*Kerry Washington says she felt the “spirit” of her character while filming Tyler Perry’s new wartime drama “The Six Triple Eight.”
In the movie, Washington plays Major Charity Adams, who commands a battalion of women soldiers. As we reported earlier, during filming, when a local resident inquired about the project and learned it was a film about the history-making Six Triple Eight, he offered a personal contribution.
“He pulled out a trunk and he opened it up,” Washington said, per Netflix’s Per Tudum.“And it was my character Charity Adams’ actual trunk. It had her uniforms, it had seeds from her victory garden. It had letters, it had pictures. It was unbelievable.”
“The Six Triple Eight” is the story of World War II’s only Women’s Army Corps unit of color, which Perry wrote, directed, and produced alongside Nicole Avant, Angi Bones, Tony L. Strickland, Keri Selig, and Carlota Espinosa.
“The 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion contributed to the war effort in a unique way: by sorting through a three-year backlog of mail (17 million pieces of it!) that hadn’t been delivered to American soldiers far from home,” per the synopsis. “In the face of discrimination and a vast, unfamiliar country divided by global conflict, these 855 women brought hope to the front lines. Given six months to complete the task, the 6888th accomplished their mission in less than 90 days, providing morale when the United States needed it most.”
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“I felt like these women were with us in this process,” Washington said during the 2024 Tribeca Film Festival. “You felt their spirit all the time.”
According to Netflix, Perry was inspired to create “The Six Triple Eight” after forming a connection with Lena Derriecott King, a former member of the group who passed away at the age of 100 in January 2024.
“We sat in her house for a couple of hours just talking, having a great conversation,” Perry said in a tribute video to King. “And when I left there I had a whole movie in my mind that I wanted to write for her.”
Perry showed King an incomplete version of the film before she died.
“I didn’t know what to expect,” Perry told EW of meeting King for the first time at her Las Vegas home, when she was 99. “I didn’t know what frame of mind she would be in, but she was as sharp as a tack. She talked to me about Abram and being in the back of the rumble seat, and how she loved him driving her and how close they were and how he died. Her memory was amazing. I had a historian that I worked with and he verified how factual everything she was saying was.”
Perry had Washington in mind to portray Charity Adams from the get-go.
“Every time I wrote a line for Charity Adams, I saw Kerry Washington,” the filmmaker said. “She said she wasn’t sure how we’re going to do a story about the mail. But after she read the script, she really got it.”
“The Six Triple Eight” is now on Netflix. The ensemble cast also features Oprah Winfrey as civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune, Sam Waterston as President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Susan Sarandon as First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and Dean Norris as General Halt.
READ MORE FROM EURWEB.COM: Tyler Perry Teams with Netflix for Wartime Drama ‘The Six Triple Eight’ Starring Kerry Washington | Watch Trailer
