wanted to go in and confront this guy. And she always talked me off the ledge. And she. She did that job. And it kept food on our table. While I was doing this play, it was doing that production where the Royal Shakespeare Company first saw me, which led to what you've already mentioned, me playing Henry VI at the Royal Shakespeare Company. And that is one of a litany of moments where she has. She has gone, I've got you. I've got us.
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B
Go, let's Talk about the moment where you played that British king. The reviews were good, but there were some people who were not as pleased. It was because, as I read it, you were black. And it was like, well, he wasn't black, so why are we having a black guy play a white king? Correct your thoughts on that. When it happened in the moment, it
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A
blindsided me because I didn't know I was the first black person to be afforded that opportunity. I was just elated to be afforded that opportunity. Michael Boyd, who cast me in that role, there was never a discussion about race.
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B
Right.
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A
It was purely about story and character, a sense of place and the story that Shakespeare sought to tell. And, of course, I was elated to. To be given that opportunity. It. It started with an Oxford don, so a professor at Oxford who said, we open ourselves to ridicule as a country, as a nation, as a, you know, culture, if we have black people playing English kings. And it was sort of a ball that rolled downhill from there. And I was doing interviews every lunch break trying to explain why we had made this choice. And, you know, and for me, the reason why Shakespeare has endured for so long is because he somehow, more so than any other playwright in the history of humanity, has tapped into the core of our humanity in a way that is completely univers. It is. I don't know where he got that ability from, but it transcends race to a certain extent, religion and place. And, you know, you don't literally set Hamlet in Denmark almost ever. You don't have Danes only playing Hamlet, even though that is literally stated in the text. We have had many Cleopatras who are not Egyptian, and you could go on and on and on and on, let alone Shylocks who are not Jewish. And so, again, I couldn't articulate this at the time. I just knew that it was an immense amount of pressure. And so I just decided, I'm not gonna focus on that. I'm just gonna get on with the job.
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B
The quote that you said, which speaks to the criticism that you got, I love and I wanna reflect on with you, you said to me, theater is make believe. If I say, I am commanding 30,000 soldiers, you believe. If I say I am king, somehow it's controversial.
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A
Yeah, it's selective outrage is the reality. And it was one of the moments when I realized the power of story, plus that character for some people was they took umbrage with it because in their minds, I now realize it was a threat to their supremacy. It was a threat to their identity, because someone like me, fundamentally, they feel is lesser than. And to encroach upon their identity. And so therefore, their power and their access is something that was a threat. There would be no version of Shakespeare having written some pauper or some slave or some character that is by definition denigrated, that they would take umbrage with a black person playing that role. It was tied to the position, the. The placement from a hierarchical point of view of that character. That character was the pinnacle of society, the pinnacle of power. That person in that play is supreme. And so me being afforded that is a threat to the status quo. And it was the first time I encountered that in a way that I recognized was less about me and more about them.
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B
Michael Boyd, who is he still director.
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A
He's passed away now. He has passed away.
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B
Said at the time, david is a bit of a genius. I chose him because he's best for the role, regardless of race. I always try and figure out, out of. Out of a moment of either shame or pain, what do we come away with? What do you think you came away with that changed, maybe how you looked at roles, interacted with criticism and moved forward in the profession.
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A
I came away with both resilience and pain. Resilience was born out of the fact that I decided to block that out, get on with the work, and then the production was very successful, and it essentially shut up the critics. The pain came from the fact that something I can't control, I. E. The color of my skin, was something a group of people took umbrage with. And it was crystallized in the fact that I was getting hate mail over this and to the point where the mail would come into the stage door at the Royal Shakespeare Theater, and my mail had to be screened so that I didn't, you know, see anything awful. But one letter slipped through the net, and I remember exactly where I was sat when I opened it. And I can't remember exactly what it said, but I think I got a line in and I. And I. And I knew I couldn't keep reading because what was in there was death. It was. It was something that was sent to destroy me. That's what it was designed to do, because that person is not going to carry out the threats that they're making. It's not unlike, you see on social media today when people say, I'm coming for your children. I'm going to kill you. I'm going. Whatever. But I knew that to internalize that in any way was going to be detrimental. But I read enough of it that There is pain associated with. With knowing that me plus power for certain people is deemed to be problematic.
