Oprah Winfrey feared embarrassing herself in 'The Butler'
Published: 2013 August 11 07:57:59 (5550 Views)
When it came to returning to film acting in "Lee Daniels' The Butler," opening Friday, Oprah says she was gripped with fear.
"It did scare me very much," Winfrey told the Daily News in an exclusive sit-down. "I said to [director Daniels], 'I just don't want to embarrass myself.' Lee said, 'You won't, trust me!'
"I said it was me I have to trust."
It's been 15 years since Winfrey's last starring film role, in the 1998 adaptation of Toni Morrison's "Beloved," a project Winfrey nurtured for 10 years.
When it finally opened — a long way from her Oscar-nominated turn in Steven Spielberg's "The Color Purple," yet right in the middle of her syndicated talk show's 25-year run — it flopped. Famously.
" 'Beloved' was such a great, great teaching tool for me. I didn't know how the 'movie world' works. I thought: You make the movie, people go see it," says Winfrey.
"I remember sitting at home the Saturday after it opened, and being told, 'We've lost.' " The movie had debuted to $8 million, on its way to a paltry $22 million.
"I said, 'Is it over?' 'Yeah, it's basically over.'
"I mourned that for a looong time. I went into — I wouldn't say severe depression, but I could tell that this sadness I was feeling had sort of taken me over. I felt like I was behind a veil. I had literally said to myself, 'If I am depressed, who am I going to talk to?'
"I had never been to a therapist. I'd had therapists on the show — this was before Dr. Phil — but I thought, If this doesn't get better, I'm gonna pray my way through it. I'm going to consciously try to feel as bad as I can, and let it pass through me."
It eventually did.
"It took about 30 or 40 days," Winfrey shares. "And one day I was doing a voice track for the 'Oprah' show — for a month I felt like I was just going through the motions — when I heard myself laugh. I thought: I'm laughing, I'm gonna be okay. I'm not gonna be sad forever.
"When you have a big, biiiig so-called 'failure' such as that, you have to look at it for what it can teach you. How can it grow you up so that you don't have to go through that kind of suffering again? It doesn't mean you won't have it again, but that — that impact — cannot happen again."
In "The Butler," Winfrey plays Gloria, the wife of Cecil Gaines (Forest Whitaker). She and her husband witness the great civil rights battles while Cecil works in the White House as a butler for eight Presidents, from 1957 to 1986, and while their son (David Oyelowe) becomes an activist. The film ends with Barack Obama's election in 2008.
Daniels' film, with its social context and full conscience, and the way it makes history's pain personal, meshes with Winfrey's philosophy, though she's not a producer on it (she had exec-produced Daniels' Oscar-winning 2009 film "Precious").
She says she felt a connection to Danny Strong's screenplay for "The Butler," which is based on the life of the late Eugene Allen.
"Oprah was so committed to the film, I sometimes didn't know how to deal with it in character," says Whitaker. "When she was playing Gloria drunk or in pain, as two examples, I didn't know how to react to her. That doesn't happen often with actors."
"I said to Lee, 'This is the worst possible time you could ask me to do anything,' because I was in the middle of all of That , with a capital 'T.' " meaning the end of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" in 2011, after 25 years, and the start of OWN.
"I said yes, though, because of the possibility of taking that parade of pain and giving it a context that allows you to see the spirit of the country through the soul of one person."
"The Butler," Winfrey says, could do something rare in American movies: Address the mid- and late-20th-century challenges of the civil rights movement while entertaining at the same time.
"Just look at the arc of this film — it begins with a lynching and ends with Obama," says Winfrey. "That happened in one man's lifetime. In that amount of time, to go from, essentially, terrorism in your own country — which is what it was to be a black man walking the street in Mississippi in 1954, the year I was born — to Obama.
"I marvel at this country and how far we've come, and not just because I am an extraordinary beneficiary of it. Yeah, there are still obviously a lot of things that need to go forward for us — and during a scene in which the young Cecil Gaines walks in fear at night in the early 1930s, you can't help but think about Trayvon Martin. It's the same thing.
"But we will get there. We will. The young generation today is light-years ahead of two generations before. And I think everything — rap music, entertainment, Beyoncé, all of that — has contributed to that."
Winfrey says she has spoken with producer-director George C. Wolfe about a possible miniseries about the Harlem Renaissance, but other things will likely come first.
And she seems intent to not let a decade and a half go by again before she acts in another film.
"Now that I know I can pull that instrument out and tune it up a bit, I would like to do some other acting. I really am in a free space now — 'free' meaning I can reorganize my schedule a different way. But it would have to be something really compelling."
