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3:21 pm - 06/11/2012

Alfre Woodard Joins 'Twelve Years a Slave' Cast





Alfre Woodard will join the cast of Twelve Years A Slave, the New Regency film being produced by Plan B and River Road.


The film is being directed by Steve McQueen (Shame, Hunger) and stars Chiwitel Ejiofor, Brad Pitt, and Michael Fassbender.

Based on an autobiography written in 1853 by Solomon Northup, a free black man who became enslaved, the script tells how Northup (Ejiofor) was kidnapped and put in a slave pen, paving the way for a grueling life under numerous owners.


Woodard will play Mistress Shaw, a former slave who has risen in the Southern caste system.


Lupita Nyong'o is also joining the cast and will play a slave who is the object of both the affections and cruelty of Master Epps (Fassbender).


The movie’s cast also includes Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock), Paul Giamatti, Paul Dano, and Sarah Paulson.

Source

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alexlover14 11th-Jun-2012 08:56 pm (UTC)
Directed by a black man and casting black actors in roles that are more than just backdrops.
alexlover14 11th-Jun-2012 10:11 pm (UTC)
I see what you mean. But I hold Steve McQueen as being in a higher level than Perry or Lee Daniels.
harborafternoon 11th-Jun-2012 10:27 pm (UTC)
it's not about WHO is making the movie. it's about the context the movie is being made in and the context it is reinforcing and reproducing.

the context being one in which movies with a more colorful cast being about historical oppression as if that's the only thing we're about. it's frustrating because such a narrow representation of who poc are and ow they experience the world does no favors for what we are imagined to be like in the world, you know?
harborafternoon 11th-Jun-2012 10:24 pm (UTC)
but not being produced in a vacuum. and i think that's what stings- that blacks are being cast and written (it doesn't matter by who) as certain kinds of oppressed people. i mean, sure- being maids, slaves, other low/no-income servants and workers is a historical and present reality but it's not the only reality, espesh presently. AND, if we're set on looking at racism/race relations/racialized caste systems (which isn't a bad thing), it would be nice if we'd look at racism TODAY instead of what it looked like decades or centuries ago because a movie on current racial oppression would be more conducive to ending racial oppression by raising awareness of how it currently materializes.
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