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B
Me plus power is deemed for some people to be problematic. Wow. As I sit here and I listen to you, I think about. So I'm gay. Can't control it, can't change it. Born this way, right? And I do sometimes go through the world wondering if bigots who see me succeed and see me post open pictures with my partner are offended.
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A
Right.
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And I can't help but think about that. Right. Do you continually think about whether someone is taking objection to something you've been given because of the color of your skin?
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A
I know. Still today, I know it to be true. I know it to be a fact because I've had too much evidence of that. I've been afforded too many opportunities that have been deemed a threat or deemed to be something that I shouldn't be afforded. Or have there have been attempts to denigrate it because again, the fact of it is perceived as a threat. It's about power and access to it. And if you're afforded it, either when it's a marginalized community that is threatened by it or an insecure community who's threatened by it, which I would say is why the levels of insecurity when you are, are you've built your identity around. The notion of empire is seismic. Great Britain is a tiny, tiny place. It is still too big on the map today than it actually is. But it somehow managed to corral and imbibe, I mean, that country. And I'm proud of being British. I was born there. I'm proud of being British. But boy, did that place punch above its weight when it comes to colonization, capture and just complete and utter destruction of countries that it siphoned the resources out of. And its identity was rooted in its ability to do that. So I understand where it comes from, but it doesn't mean it doesn't hurt when I become momentarily the poster boy for that insecurity.
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B
Do you still seek out those roles that provoke people like that and challenge
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fastidiously the way they feel? That's all I want to do because I have now recognized the potency of it. The reason why roles I've been blessed with, the opportunity to play have elicited that kind of response is because it's powerful. And the task I believe I'm here to perform is to hold a mirror up to humanity, but primarily to contextualize what it is to be a black man on planet Earth. And that is as a Brit, as a African, as A European, you know, all the myriad of cultures I've experienced, and I may have the ability to evoke and hold a mirror up to. Because I have seen. The beautiful thing about the journey I have walked is that I have seen the power of story, to change minds, to reshape people's brain chemistry around prejudice, around perception, around culture, around humanity, and sometimes their lack of it in relation to the need for that to grow. I have seen that on the basis of some of the work I've done. So, you know, I love entertaining people, but probably more than that, I love revealing the truth of us to people.
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C
I need to take a moment just to thank Canva for backing this podcast. Their support is what makes these conversations possible. Canva is guided by a clear idea. Build something incredibly valuable and then use
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B
it to do real good in the world.
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C
That's why they provide their tools free of charge to schools and non profits, helping to create equal access and opportunity
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B
for people all over the world. You say that in the early 2000s, you had, I don't know how you would characterize it, a dream, a vision, a belief that you would one day play Martin Luther King. Explain that.
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A
My wife and I had moved to the states in May. May 8th of 2007, round about June, a script hit the doormat called Selma. I'm a Christian, and I was in a time of praying and fasting. And one of the byproducts of fasting is that you take away some of the distraction, you take away some of the things you're dependent on, and it makes you more dependent on the spirit, beyond yourself, beyond the carnal, beyond the tangible. And the reason I know that that voice was not of me is I had never had aspirations to play Dr. King. I don't think at that point I'd played any Americans, really. I had spent a lot of time studying the accent, knowing that we wanted to move to America, knowing that Great Britain wasn't affording me the opportunities I aspired to. And I just saw America as a place that had more fertile ground for the scale of what I wanted to do. So I was prepared. But there's no version of me daring to think I was going to play someone like Dr. King. And I went on to audition for the director at the time, and the feedback came back, david oyelowo is not Dr. King. That was the feedback I got after I auditioned. So I thought, hmm, okay, maybe that was selfish ambition. Maybe that was me hoping. Maybe that was me conjuring up. I. I parked it three years went by. And then Lee Daniels had this amazing Oscar run with the film Precious. I think got like four Oscar nominations. And the script had gone from Stephen Frears, who was the first director, to Paul Haggis to Spike Lee. And now it was with Lee Daniels. And I was sort of hearing on the ether, all of this stuff happening, and I was nowhere near a part of the equation. And my friend Nate Parker, who I had done Red Tails with, who called me and said, I'd just been up for Selma, you should go up for it. I was like, I know that. I know that script. I know that. What? It's coming back. Long story short, I auditioned for Lee Daniels and I got the role. And Lee Daniels was the one who cast me in Selma.