About Broadway she said, "Nothing is set as of yet, but it's there. I see it. Broadway is in my future."
- NYDaily
"It did scare me very much," Winfrey told the Daily News in an exclusive sit-down. "I said to [director Daniels], 'I just don't want to embarrass myself.' Lee said, 'You won't, trust me!'
"I said it was me I have to trust."
It's been 15 years since Winfrey's last starring film role, in the 1998 adaptation of Toni Morrison's "Beloved," a project Winfrey nurtured for 10 years.
When it finally opened — a long way from her Oscar-nominated turn in Steven Spielberg's "The Color Purple," yet right in the middle of her syndicated talk show's 25-year run — it flopped. Famously.
" 'Beloved' was such a great, great teaching tool for me. I didn't know how the 'movie world' works. I thought: You make the movie, people go see it," says Winfrey.
"I remember sitting at home the Saturday after it opened, and being told, 'We've lost.' " The movie had debuted to $8 million, on its way to a paltry $22 million.
"I said, 'Is it over?' 'Yeah, it's basically over.'
"I mourned that for a looong time. I went into — I wouldn't say severe depression, but I could tell that this sadness I was feeling had sort of taken me over. I felt like I was behind a veil. I had literally said to myself, 'If I am depressed, who am I going to talk to?'
"I had never been to a therapist. I'd had therapists on the show — this was before Dr. Phil — but I thought, If this doesn't get better, I'm gonna pray my way through it. I'm going to consciously try to feel as bad as I can, and let it pass through me."
It eventually did.
"It took about 30 or 40 days," Winfrey shares. "And one day I was doing a voice track for the 'Oprah' show — for a month I felt like I was just going through the motions — when I heard myself laugh. I thought: I'm laughing, I'm gonna be okay. I'm not gonna be sad forever.
"When you have a big, biiiig so-called 'failure' such as that, you have to look at it for what it can teach you. How can it grow you up so that you don't have to go through that kind of suffering again? It doesn't mean you won't have it again, but that — that impact — cannot happen again."
In "The Butler," Winfrey plays Gloria, the wife of Cecil Gaines (Forest Whitaker). She and her husband witness the great civil rights battles while Cecil works in the White House as a butler for eight Presidents, from 1957 to 1986, and while their son (David Oyelowe) becomes an activist. The film ends with Barack Obama's election in 2008.
Daniels' film, with its social context and full conscience, and the way it makes history's pain personal, meshes with Winfrey's philosophy, though she's not a producer on it (she had exec-produced Daniels' Oscar-winning 2009 film "Precious").
She says she felt a connection to Danny Strong's screenplay for "The Butler," which is based on the life of the late Eugene Allen.
"Oprah was so committed to the film, I sometimes didn't know how to deal with it in character," says Whitaker. "When she was playing Gloria drunk or in pain, as two examples, I didn't know how to react to her. That doesn't happen often with actors."
"I said to Lee, 'This is the worst possible time you could ask me to do anything,' because I was in the middle of all of That , with a capital 'T.' " meaning the end of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" in 2011, after 25 years, and the start of OWN.
"I said yes, though, because of the possibility of taking that parade of pain and giving it a context that allows you to see the spirit of the country through the soul of one person."
"The Butler," Winfrey says, could do something rare in American movies: Address the mid- and late-20th-century challenges of the civil rights movement while entertaining at the same time.
"Just look at the arc of this film — it begins with a lynching and ends with Obama," says Winfrey. "That happened in one man's lifetime. In that amount of time, to go from, essentially, terrorism in your own country — which is what it was to be a black man walking the street in Mississippi in 1954, the year I was born — to Obama.
"I marvel at this country and how far we've come, and not just because I am an extraordinary beneficiary of it. Yeah, there are still obviously a lot of things that need to go forward for us — and during a scene in which the young Cecil Gaines walks in fear at night in the early 1930s, you can't help but think about Trayvon Martin. It's the same thing.
"But we will get there. We will. The young generation today is light-years ahead of two generations before. And I think everything — rap music, entertainment, Beyoncé, all of that — has contributed to that."
Winfrey says she has spoken with producer-director George C. Wolfe about a possible miniseries about the Harlem Renaissance, but other things will likely come first.
And she seems intent to not let a decade and a half go by again before she acts in another film.
"Now that I know I can pull that instrument out and tune it up a bit, I would like to do some other acting. I really am in a free space now — 'free' meaning I can reorganize my schedule a different way. But it would have to be something really compelling."
About Broadway she said, "Nothing is set as of yet, but it's there. I see it. Broadway is in my future."
- NYDaily
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