Rosamund and the story that shows love can conquer racism
WHEN Rosamund Pike received an email from her friend, actor David Oyelowo, she opened it to reveal a picture of a man and a woman she had never laid eyes on before. Further images showed the couple holding a baby and the woman listening to an old-fashioned radio with a group of African men. ‘I looked at these faces, and I started to cry,’ the actress recalled. ‘Tears started pouring down my face. On some level it touched me really profoundly, and urgently. ‘All I saw was a white woman and a black man; and I guess maybe their love came out,’ she told me, with a shake of her head. They were Ruth Williams and Seretse Khama. Williams was born in Blackheath, South London. Her father was in the tea trade. Khama was an Oxfordeducated prince from the British protectorate of what was then Bechuanaland (now Botswana) and heir apparent to lead the Bamangwato tribe. Pike sent Oyelowo a message that read: ‘I don’t know who these people are, but I want to be in the film!’ The woman she was itching to play defied Britain’s government and Bechuanaland’s colonial powers when she married Seretse. By the time she was expecting their first baby, Ruth was in Africa, but he languished in London, prevented from joining his wife in his homeland. The story of how they were reunited and more (he became Botswana’s first democratically elected president; Ruth his first lady) is related in Amma Assante’s epic A United Kingdom, released next Friday. United: Pike and Oyelowo The pressure to capitulate was immense. But Ruth was tough. ‘She drove an ambulance at an airfield during the war and was a confidential clerk at an insurance company,’ Rosamund said.
‘She was entering a workplace that would have previously been occupied by men. She had that appetite for adventure, and could commit herself to a cause.’
THAT cause was her love for Seretse. ‘She also showed the strength you can have just by being loyal to someone; and being by their side. Some were envious of that love.’ Others disapproved, then — and now. Offensive comments were left on websites featuring the film’s trailer. ‘There’s obviously a lot of racism,’ Pike said, sadly. ‘What’s the first thing people see, when they look at a poster of me and David? Do they see a black man with a white woman, who “shouldn’t be together”? Or do they see a couple who love each other?’
If she was in a romantic comedy she hoped Oyelowo would be ‘up alongside any other man’ to play the male lead. ‘But it doesn’t happen.’
She would love them to work together again. ‘It would be good if it didn’t matter to the studios — or anybody else — what colour we are.’