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B
What effect did David Oyelowo playing MLK have?
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A
Well, the effect. And I couldn't have known this, so if I were to speak to my younger self, the thing I would have been, really encouraged me to employ is patience. I feel that because all I wanted was to do it now. And that was to do with my insecurity around the notion that the opportunity would slip away. Even though God had told me it is for me, I didn't trust it fully. And so every time it almost happened but didn't. I thought, see, of course this isn't for me. How could it be? For me, it's slipping away again and again and again and again. But in that time, I did films like Lincoln, the Help, Red Tails, the Butler, all of which gave me a 150 year education on African American history. Because Lincoln was set in 1865. The butler went all the way to 2008 when Obama became president. And with Red Tails and the Help and these other films in the middle, I basically got the education I needed to get to Selma. Now people often say to me, well, you're not nervous about it. I was so obsessed with the idea of that film getting made that all I focused on was that I didn't have time to be nervous about the fact that I was getting to play Dr. King. It wasn't. I remember the moment I went, what? What the hell was I thinking? And it was the screening of selma at the AFI Film Festival in 2014, November of 2014, watching it with an audience and going, I am playing Dr. King.
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B
Have you ever experienced watching yourself play a character and you find that you get lost in the role and you forget you are watching you? Has that happened to you?
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A
Yes, it happened with Selma. It happened with a film I did called Nightingale. And it's the case with this film, Newborn. And I think it's to do with the alchemy of the role, the stage I was in life at that time, and therefore the spiritual hemisphere I was inhabiting. My mother got a brain aneurysm two months before we started shooting Selma, and she remained in a vegetative state for the entire shoot. And she remained in that state, unfortunately, for three years before she passed away in 2017. But I think the combination of the film finally getting made, the. The sheer amount of impending loss and devastation about what was happening in my personal life, the realities of what the character was going through and the way he was carrying, means I now watch that film and I am unrecognizable to myself because I've healed from some of what I was going through and what I was going through on that character and that place and that time was so specific. And I stayed in character the whole time. I don't call it method, I call it service. You know, it's what you. I felt I needed to do to serve the character, but I did that for a role that I was playing. Someone with dissociative identity disorder, what used to be called multiple personality disorder in a film called Nightingale. And similarly, I just. I had seven iterations of myself within one character. I just felt like David would be an eighth and I needed to jettison David. So I moved out of my home and just stayed in the character the whole time. And that was, wow, painful.
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B
Are you a better actor when you are going through pain in your personal life?
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A
I don't know if I'm a better actor. I think that probably access to the truth is. I think the truth is more accessible because the third eye, which is the thing you're battling the most as an actor, you know, self observation becomes dim because you are so in the midst of the reality of what you're dealing with. And so I, you know, that's the battle. As an actor, you're constantly trying to not self edit in order to access the truth. And so, you know, with Newborn, my father was dealing with stage four colon cancer and I was not going to do the film. And he insisted I do the film despite what he was going through. And we were shooting it in Canada, we live here in la and my dad was living with us and he passed away on the first day of the shooting, 2am before my 5am call to start shooting Newborn. And so I watch the film now and I feel quite unrecognizable to myself because again, I've managed To heal from some of that. The loss I feel of my parents is that will be with me forever. Cause I truly believe the feeling of loss is relative to the feeling of love you had. And I wouldn't have it any other way. But, yeah, I do think it's about how much the circumstances you're in, whether it be pain, whether it be love. You know, if I had done a romantic comedy just as I was falling in love, who knows what the alchemy of that might be?
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B
It was Queen Elizabeth who said, grief is the price we pay for love. Yeah. And I never forgot that. I want to go back to. I first heard you tell my friends and colleagues on CBS Mornings about being in Canada when your dad died. Do you regret that? And I'll tell you why I'm asking the question of regretting. Like, do you regret going rather than being there in the end for him?
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A
I suffer with feelings of guilt primarily over the fact that my brother, my youngest brother was by my dad's side, because my middle brother lives in Australia with his family. And it was very debilitating for my youngest brother to be in my home with our dad as he passed away. He was the one who called me about it. My cousin was with him and my second cousin. And there's a video of my dad passing away because I wasn't there. And he felt the need to, you know, turn a camera on.
