Page 12 - 7-1-16 Friday's Edition

Black History
Gugu Mbatha-Raw Brings History To Life In Free State Of Jones
SPOTLIGHT
VIALTTA
In the steamy Spotlight this week is Vialtta, and she is proof that if you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen. This young lady has no quit in her, and her tireless spirit is contagious to those around her. Con- gratulations to Vialtta as this week’s Spotlight feature.
TV’s Underground and Roots remake have caused some Black actors to criticize Hollywood’s appetite for de- picting brutality against Black people, citing a lack of imagi- nation for other periods in African American history. But the British actor Gugu Mbatha-Raw, 33, who stars opposite Matthew Mc- Conaughey in this sum- mer’s Free State of Jones, begs to differ. The movie opened last week at the the- aters.
“This movie isn’t just about slavery,” she says. “Often you see villainous slave owners and victimized slaves.”Jones, on the other hand, depicts poor white farmers joining runaway slaves to form an up- rising. “It’s about how people can be united in the fight for freedom,” she says.
And as the story goes, --- for love. Free State of Jones is based on the true story of Newton “Newt” Knight
Gugu Mbatha-Raw attended the photo call for "Free State Of Jones" on May 11, 2016 in Los Angeles, California. The actress stars as a runaway slave who joins a rebellion against the Confederate Army.
(McConaughey), a Confed- erate Army deserter who led a rebellion against a South he believed was enlisting poor
FREE STATE OF JONES
farmers to fight for the inter- ests of rich men, namely cot- ton and slaves. (That’s according to the movie’s telling, anyway—historians still debate his true motiva- tions.) Mbatha-Raw plays Rachel, a runaway slave who joins the insurrection and later marries Newt, becoming one of the few Black women to own land in Mississippi.
Mbatha-Raw, who in re- cent years, starred in Concus- sion and Beyond The Lights, still has to pinch herself from time to time.
“I found it fascinating—she lived this double life between the plantation and the rebels. The courage that must have taken!” says Mbatha-Raw. She got into character by ex- ploring Louisiana’s swamp- lands, a great deal of which are largely unchanged since the time when Rachel met Newt across the state line in Mississippi. “It’s helpful to go to the place where my charac- ter may have stood,” she says. “To be out there in the swamps, to smell the magno- lia trees. I find that so inform- ative on a sensory level.”
Though McConaughey may get top billing, Free State of Jones is largely about the role of women during wartime—both slaves like Rachel and white Southern- ers, like Newt’s first wife Serena (Keri Russell), left behind by husbands called to war.
The Knights’ arrangement was far from perfect --- Re- construction replaced the vio- lence of slavery with new forms of cruelty --- but it still resulted in whites and Blacks living harmoniously, if only in one little corner of the South.
Even Serena lived along- side her former husband and his new wife. As Mbatha- Raw says, quoting director Gary Ross’s script, “Wars make strange families.”
PAGE 12-A FLORIDA SENTINEL BULLETIN PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY AND FRIDAY FRIDAY,JULY 1, 2016