Life according to... David Oyelowo
Golden Globe-nominated British actor and star of Spooks, Jack Reacher and Selma discusses fairy tales, culture shifts and working with Angelina Jolie
How do you reflect on 2020?
It’s been a year like no other, but it’s also been about trying to find the silver lining – I’ve been with my four kids more than normal.
You live in the States. What was it like during the protests?
The Black Lives Matter movement wouldn’t have been as potent if it hadn’t been for the fact we were all focused and didn’t have the distractions of cinema, sport, holidays, restaurants and so on. The murder of George Floyd was beamed into our homes and for a lot of people who are not black, the reality of what black people have had to endure for so long became all that much more real.
Are you concerned for the future of cinema?
It doesn’t worry me at all. We’ve gone from amphitheatres to indoors, from silent movies to talkies, and from black and white to colour – there is a need for the evolution of storytelling. Every time there is a seismic leap forward, people become nervous but I see a lot of opportunity. The great thing about streaming is the content we watch is based on data in relation
Come Away is out in cinemas now to what we are actually watching, so the audiences are the winners. It makes it a more egalitarian business.
What attracted you to Come Away, a prequel of sorts to Peter Pan and Alice In Wonderland, making them siblings?
I’d loved the stories separately, but the conflation of these two characters and narratives was genius. You have a boy who doesn’t want to grow up and a girl who wants to grow up too soon, Neverland and Wonderland. I realised this would be a version I didn’t have the opportunity to see when I was younger, and by that I mean see myself reflected in the narrative, and that would be the case for my kids and millions of children all over the world, not just kids of colour but white kids as well. Any time empathy can be built up, because we are all seeing ourselves reflected in people who are not necessarily like us, is a beautiful thing.
What was working with Michael Caine and Angelina Jolie like?
It was a complete dream. Working with Michael Caine was very surreal. To have that iconic voice coming back at me was super weird. Angelina has been a friend for a while and I knew her passion for family, so I had a hunch the role would speak to her and thankfully that turned out to be the case.
Did you have a typical Christmas?
It was an atypical Christmas, as I can’t remember a time when there hasn’t been at least 20 of us together, so it was weird being just us and our four kids. But I made the most of it, because we’ll probably never have another Christmas like that, plus my eldest is 19 now, so who knows how much longer he’ll be in the house.
most of Christmas, as we’ll never have another like it
What are your hopes for 2021?
My concern is, should things go back to some semblance of normalcy, we forget some of what we learned. I’d be very upset if the way we treat our planet goes back to the way it was. And in the UK and America, the division is almost exactly 50-50 so it’s impossible to achieve anything when there’s division, so that’s concerning. But hopefully some lessons have been learned in all of this.