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B
Wow.
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A
And so I have footage of my dad leaving this earth.
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B
Wow.
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A
And I woke up to that imagery. And I feel deep guilt around not being there to shoulder that burden. It took a long time for my brother to recover, if indeed he has recovered, because I think there are dynamics in families. I was very much. And I'm very much the eldest brother, and my brother is very much the youngest. And I think that was more than he was designed to bear at the time. I think it has gone on to shape him in good ways. But I feel guilt over that. I feel guilt over. Because I don't think it has ever left me this notion that what I do for a living and what I'm passionate about, which is storytelling, is in some way trivial. And that was baked into me when my parents were all about academia. You know, I wanted to go and do this thing. Like, my dad would say, why do you want to go and be a jester? You know, like, so acting for him was being, like the town jester. And so he changed his tune mightily. It was when he came to see me in Henry Vincent, that having endured a lot of racism in the uk, to see his son play the King of England was formative for him. He just couldn't believe what he was saying. So that attitude changed. But, you know, family is everything to me. And for me. And even though Newborn is a film I am deeply proud of, and I have absolute clarity about why I wanted to tell that story, not being there for my dad in that moment is a hard pill to swallow.
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B
The reason I asked the question is because Muhammad Ali had died. And I was sent by CBS News to cover the funeral. And a woman who was a great aunt of mine, but in a grandmother role for me had died at 98. And I remember being pressured by my bosses to go. And I remember my dad saying, oh, you should go. But to this day, probably a decade later, I still regret going because something in me believes that we need to be there for those people on that day and time. So when I heard you say, and your father did say, you should go. But I remember in my own life, right, because that's what storytelling does. It forces us to confront. It reminded me of that day for Muhammad Ali's funeral. And I still to this day say, if I had to do it again, I wouldn't have gone.
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A
Right. I think if my dad had hesitated for a nanosecond, you'd have stayed. There's no version of me going. There's no version of me going. He was adamant. I don't know if it was because he thought he would make it or because for him, he was a brilliant father, the embodiment of love from the point of view of self sacrifice. He taught me love and just so, so, so, so giving my dad. And so, and I haven't really articulated this before, I think knowing my dad, where it was coming from was. He was very, very proud of me. He was very, very proud of what I had achieved and was achieving. And he would always say to me, david, the sky is the limit. And we always say that. And he was just. And he would always say, I'm proud of you. We are proud. The way my dad said the word proud, you believed it, you knew it. No one walking this planet said proud like my dad did in relation to his children. And I think it was that, you know, his pride was in his legacy was his children. That's what it is. His legacy was his children. And what we were doing over, aspiring to do was all he really cared about. And I felt that when he said, go do it. And in some ways, I felt like I would be in some way not honoring what My dad had given me. I feel that, you know, so that's. That gives me peace. But I still struggle with it.
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B
Your father moved you all from Great Britain to Lagos, Nigeria. He worked for the national airline. And there was a story he told you about how you are a prince, right. And you would kind of react just like that, with a little bit of an eye roll. But you later discovered he was telling the truth. You, in fact, are. And it would help with dates, but wasn't very helpful in other ways. Life in Lagos, what was that like?
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A
Such a culture shock. Such a culture shock, yeah. What he had told me. So my dad had these tribal marks. He had like four slashes on each cheek. And he had the word ballet, B A L E in small blade marks cut into his stomach. Wow. And growing up, he would always tell us that the tribal marks was from when he had fought a tiger. And that was such a huge source of pride for me because very clearly he had a beard, but the skin didn't. Sorry. The hair didn't grow on the tribal marks. Cause they were that deep. And so kids wouldn't mess with me at school. Cause I was like, my dad fought a tiger, so you better not. And he would come and get me, and you'd see the slashes on his face, you know, and so that I was happy to believe. But then he was like, oh, and by the way, we're from a royal family. I was like, and now what we had was Queen Elizabeth. We had Prince Charles, but we had all of that. Like, daddy, we are not from a royal family. I believe you fought a tiger, but that is ridiculous. And so. So I arrived. I remember arriving in Lagos with my mom and my two brothers for the first time in Lagos. My uncles all coming to the airport. And I see all my uncles, and I say, did everyone fight tigers? Like, what happened? What is this? Because they all had these marks.
