*Oprah Winfrey hosted an event Friday in Hollywood, California, to celebrate David Oyelowo’s work on the new series “Lawmen: Bass Reeves.”
“If you’re going to ‘raise a glass,’ let’s raise lots of glasses,” Winfrey said to the crowd that included Gayle King, Mykelti Williamson, Lupita Nyong’o, Niecy Nash-Betts and the cast of the hit Paramount+ series, Variety reports.
“So, we’re all here to raise a few glasses in honor of David, Yoruba Saxon and the vision this man has held for a decade for Bass Reeves,” Winfrey continued. “It has come to fruition and it is the number one premiering series on Paramount+!”
Per Variety, citing Nielsen, “the first two episodes attracted a collected 7.5 million viewers in its first 7 days across Paramount+ and a special CBS airing on Nov. 12,” the outlet writes.
Created for television by executive producer, writer, and showrunner Chad Feehan, the series “follows the journey of Reeves (Oyelowo) and his rise from enslavement to law enforcement as the first Black U.S. Marshal west of the Mississippi. Despite arresting over 3,000 outlaws during the course of his career, the weight of the badge was heavy, and he wrestled with its moral and spiritual cost to his beloved family. LAWMEN: BASS REEVES is an all-new, standalone anthology series and future iterations will follow other iconic lawmen and outlaws who have impacted history,” per the official synopsis.
“Bass embodies what is our biggest theme of the show, which is the triumph of the human spirit,” Feehan told Newsweek. “He overcame unimaginable circumstances and unimaginable horrors to become arguably the greatest lawman in the history of this country.”
During the Oprah event, Oyelowo gushed over Winfrey and their previous work together.
“Over a decade ago, we played mother and son, and you have been there for me ever since,” he stated, according to Variety. “Two months before we started shooting ‘Selma,’ my mum had a brain aneurysm and she went into a vegetative state, a state in which she stayed for three years before she eventually passed away. And it was the hardest thing I have ever been through.”
“You’ve been an incredible mother to me, an incredible advocate for me,” he said. “The first time we had a conversation in New Orleans while we were shooting ‘The Butler,’ you talked about how Quincy Jones and Sidney Poitier had been there for you and you said ‘I see something in you. … I am going to be what they were for me to you.’ She made good on that promise. She saw in me what I didn’t see in me yet.”
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