Oyelowo’s roots galvanised him
DAVID OYELOWO was not familiar with the story of Seretse Khama and Ruth Williams, but once he read Susan Williams’s Colour Bar he became obsessed with turning it into a film.
Several years down the line A United Kingdom has opened in the UK and now opens today in South Africa and next year in the US.
It isn’t so much that the 40-year-old born in England to Nigerian parents is himself married to a white woman, but what this story would have meant to him growing up.
“One of the things I know it would have done was give me a greater sense of self-esteem in relation to a continent I am so proud to be a product of…To see someone like Seretse Khama, a leader who loved his people, a king, someone who fell in love and was prepared to fight for that love,” Oyelowo explains in a telephone call from London.
“To see a black protagonist at the centre of his own narrative. That would have been pretty formative for me as a black man.”
Credited as a producer on A United Kingdom, alongside several people who include his friend Amma Asante who directed the film, Oyelowo says they deliberately tried to make a love story: “Movies are at their best when they make you relate and sympathise and empathise with the protagonist and that’s harder to do with a straight political story.”
Though he first spotted the story back in 2010, Oyelowo says it took a while to get the film going, partly because he was attached to the project and the money-people didn’t believe he was a big enough drawcard.
“There is a real resistance to someone who looks like me being at the centre of a narrative. There is still a notion that black protagonists will be resisted by the audience, but I know that to be not true.
“It’s not purely only to do with prejudice, I hadn’t had the opportunities that would give me a name that would give them financial confidence to get the film made.
“So often black actors don’t get those opportunities early on in their career. That’s why Denzil Washington and Samuel L Jackson came into their own later on in life.”
Steady work in features over the past six years though have seen Oyelowo in ever bigger roles, culminating in a lot of press around his lead turn in Selma. He most recently was seen on the South African circuit in Mira Nair’s Queen of Katwe, playing a Ugandan chess teacher.
He laughs when he explains that he almost never gets to use his own Oxford accent in films and he worked with an accent coach on both Queen of Katwe and A United Kingdom. “I am very perturbed when Africa is treated like a country as opposed to a continent. To get the specific nuances of the different countries is very important.”
While he doesn’t think two hours of watching a film, or these particular protagonists, is neces- sarily going to change anyone’s point of view, he hopes it might give someone insight into a person who is not like you: “You can gain some understanding of why two people fell in love without race as a consideration.
“And the fact that the love was beautiful and produced something edifying not only for themselves, but for the nation that is now Botswana.
“Understanding literally comes through knowledge and education and if the film is able to show that which they didn’t know, which with this story really is the case… there are even people in Botswana who didn’t know the story… It can only be a good thing.”
He is proud of his African heritage and thinks living in Lagos, Nigeria between the ages of six and 13 had a profound influence on his identity. The experience certainly informed his choice to do both Queen of Katwe and A United Kingdom.
A United Kingdom starts today.