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B
What the hell is that from?
- [42:37]
A
It's because my dad is from a royal family. The tribal marks. And the word bale. Bale means king. So it's traditionally you mark the person in that way so that if they die in battle, you know, to give them a royal burial.
- [42:54]
B
Wow.
- [42:54]
A
So that's why they're marked in that way. And I guess it's from the time where battles of that nature were fought. But it just, you know, it didn't pass down the generations so instantaneously. I was like, daddy, like, why did you tell me about the tiger? I was like. But he was like, yeah, but we are royal. And I Was like, so we arrive on Oyelowo street and this big compound where we all live. And my grandfather was the ballet of awe part of Western Nigeria in Oyo State. And the extraordinary thing was my uncle's bearing. I was like, oh, these people carry themselves differently. And it was the way my dad carried himself. But I now recognized that living in South London in the early 80s, he didn't take his full height the way he did when we were back in Lagos.
- [44:01]
B
Like he would slouch a bit.
- [44:03]
A
Not physically. It was just a dimming. And I only recognized it when I saw him around his brothers.
- [44:10]
B
So what was it that brought that about in Nigeria?
- [44:14]
A
Identity.
- [44:14]
B
A pride.
- [44:16]
A
Yeah. He was in a culture and a society where every opportunity possible was at his disposal.
- [44:25]
B
So to that end, and one of the reasons I wanted to bring up Lagos was that you talk about one of the benefits to living there being that you got to experience what it felt like as a black man to not be a minority.
- [44:40]
A
Yeah.
- [44:40]
B
Can you speak more about that?
- [44:42]
A
Yeah. It's like the boiled frog syndrome. You don't know that you are being slowly cooked by an environment when it is happening very slowly and very subtly. It was not until, even as a young kid, it was not until being back in Nigeria, I went, what is different about this? And it was the fact that everyone looked like me and they all carried themselves differently. There was no apology. Nigerians are incredibly front footed, identity, clear people. And the beauty of moving back there when I was 6 to 13 is that those were formative years in which the minority mentality was boiled out of me. Yes. And it never returned. Even though we moved back to the UK and I've now lived here in the States for 19 years. Both places where people of color are still described as minorities, which has negative connotations in and of itself. You're minor as opposed to major, you know, in and of itself, even if it is a reality. But words matter.
- [45:57]
B
So how does that frame the way you move through the world in a country where African Americans are the minority
- [46:04]
A
without apology is, I think, the manifestation of it. And I am very secure in my identity. One of the greatest gifts I have
- [46:15]
B
and I feel that I just want you to know, I think, and I don't mean to cut you off, but like, I think what I'm learning from you sitting at this table is the energy you bring into a room, as Oprah often says, you are responsible for. And there is an energy that you bring into the room which does not, you know, how words can be Weaponized.
- [46:36]
A
Yes.
- [46:36]
B
I don't believe energy. So much can. And there's sort of an energy with which you use to flow through a room that I think exudes the no apology mentality you're talking about.
- [46:50]
A
Yeah. Yeah. And I'm going to say thank you for saying that, because I do believe it's a strength. I do believe it's a superpower because it's tied to identity. It's tied to a sense of self. It's tied to I know who I am, I know what I believe. I know what is prioritized to me. And so therefore, when I am in the midst of a lie, I meet it very quickly with my own truth, and I know how to step away, or I know how to reject it, or I know how to call it out. And I think that the effect of a lie at its worst is when it affects and erodes your own truth. Yes. And you get pulled into the vortex of a lie. And the industry I have chosen to be a part of is steeped in that, steeped in fear and lies. And that's because, as I've mentioned earlier, power is a huge component of this industry.
- [48:04]
B
Where do you get the confidence to call it out? Because a lot of people wouldn't utter those words for fear of not getting work that they want.
- [48:12]
A
I think in any given moment, as human beings, we are either operating in fear or faith. My faith as a Christian, my faith in humanity, my faith in myself, my faith in my core relationships outweighs my fear of what might be done to me, what punitive actions might be meted out to me for telling the truth, Ultimately, what means I sleep very well at night and I have a clear conscience is my access to what I deem to be the truth. And I have found it to be something that, yes, people might not like. A lot of them don't say it to my face, thankfully, but it has led to a life lived clear.
