“Selma” breakout David Oyelowo sat down with Variety to discuss his two upcoming projects, the chess underdog story “Queen of Katwe” and the interracial romance “A United Kingdom.” Both films made their World Premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this month, and both are helmed by women of color.
Oyelowo, who has been acting for nearly 20 years, has made a point of working with female filmmakers. As Variety points out, “of the recent films in which he starred (and, in some cases, produced), five — Ava DuVernay’s ‘Selma,’ Maris Curran’s ‘Five Nights in Maine,’ Cynthia Mort’s ‘Nina,’ Amma Asante’s ‘A United Kingdom,’ and Mira Nair’s ‘Queen of Katwe’ — were directed by women.” The streak is not a coincidence, but a conscious decision.
“The kinds of stories I want to be a part of telling are about delving into what it is to be a human being,” he explained. “This is a generalization, but often, male directors — especially in the climate we’re in in Hollywood right now — are more interested in action-oriented films or franchise movies, films that are about this notion of the path you need to tread in order to continue to up your value as a director.”
Oyelowo offered examples to illustrate the differences he’s encountered between male and female directors. He was cast in the early stages of “Selma,” and the project had a number of male directors attached during the road to production. When DuVernay joined the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. drama, Oyelowo was struck by her “strikingly original” take on the story.
In “Queen of Katwe,” he plays Robert Katende, the coach of chess prodigy Phiona Mutesi. The Uganda-set film is based on a true story. Oyelowo suspects that if the film were directed by a man, the coach may have been the focus of the film as opposed to his exceptional, inspiring female pupil. “And if [the director] were not just a male, but a white male, there may have even been a temptation to make my character white,” he observed. “That has been done before, where you have these great stories and you transpose them with the excuse that they need to be palatable to a Western audience. ‘Queen of Katwe’ wouldn’t be what I believe to be its best version without Mira directing that film. I would say the same of Ava. I would say the same of Amma. That’s just trying to get the best version of those films made.”
“I find that male directors are more interested in what the film looks like as opposed to what the film is about emotionally,” he remarked. “My job is not to make the film look pretty, and I don’t feel drawn to making myself look pretty within the film. I just want to tell the emotional truth, and I have found that the women directors I’ve worked with — there’s no pussyfooting around it or navigating around it. There’s no playing off talking about emotion as something that’s uncomfortable, and that’s of value when you’re barreling through a shooting day, and it’s a love story or it’s about an 11-year-old girl or it’s about how Dr. King’s marriage is functioning or not functioning, or, in the case of ‘Five Nights in Maine,’ you’re a bereaved husband who’s having a very difficult time with his mother-in-law.”
Oyelowo has established a mandate as a producer — one he thinks Hollywood should also adopt. He ensures that “50 percent of the names on any list of potential directors belong to women.”
“You’re not going to bring about change if it’s not intentional,” he said. “We all have cultural bias, racial bias. One of the difficult things around this subject matter is to deny that we have places we go to subconsciously, and unless you consciously decide that that’s wrong and you’ve got to do something about it, especially if you’re in a position of power, it won’t change.”
Oyelowo also spoke about how women directors lead to more women working behind the scenes. “When you have a female director crewing up, they’re consciously looking for a female DP, editor, costume designer, production designer, because they know this is a challenge,” he explained. “The constant excuse is, ‘They’re not experienced enough.’ But there’s a catch-22. If they don’t get to do it, they don’t get to do it. You’ve just got to stick your neck out.”
Data supports Oyelowo’s theory. Research from Dr. Martha Lauzen and the Center for the Study of Women in Television & Film shows that in the top-500 grossing films of 2015, “films with at least one female director employed greater percentages of women working as writers, editors, and cinematographers than films with exclusively male directors.” For example, “on films with at least one female director, women comprised 32 percent of editors. On films with exclusively male directors, women accounted for 19 percent of editors.”
Head over to Variety to read the lengthy and engrossing interview with Oyelowo. In it, he discusses how he was inspired by his “Selma” director DuVernay.
“Queen of Katwe” hits theaters September 23. “A United Kingdom” doesn’t have a U.S. release date yet, but it looks like Fox Searchlight is going to nab the rights to the film.
