How many of you were shocked when you found out #IdrisElba was British!? And even after knowing, we still identified him as a Black actor. So when did the divide happen between African American actors and Black British actors? Last year, Samuel L. Jackson accused Black British actors of taking roles from their African American counterparts when #DanielKaluyya starred in #GetOut. This time, #CynthiaErivo is getting criticized by a commentator on Instagram for her role as Harriet Tubman in the biopic “Harriet”.
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“Why do you Brits come to the U.S. and take roles that should be reserved for African-Americans? How would you feel [if] we went to your country and snagged all the acting roles? Why can’t you people create your own movies and roles in the U.K.? We paved the way for ourselves here, and you people come and take [shots] we worked hard for….”
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Erivo wasn’t going to let that slide and responded back directly, stating that she “worked very hard” for a “role I neither took nor was simply given.”
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“Actors are free to go where they please for their work, but I dare you to do that fully as a Black woman in the U.K. If I see it, I applaud it,” she wrote. “What was for someone else was never mine in the first place. Please believe that I have turned down roles I know I have no business playing. This role is not one of them….” In another post, she continued, “If you met me in the street and hadn’t heard me speak, would you know I was British or would you simply see a Black woman?”
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Producers Debra Martin Chase and Daniela Taplin Lundberg said, “This is the story of a seemingly powerless woman who accomplished the extraordinary to save her loved ones and, in the process, became a leader of and inspiration for her people. While #HarrietTubman is a household name, most people don’t know the breadth of her story—not only was she a conductor on the #UndergroundRailroad but she was a spy for the Union army and remains one of the few women to have led an armed expedition in U.S. history.”
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According to #Essence, Erivo is set to begin filming for the biopic next month in Virginia.