- [49:06]
B
Which role gave you the success that allowed you to operate this confidently?
- [49:15]
A
No role.
- [49:16]
B
No role?
- [49:16]
A
No, it's not a role. You know, I learned this from Oprah. And what I deemed so beautiful about Oprah and Gayle's relationship is when you see them together, you can kind of tell they've always been those people, like, way before the success and the power and the notoriety and the fame. You can just. There is something so authentic about their relationship. And when I first met Oprah doing the butler, the thing she said to me that will never, ever leave me is she said, I see in you what I saw in myself 30 years ago. And even though that floored me, I think what she means is that thing that success or failure will not change in me, which is my obsession with the truth, my obsession with that which is right. And that can sometimes be deemed subjective. But I'm very clear. I'm very clear about my moral compass. I'm very clear about what I deem to be humanity and compassion and kindness. And again, Oprah taught me the intention with which you do something manifests in the thing itself. So my intention, I try to have it always be pure. And when it is not, I try to either hold myself accountable or I have people around me who do. My wife is a primary tool for that. She is phenomenal. She knows me so, so well. We've known each other for over 30 years. And she knows me well enough to know when I'm not operating in truth, and she will pull me up on it, and I give her license to do that.
- [51:02]
B
When you play a role, you said to me, you're not trying to be exactly what Martin Luther King was. You are trying to do what, when you embody him in a role, evoke
- [51:12]
A
the essence of him, trying to tap into the essence of him. Because it would be a lie for me to sit here and say, I became Martin Luther King. My humanity, my job as an actor, I believe, is to bring my humanity to a role, work as hard as I can to get as close to that role, as close to the truth of that character and me. My humanity, plus hopefully the execution of the writing and the directing and everything else, and the humanity that the writer managed to imbue the character with, leads to a character that the audience. I recognize that human being, that is a human being, that is a three dimensional, complex human being. Now, there is no version of any role I ever play, not having some of David in there, because this is the tool through which I'm telling that story and that character.
- [52:09]
B
So then where are you in the character in Newborn, the newest film, right, inspired by a true story, a man who served a very long time in solitary confinement. Where are you in that role?
- [52:24]
A
I am a father, I am a husband, and I have very, very deep connection to those roles. And Chris Newborn is a husband and a father and a brother in the film. And where my own education really began and where my experience was not up to snuff yet was, what on earth is it like to be in solitary confinement for seven years? So that's the work. That's the interviewing Richard Rosario, who endured that. That's the interviewing of Shaka Sancourt, who endured that. That's the reading of the book Solitary by Albert Woodfox. That's the reading of a book called Hell is a Very Small Place. That's the reading, the document of people who have dealt with that truly debilitating reality. And then just spending a lot of time talking to Richard and trying to mine him for his truth and to try and project myself into what that might feel like. Because there's no version outside of me going and doing seven years of solitary confinement, which I don't believe is the job of an actor to do that, to go and break themselves. Because after 13 days of solitary confinement, you're never the same again. Studies have shown psychologically there's something broken that will not return.
- [53:56]
B
And 80,000 people are in solitary confinement, men, women, and kids.
- [54:00]
A
Children, yeah. I interviewed a guy who was now in his late teens, but he had been in solitary confinement for a year and a half at the age of 14 while in a juvenile facility. So it's become so normalized as a practice in America that it is being meted out to kids.
- [54:18]
B
And Mr. Newborn was wrongfully convicted.
- [54:21]
A
He was wrongfully convicted in that he had. There was a prison fight in which he was defending an inmate and he was accused of killing someone. He didn't. And that is very close to. It's not apples to apples with Richard Rosario, but Richard Rosario was convicted of a crime he didn't commit. He's now been awarded $5 million in compensation, having served 20 years, seven of which were in solitary confinement. He was in Florida at the time. He was accused of a crime that took place in the Bronx. There were two eyewitnesses, but 13 people who could corroborate the fact that he was in Florida at the time. And it was just a complete failure of the judicial system. So he was in there. Innocent. Albert Woodfox was in solitary confinement for over four decades. Innocent. And it was punitive because he had been a member of the Black Panther Party, and they just chose to subject him to that. So that's where my brain gets breakage is being in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day, fluorescent lights on all the time, and you didn't commit the crime. And it's just a prison warden who metes out that sort of punitive circumstance. It's crazy that that is still happening. And so, you know, the truth of telling that story is just tied to internalizing a lot of information and then just trusting that the truth will pour out of you.
