Once upon a time, we mostly knew David Oyelowo as “that guy from Spooks, or MI-5, as the Americans keep insisting we call it”, but these days he’s been carving out a healthy film career, with roles in The Last King of Scotland, A Sound of Thunder, **As You Like It **and the upcoming Rise of the Apes. And now he’s signed on to another high profile project, DreamWorks’ drama The Help.
Tate Taylor wrote the script and is directing the film based on Kathryn Stockett’s best-selling book. Taylor actually optioned the tome before it became a sensation (he’s a friend of Stockett’s) and despite only having directed one other film (2008’s Pretty Ugly People), he stayed with it when DreamWorks agreed to produce the movie.
The Help follows several female characters in 1960s Jackson, Mississippi, an era before the Civil Rights movement when black housemaids and other workers faced discrimination by their employers. A recent college graduate, Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan, aims to throw some light on their struggles by writing about them.
Oyelowo, playing a preacher, joins a cast that already includes Emma Stone, Bryce Dallas Howard, Allison Janney, Sissy Spacek, Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer. Taylor is shooting the film right now in Greenwood, Mississippi and it’ll be out in the US on April 14 next year, with a UK release date still to be decided.