A black and white world
David Oyelowo tells Richard Betts why Victor Hugo’s classic is still relevant
Many years ago, when I worked in a music store, a customer returned a copy of the BBC’s Pride and Prejudice because, she said, it was incomplete. We ordered her another. She returned that too. The customer wouldn’t tell us how she knew it had been cut; it took us months to realise that Colin Firth’s iconic swimming scene — and wet-shirted emergence from Pemberley’s lake — had been reduced in length.
That drip-dry Darcy came not from Jane Austen but the imagination of Andrew Davies, the go-to writer for big-budget costume dramas, whose most recent adaptation is for the Beeb’s sweeping new version of Les Miserables, which comes to TVNZ 1 and OnDemand on April 21.
Anyone hoping to see barricades stormed with accompanying chorus will be disappointed; this Les Mis draws on Victor Hugo’s novel, not Claude-Michel Schonberg’s musical.
Davies has admitted he hates the musical. David Oyelowo, who plays the unbending jailer and police inspector Javert, disagrees but admits he prefers the novel, not least because it fleshes out his character’s motivations. That depth carries into this screen version.
“I love the musical as a piece of art but with this we get to dive deeper into who Javert is and why he is the way he is,” Oyelowo says. “Yes, he’s the villain, but with six hours [of television] you get a bit more context.”
In this production, Javert the gaoler is as much a prisoner — of his rule-bound world and his own self-loathing — as the convict Jean Valjean.
“Yes, and I’m hoping for a degree of empathy,” says Oyelowo. ”[Javert’s] very much a product of a certain time and a certain place. France is coming out of revolution and chaos; Javert’s an enforcer of the law who is trying to quell chaos. He feels the need to live in a black and white world.”
In this colour-blind production, Javert is a black man in a white world, too. Casting Oyelowo, who was born in Oxford to Nigerian parents, has been contentious in some circles but the actor is having none of that nonsense.
“I think it’s about telling the truth,” he says. “People of colour have been inherent in European life for centuries and we have done a very bad job of representing that in television and film. I know
for a fact that there were individuals high up in Napoleon’s army. You never see that.”
Oyelowo has done more than most to increase ethnic diversity on our screens. The actor’s failure to receive an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Martin Luther King in Civil Rights drama Selma was one of the trigger points of the #OscarsSoWhite movement. He became an executive producer on Les Miserables in part to ensure broader representation.
“I really wanted not to be the token person of colour in the show. I was very keen we make sure it felt like an integrated world, a world that reflects the now. I think the only reason to make a project like Les Miserables now is because we are talking to now, not 200 years ago, and I think the way to do that is to reflect society.”
Les Miserables could hardly be more relevant to modern life, says Oyelowo.
“Look at Paris right now with the Yellow Vests and all the rioting. That discontent is reflected around the world. You see a widening gap between the haves and the have-nots, which is also a big theme in this story.”
Oyelowo points out that Valjean is sentenced to 19 years’ jail for stealing a loaf of bread. The actor finds contemporary resonances in that, too.
“I live in America and you see people receiving disproportionate sentences for trite offences because they are of a certain race and socio-economic background.”
Hollywood hasn’t always been welcoming to people of colour either, but Oyelowo thinks that’s changing, in part because of #OscarsSoWhite holding the film industry to account, but also because the success of movies like Black Panther has changed the industry, with audiences demonstrating through the box office what they want to see.
Oyelowo’s sense of what people want to see is about to be tested. He soon moves behind the camera to direct his first film, The Water Man, about a 10-yearold who seeks a mythical figure in the hope it will cure his mother. He says he’s making The Water Man because he wants to shoot a movie he can share with his four children. He also wants to share in his own good fortune.
“I’ve never been good at waiting by the phone for stories other people tell that I can participate in, though I have been a beneficiary of that. I prefer to use whatever visibility I have to create opportunities for others or myself both in front of and behind the camera, and to get stories told that otherwise wouldn’t be because they don’t have an advocate.”
You get the sense that Oyelowo will not be a dictatorial director. He believes the best filming experiences open and collaborative, and points to Les Miserables director Tom Shankland and Davies as examples of what he means.
“Sometimes writers can’t let go of what they see in their head; [Davies] was at rehearsals, reacting to what he saw and tweaking along the way, and we were getting his feedback as we were shooting.”
Perhaps inevitably, Davies couldn’t resist inserting occasional touches of trademark sauciness. Fans of Dominic West, who plays lead character Valjean, will enjoy a lingering eyeful of our hero’s exposed derriere, for instance.
In the future, you’ll be able to tell if the BBC has made edits to its Les Mis by whether that scene seems to be shorter than it once was.