- [56:05]
B
The Movie is really a statement on mental illness and race. We should mention produced and distributed by your own company.
- [56:13]
A
Yeah.
- [56:14]
B
Every story leaves me with. Every story that I tell leaves me with one thing that if I'm around the kitchen table and it comes up, I remember and I'm like, this is what I speak to. What does this movie leave you with?
- [56:25]
A
The power of love. That sounds a bit glib, but Chris Newbourne. The story we are choosing to tell is not the story of his incarceration. It's the story of his attempt to get back to his family. Richard Rosario talks in very eloquent terms about how his wife, Minerva, and the fact that she stuck by him for 20 years of that incarceration was the only light at the end of the tunnel for him. And Tara, as played by the wonderful Olivia Washington, who spoke to Minerva, Richard's wife also for her role, is the heart of the movie, in a sense. And so to me, that is what the film is about and what I hope people walk away with. But it's also a father and son story. You know, Jake, as played by Aiden Starks, is non verbal in the film because of the trauma. He is in the hemisphere of in terms of what has happened.
- [57:31]
B
That's incredible.
- [57:32]
A
Yeah. Wow. And so my favorite line from the film is, when my character Chris, when he comes out, he says to his son, you are my mission. And I think it's an attempt at saving his son. But how it plays out is incredibly surprising. And even though it's a sacrifice psychological thriller, it's a family love story at its core.
- [57:55]
B
I want to end on Jill. You're still in touch?
- [57:58]
A
Yes.
- [57:59]
B
You've said before how much you love her, but my hope is that she sees this. What do you want to tell her?
- [58:07]
A
Oh, I love her. My life was forever changed by her advocacy for me and her belief in me. And as recently as about a year ago, I was playing Coriolanus on the London stage at the National Theater and she came to see it three times. The pride I see in her eyes over me is everything. You know, I often say to young people who are aspiring to be actors, the two things I say is the difference between good and great is hard work. And the other thing is, all you need is 1, 2, maybe 3 of your lucky people who give you that encouragement to say, you're good enough. Keep going. That's what I had setting out as an actor. You know, I had Jill. I had that constantly from Jess. Oprah came along and boy, did she put rocket fuel on that truth. And outside of that, you know, I love the audience. I try not to pay attention to critics. But those people, those three people I mentioned are some of the most important in my life. They all came to the press night for Coriolanus. I actually have a photograph with Jess, Oprah, and Jill in it. In that photograph, we'd say a deeply precious one to me because without those three people, I can't even begin to articulate what my life would be. And so, in relation to Jill specifically, I'm just eternally grateful to her for seeing in me that which I had not seen in myself yet.
- [59:57]
B
I'm glad you're in the world.
- [59:59]
A
Thank you. That's very kind.
- [60:02]
B
And thank you for saying yes to coming.
- [60:04]
A
Of course. This was very cathartic for me. I'm David Oyelowo, and the person who believed in me was Jill Foster.
- [60:18]
C
I thought you might want to know, but this podcast is at the heart of a company I founded called Do Good Crew. I've spent 25 years telling stories. It used to be the bad news, and now I want to focus on the good news. The everyday heroes who are doing extraordinary things. You can can join us. We do live events, but we also have a newsletter. It's free. You can sign up for it by going to www.thedogoodcrew.com. our podcast was created by me, David Begno. Our executive producer is Olivier Delfoss. Our booker is Sully Block. Foster Parks is our director of photography. Audio technical production is Joseph Gabay and Will Whitley from Static Creative. Our associate producer is Jonah Jones Johnson. Our director of social media is Mariah Maul. The theme music for our show was created by our friends at Slipstream. Post production and edit was done by Longwave Digital. This podcast was brought to you by Canva. If this episode moved you in any way, consider subscribing to our YouTube channel or following and rating our show on whatever platform you're listening on. This really is the best way to help our show grow and touch more people, and we thank you for it. And one more thing before you go. If you want to join our crew, go to thedogoodcrew. Com.
- [61:31]
B
You'll love what we're doing.