Picture 1994: “This is a great script. Let’s get Julia Roberts to play Harriet Tubman,” said the then-president of a studio sublabel. Fortunately, there was a single black person in that studio meeting 25 years ago who told him that Harriet Tubman was a black woman. The president replied, “That was so long ago. No one will know that.”
—The Los Angeles Times, November 19, 2020.

 

Plowing through my emails this morning. I got an email with the subject, "Julia Roberts as Harriet Tubman?" I immediately deleted the email, but something told me to undelete it and read what as in the email -- only because the person who sent it was an elder and respected author.  If did not read his email but went to his source, because I did not want to read an opinion about sometime that I had already dismissed as fake news.

 

His source as a site I never heard of, TheWeek.com.  One look at the site and told me to just move on, but the first sentence cited the LA Times, a source worth checking out.  I read that article and apparently the headline is true!  

 

While folks can say the craziest things!

 

@Kareem, understanding how holliweird works (read the article) and what it actually takes to get a film depicting heroic Black people, are so still bend out of shape about Everio playing the role?

My issue with Erivo is her hatred towards black Americans/ADOS. I saw a clip of a show on CBS that has some white man married to a Nigerian woman? Not sure if its recent or what (again I don't watch TV). But in the clip, the Nigerians are talking about black Americans like you'd think racist white people do. Erivo has commented on how she loves the show and how accurate it is. There's just too much about that woman that rubs me the wrong way.

 

Yes, Hollyweird is the mecca of debauchery. I honestly cannot name many movies depicting black heroes that were actually well-produced and written. Malcolm X was well-done because Spike Lee produced it. "Cry Freedom" had a white director. But Denzel is such an exceptional talent, nobody was going to ruin his Biko portrayal. That "Panther" movie about Huey, Bobby, etc. was terribly produced.

 

The article you linked said something about the only reason the Harriett movie got done was because Black Panther was successful. Black Panther is fiction, as is the Harriett movie. That movie is not a biopic film. I'm still waiting on films about Marcus Garvey, WEB Dubois, Charles Deslonde, Dr. Khalid Muhammad, and many more. I know those films will never be made unless they are fictionalized to appease white audiences, like Harriett. An Obama movie will be made in the next 10 years though. Liberals/Hollywood love him. They just want to wait for the political climate surrounding him to cool off a bit first.

 

Good article nonetheless.