*”Harriet” screenwriter Gregory Allen Howard recently revealed that a studio head once suggested Julia Roberts to play the iconic abolitionist Harriet Tubman in a movie about her life.
“I was told how one studio head said in a meeting, ‘This script is fantastic. Let’s get Julia Roberts to play Harriet Tubman,’” Allen explained in a Q&A published by Focus Features. “When someone pointed out that Roberts couldn’t be Harriet, the executive responded, ‘It was so long ago. No one is going to know the difference.’”
Oscar-winning actress Viola Davis addressed the shocking reveal recently in an interview with MadameNoire.
“It happens all of the time [in Hollywood],” Davis said when asked to comment on the executive’s statement.
“Here’s the thing, simply put: Julia Roberts as Harriet Tubman is ridiculous,” she said. “That barely warrants a response. That’s ridiculous. I understand that the film industry very much is about commerce and money, I get it. But that’s ridiculous.”
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Roberts was never involved in the project.
“Fortunately, there was a single black person in that studio meeting 25 years ago who told him that Harriet Tubman was a black woman,” Howard wrote in a column in the Los Angeles Times. “The president replied, ‘That was so long ago. No one will know that.’”
Davis noted that she is “always a little concerned that the people who are questioned about race and diversity and inclusion, are the people in need and not the people in power.”
“You don’t question the people who have not been invited to the party, you question the people who are throwing the party,” she continued. “And the people who are out there who are living in any way, even within this industry, who have the green light vote, who have the power to finance films, who are making those choices to want to cast a Julia Roberts as a Harriet Tubman, this is a better question for them.”
“Why is it that you are not armed with enough information and why you don’t see it as important to cast a Black woman as Harriet Tubman? Why is it that you would want to make this decision?” Davis said, adding, “You can go through the history books and see that Harriet Tubman was a Black woman.”
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