Recently, we sat down with Sophie Okonedo, who plays May Boatwright, a traumatically regressed woman, Queen Latifah, is August Boatwright the matriarch of this family of three well-off black sisters in North Carolina and Gina Prince-Bythewood, director of “Love & Basketball”, “Disappearing Acts”, and “Biker Boyz”, to get the real scoop on their brilliant work, working with each other and our historical political times. 

How did this role come to you? 

SO: I was sent the book three years ago. And I read it and thought that it was a fantastic story and I told my agent if they make a film of it, May is the part for me, I just couldn’t see myself doing any other part. Then about 1 year ago or longer as Gina came aboard I heard she wanted me to play May and there was synchronicity and it really worked. I never met Gina when she offered me the part on the phone, I didn’t have to audition, and that’s how it came about. 

Have you experienced racism? 

SO: Yeah, definitely, as a child. I’ve really noticed it as I’ve gotten older. It may be there, but it’s not been overt. I think it may be because less now or maybe because I’m more well known in England so people don’t come up to me. I remember certainly growing up in the 70’s, it was quit a lot of racial tension at that time. There was quite a lot of name calling as a child. Where I grew up was a high proportion of blacks, about 70% of blacks so it wasn’t so obvious there. 

Did you use this film as an opportunity to research the black experience? 

SO: Yeah, I already knew quite a lot, I had done a lot reading about the civil rights movement as a teenager. I think that was because it was the most well known and well documented movement that I knew about. In England it was different, most people in England came from the Wet Indies in the 50’s. Then I became very interested at the age of 16, you know trying to find answers to questions like who you are, where you’re from and where you‘re going. I read a lot about Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. Well really, I started off with Sojourner Truth. I did a play at The Royal Court Theater which was about women evolutionary figures and I played Sojourner Truth in this huge production and we all wrote this piece and the entire woman speech she wrote. I also read a lot about the apartheid movement there was a strong anti-apartheid movement going on in the 80‘s in London.  I did some more research. I actually read a book that Gina (Prince-Bythewood) gave me called, Growing Up in Mississippi, which gave me a real birds view of what it was like to growing up in Mississippi in that time. Really, the first half of the book was so useful for me. The places she grew up, her the day to day living, the poverty, the segregation, the chores and how young they were going to work. Even trying to get themselves educated. That was really helpful. I also watched repeatedly a documentary by Spike Lee, called Four Little Girls, which I just found, more than anything I read, got me right into that time, particularly, the one on one interview with the families of the girls that died. Before I began a scene as May I would hide in my trailer and watch a bit of an interview of a young lady who was a twin and lost her sister in the fire at 14 or 15. She and her sister where like two peas in a pod, it was very key to May and April‘s relationship. I did quite a bit of study on twin bereavement. I found a forum online where twins go to talk about the loss of a twin. I found it extraordinary that people felt like they had lost half themselves; like half their souls were gone. So, the thing with May is everything stopped at 14 or 15, she just couldn’t contain the enormous loss of her sister April. So the Wailing Wall that she has in the garden and the hypersensitivity she has is due to not being able to contain that loss. But I think that the way that I saw May was not only a personal thing as a very wounded character that couldn’t contain her grief and loss. I also saw her as a symbol of the movement of the time and a sort of wound of the times really. So in a sense May carried the weight of her sisters grief and Black America’s grief . Of course May’s not thinking that though. But when I was looking from the outside in, I could see that she could grieve and be in pain for everybody. 

You’ve dealt with grief in two movies. Some profound grief and you’re becoming an expert. How do you compare the grief of Hotel Rwanda with this film? 

SO: It was a totally different experience. In Hotel Rwanda, I start out one way and this event happens to me. I’m just a wife and mother living in Rwanda in a happy marriage with children. I did very little research on the genocide. I decided that I wanted to make sure that I knew exactly what it was like as a woman living in Kigali at that time with a sort of moral, social and economic climate for her and then I let the experience of the film happen to me as we‘re filming. It was a shock to her; it was a horrendous genocide that was happening so she could only react as a human, woman housewife of that time would react. With this film I was coming from the top with this baggage. So, it was quite different, I had to really prepare myself in a very different way. 

Did you become a chef after this film? What in particular did they want you to learn to cook? 

SO: I found in the press notes that I don’t cook well, that’s total rubbish; let me say that straight away. I cook every single day. I cook at home everyday; it’s me and my daughter, I don’t need a cook in the house, I do it myself. I did have to learn how to cook southern food, which was really great to learn with these ladies they had. I learned that food in the south for these two women was really food for the soul. I was learning all about what they made, but more importantly, I was talking to them about their lives and what they felt about food . They were so passionate about food and it was such a central part of their lives. The way they cooked, the way they tasted also, the way they look at you when you’re tasting something they’ve made, it’s like they’ve given you a jeweled crown and they want to watch every expression. I had to make sure I had my expressions right. 

What was it like being a part of a film with such feminine, strong matriarchal women?  

SO: That was the best part of filming it really. We were all very excited from the beginning. It was an unusual situation where you have, not only one strong woman but five and four of them are black. We kept saying, “This ain’t gonna happen again, so we may as well enjoy it.” The bonding was fantastic. It was really easy.