Actress Octavia Spencer said on Tuesday that the 2011 film “The Help” would be difficult to make in today’s political climate, telling celebrity restaurateur Bruce Bozzi during an appearance on his “Table for Two” podcast that the idea the public took “very, very.” danger” changes in the twelve years since the film’s release.
“Why can’t the story be told? I think what’s happening in society right now is very dangerous because, you know, we’re digging through the history books. And if we can’t point to our historical references, and we can. ‘point to things like that in art, in history, we’re retelling history now, because we’ve been stripping away those truths,’ he said.
“Can ‘Help’ be done today? I don’t know. Should help be done today? Really. It represents real people who have made a real contribution to society who have not been rewarded for that contribution,” he added.
VIOLA DAVIS SAYS ‘HELP’ USED THROUGH ‘CESSPOOL OF SYSTEMIC RACSM’: I PRACTICE WITH MY PEOPLE’
Actress Octavia Spencer portrayed Minny Jackson in the 2011 film ‘The Help.’
(Photo by Dia Dipasupil/GA/The Hollywood Reporter via Getty Images)
The landmark film, based on the best-selling novel by author Kathryn Stockett, takes place in 1960s Jackson, Mississippi and highlights racism against blacks in the Deep South at the dawn of the civil rights era.
The story follows the views of African-American maids who live under the pressure of racism from the white, wealthy southern families they work for, a fact that has received criticism from one of movie stars in recent years.
“VIOLA DAVIS BELIEVES HER PARTICIPATION IN ‘THE HELP’
Viola Davis arrives at The Hollywood Reporter’s Women in Entertainment Breakfast at Milk Studios on Wednesday, December 5, 2018, in Los Angeles.
(Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)
Co-star Spencer Davis gained attention in 2020 after spoiling the project and confessing her guilt over being Aibileen Clark’s character in a Vanity Fair article.
“It’s not a lot of narratives that are invested in our humanity. They’re invested in the idea of what it means to be Black, but … to feed a White audience,” said Davis.
“The whitest audience can sit and get an education about what we’re like. Then they leave the theater, and they talk about what it meant. They’re not influenced by what we were. too.” he added.
Actress Jessica Chastain was also nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her role in ‘The Help.’
(Getty Images)
“The Help” stars Spencer and her co-stars Viola Davis, Bryce Dallas Howard, Emma Stone and Jessica Chastain to name a few, and has garnered praise for its quirky plot.
Spencer won the Oscar for best performance by an actress in a supporting role while Davis and Chastain were nominated for other awards.
The film itself was nominated for Best Picture in 2012, but in the end it lost to “The Artist” by Thomas Langmann.
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Fox News star Ushe contributed to this report.