A love that learned to speak its name
Ruth Negga relished playing civil rights heroine Mildred Loving
Actress Ruth Negga sees the 50-year-old story of American interracial couple Richard and Mildred Loving revealing itself onscreen like a couple’s dance in the fact-based drama Loving, opening Friday.
Richard Loving (Australian actor Joel Edgerton) begins the film by leading. “Slowly, the hand positions change and she’s the one taking control. And I think that’s really important,” said Negga, hours before Loving had its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Over the nine years that Loving covers, it is a joy to watch Negga’s portrayal of Mildred as she goes from shy country girl to confident woman, speaking up with gradually revealed determination against the unfairness endured by her family at a time when many voices were silenced.
It’s not surprising Best Actress Oscar talk began when the movie had its premiere at Cannes in May and again in September at TIFF.
“I think it’s important to see a woman who’s quite reserved and shy and quiet show a certain strength, because there’s many kind of strengths isn’t there?” said the Ethiopia-born and Ireland-raised Negga in her soft Irish lilt.
The Lovings were a Virginia couple who married in1958 and had a family at a time when interracial unions in that state and others were outlawed.
Mildred Loving was African American and native American; Richard Loving was white. The couple went to neighbouring Washington, D.C., to marry and returned home, where Mildred was jailed after their relationship was discovered.
The Lovings were forced to leave Virginia permanently, raising their three children in Washington, away from family and all things familiar to them, or face imprisonment.
A resigned Mildred bore it with quiet dignity until she couldn’t stand the injustice any longer.
She wrote a letter to then-U. S. attorney general Robert Kennedy asking for help with their civil rights case, which was eventually taken up by the American Civil Liberties Union. They fought to the Supreme Court.
Negga, born to an Irish mother and Ethiopian father, needed to do considerable research both into that time in America and her character.
She turned to Nancy Buirski’s 2011documentary The Loving Story, calling it “my bible,” not only for providing her introduction to “accidental hero” Mildred and the racial politics of the time but also for the footage of the “bucolic beauty” of rural Virginia, where Loving was filmed.
Written and directed by Jeff Nichols ( Take Shelter, Mud), the depth of feeling between the Lovings and the forced suppression of their emotions play out as profoundly genuine.
The drama also benefits from careful production design and scenes often suffused with muted golden light, along with costumes that accurately convey not only the time the story is set but the Lovings’ modest means.
“It was like, have you ever been given a present or bought really lovely jasmine tea, those little balls, and then the whole tea ceremony where you put the water and it (opens) and it’s really moving, quite beautiful,” Negga said quietly.
“That’s what reading Jeff’s script is like. And even the colour, there’s these tone-y colours, this great light to our film. Amber light. And there’s something so warm and inviting and beautiful.”
She credits her co-star Edgerton who, like her, came from a theatre background, with helping create her characterization of Mildred.
That process was aided by spending two weeks in Virginia before filming began, meeting the Lovings’ only surviving child, Peggy, visiting the couple’s graves and seeing the cell where Mildred was jailed.
These experiences helped her form thoughts about the nature of the Lovings’ relationship.
“The overwhelming thing you come away from when you watch the picture is that (they are) deeply connected . . . deeply, soulfully connected, deeply in love,” she said.
“And what’s apparent is that love is the kindest, most gentle, most loving respectful love I’ve ever seen between two human beings. You could almost see it.”
Playing Mildred is pushing Negga into the spotlight after more than a decade of roles in indies ( Breakfast on Pluto and Toronto-shot drama The Samaritan, opposite Samuel L. Jackson) and small supporting parts ( World War Z), along with more substantial roles on TV’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Preacher.
She hopes seeing Loving will get people talking about issues surrounding equality, reminding them of the stand a Virginia couple made a generation ago.