Miniseries about Mamie Till Mobley to film in Memphis
Will Smith and Jay-z are among the powerful producers of a television miniseries about Mamie Till Mobley — mother of murder victim Emmett Till — that is scheduled to begin production in late January in Memphis.
Filmmakers "are currently scouting for filming locations in the Memphis area," according to notes from location managers that are being left this month at homes and other sites, in preparation for the six-episode series.
Titled "Women of the Movement," the ABC-TV miniseries will be shot at least in part here and in the Mississippi Delta region where Emmett Till, a 14year-old visitor from Chicago, was abducted and brutally murdered in August 1955, after being accused of flirting with a white woman outside a grocery store.
The focus of the six-episode series will be on Mamie Till Mobley (19212003), who became a crusader for justice after the murder. She also made the
crucial decision to hold an open-casket funeral for her son in Chicago, so that thousands of mourners and the news media could bear witness to the violence of the crime.
"The open-coffin funeral held by Mamie Till... exposed the world to more than her son Emmett Till's bloated, mutilated body," wrote the authors of the 2013 Black history book, "Freedom on My Mind." "Her decision focused attention not only on U.S. racism and the barbarism of lynching but also on the limitations and vulnerabilities of American democracy.
Mamie Till Mobley will be played by Adrienne Warren, who recently was nominated for a Tony Award for her lead role in "Tina: The Tina Turner Musical," partly written by Memphian Katori Hall (who also received a Tony nomination — the musical received 12 nominations in all). Other casting decisions have yet to be announced.
The Till episodes of "Women of the Movement" are intended to function as the first season of what producers hope will be an ongoing anthology series celebrating the contributions of women to the civil, equal and human rights movements.
The director of the first episode will be Gina Prince-bythewood, known for "Love & Basketball" (2000) and the recent Netflix superhero film, "The Old Guard," with Charlize Theron. The series was written and created by Marissa Jo Cerar (a producer and writer on "The Handmaid's Tale"), working from the 2015 book "Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement," by Devery S. Anderson.
"Telling Emmett and Mamie's story is a responsibility I have not taken lightly... because this is more than a tragedy," said Cerar, in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter. "It's a story about a mother's unwavering love of her son and her commitment to bettering the lives of all Black people."
The show's "all-star producing team" (in the words of a network press statement) includes Smith, Jay-z and Aaron Kaplan, a television veteran with credits on multiple networks.
Filming on the miniseries is expected to continue through May. It is uncertain whether most of the filming will take place in the Memphis and Mississippi region, or if this will be primarily the first-episode location.
The Emmett Till story has been represented and interpreted with some frequency — and not without controversy — in the arts in recent years. This month, the teenager's funeral and a recreation of his murder were depicted in an episode of the racially themed HBO horror series, "Lovecraft Country."