![]() Those are things audiences may be less familiar with. Sims: The film foregrounds Tubman’s religious devoutness, and the role that dreams and visions played in her life. I did seven months of research on who she was, trying to bring as much specificity to the story as possible. In the ’90s, there were three major biographies written. But I wanted it to be about the actual Harriet Tubman, you know? I think Gregory Allen Howard had written the script before the major scholarly biographies had been written about Harriet. Kasi Lemmons: I loved that it was an adventure story starring a young Harriet Tubman–type character. This conversation has been edited.ĭavid Sims: What about the existing Harriet script did you keep, and what did you want to change? “Film is how we understand a lot of history it’s our most empathetic art form, and it’s how we love to examine things … is such a fascinating character, and yet this is the first feature film about her,” Lemmons said in an interview, during which she discussed Harriet’s path to the big screen, wanting to avoid slavery-movie clichés, and the “uphill” journey of her own film career. In approaching this story, Lemmons took a script that had been floating around the industry since the 1990s, revamped it to include more accurate details about Tubman’s history and personality, and focused on the younger years of a legend often remembered as a wizened icon. ![]() An abolitionist born into slavery in 1820s Maryland, Tubman escaped in 1849 and subsequently worked with the Underground Railroad to free dozens of other enslaved people. ![]() Department of the Treasury recently planned to put her face on the $20 bill, has never been meaningfully portrayed on the silver screen before. Tubman, a figure so consequential in American history that the U.S. “I didn’t have advance time to think about it, so in the moment, I took my own temperature,” Lemmons told The Atlantic. But as the meeting with Chase began, Lemmons realized she’d been summoned to talk about directing a glitzy Oscar player: a biographical film about Harriet Tubman, with the Broadway luminary Cynthia Erivo attached to star. Her résumé boasts nuanced gems such as The Caveman’s Valentine (2001) and Talk to Me (2007). An actor who made her directorial debut in 1997 with the acclaimed family drama Eve’s Bayou, Lemmons remains one of Hollywood’s most under-recognized artists, despite her consistently strong output. When the filmmaker Kasi Lemmons was invited to meet with the producer Debra Martin Chase a couple of years ago, she thought they’d just be having a general discussion.
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