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"I really felt that I wanted to speak about a
different kind of violence, which was family separation, which I
hadn't seen as much of but is very much the Harriet Tubman story
and what she was motivated by," said Lemmons. Lemmons co-wrote
the screenplay for "Harriet," which opens in U.S. movie theaters
on Friday.
"This image of her sisters being taken away, her brother having
to leave his wife right after childbirth, her sister saying,
'no, I can't leave my children.' The choices that people had to
make and the fact that she was motivated to go back to rescue
her family," Lemmons added.
Tubman was born into slavery in the early 1800s in Maryland. As
a young adult, she escaped slavery by running nearly 100 miles
through forests and fields. She then risked her life several
times to return to Maryland and lead dozens of slaves to freedom
via the Underground Railroad.
The petite, 5 foot-tall (1.5 meter) Tubman is played by Cynthia
Erivo, a London-born actress with Nigerian parents who won a
Tony award in 2016 for her lead role in the Broadway revival of
the musical "The Color Purple."
The casting of a British actress to play a woman seen as an
African-American icon has caused controversy in the United
States, but Lemmons said she thought Tubman's story "was big
enough to share."
Lemmons said she was struck by Erivo's "physical stature and her
athleticism and her singing voice and those cheekbones. ... I
felt like, 'Oh, I'm looking at somebody who really, really could
make me believe it.' And I really think that that's what it's
about. I think the most service that I can do to this character
is to bring, help bring this perfectly realistic performance."
Erivo said she worked hard to capture Tubman's physicality.
"It was really about finding the map of her face," she said. "So
we would look at pictures, discuss, you know, her downturned
mouth, her eyes, how she would hold them, her body, where the
tension was, try to find her voice. Because I knew I didn't want
her to sound like me."
(Reporting by Reuters Television; Editing by Leslie Adler)
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