David Oyelowo Talks HBO’s Nightingale And Championing Female DirectorsPosted by Wilson Morales
May 29, 2015
Last night, Blackfilm.com attended the premiere of HBO’s single-character drama NIGHTINGALE, starring Golden Globe nominee David Oyelowo (‘Selma’).
Airing tonight at 9pm on HBO and directed by Elliott Lester from a screenplay by Frederick Mensch, NIGHTINGALE is a provocative drama that probes the darkest corners of a disturbed mind, as a war veteran named Peter Snowden begins to unravel thread by thread. This searing story of solitude and isolation offers a poignant look at how life has failed one man.
For Oyelowo, who’s worked on numerous films such as The Last King of Scotland, Red Tails, Middle of Nowhere, Jack Reacher, Lee Daniels’ The Butler, and Ava DuVernay’s Selma, where he was applauded for his role as Martin Luther King, Jr., this role was equally challenging as it’s a one man film in one location.
Oyelowo flew in for the premiere from South Africa where he’s currently shooting Mira Nair’s ‘Queen of Katwe’ with Academy Award winner Lupita Nyong’o (’12 Years a Slave’).
Blackfilm.com spoke with Oyelowo about his work on Nightingale and championing female directors such as DuVernay and Amma Asante, who will direct him on his next project, ‘A United Kingdom.’
What was the attraction to doing Nightingale?
David Oyelowo: The fact that is was intriguing. Most scripts you read feel like well trodden territory. You’ve seen it before. You’ve heard it before. You’ve been in it before. This was none of those. I simply had never read a script quite like this, certainly not for the screen. The character was so compelling to me…terrifying really. I really felt I wanted to do it as a dare to myself. Could I engage with this and you have to. You have to be fully expose as an actor and I decided to dive in.
Can you talk about collaborating with Elliot Lester and his vision?
DO: What I loved about Elliot is talking to him early on, he was just as terrified but also excited by it as myself. We very much went into it with a feeling of fearlessness really; and I mean fearlessness in a sense that if we fail, let’s fail forward. There’s no guarantee with a film like this that it’s going to be successful. That it’s going to be well realized because so many of the tools that you normally have aren’t. You don’t have other characters. You don’t have multiple locations. You don’t have a car chase and you don’t even have a love interest. It’s just one guy in a house. Can that work cinematically? We live in an age where you have seen it all before. Let’s try to do something where you haven’t seen it before.
What’s the challenge when it’s just you with no co-workers, and one location as you mentioned?
DO: It’s very lonely. Thankfully the character is a very lonely guy. He’s someone who’s very solitary and doesn’t particularly like going out. He’s someone who has cultivated a wall of lies around him in order to be able to survive. Any loneliness I felt lent itself to the character. Thankfully it was only a three week shoot. Anything much longer than that, I would have actually gone a bit mad like Peter Snowden.
You seem to be working all the time. When do you catch a break?
DO: I think I use my time off wisely. If I’m not on a set, I’m with my wife and kids and that’s about it. I love being with them and they travel with me all the time. I’m doing a film at the moment. I flew in from South Africa last night. We were in Uganda. My wife and I have a two week rule that we’re never apart for more than two weeks. Even though I stayed in character for the three weeks that we shot this, I stole away for half a day to see my family. I’m having a great moment right now and it doesn’t promise to stay forever, so while it’s around, I’m going to put as much as a dent in thing as I can.
You worked with Ava DuVernay on ‘Selma’ and you’re about to work with Amma Asante on ‘A United Kingdom.’ Can you talk about working with these Black female directors?
DO: In talking about Ava, and in talking about Amma, one of the things I’m adamant about is that I want to see and hear voices of others. Others who are not being represented. Female directors, actresses, people of color, people who are underrepresented on film. I deliberately pursued Ava to direct ‘Selma.’ I deliberately pursued Amma to direct ‘A United Kingom’ because I think these are underrepresented voices in film; and I think that when you are an artist, who you are is tied in to what you do. If 50% of the population is female and yet a minuscule of percentage of directors are female, something’s off. Something’s wrong and therefore the films we’re seeing are skewed in a way that doesn’t represent the world I live in. Both in terms in women and of people of color. That’s why I wanted to do ‘Nightingale.’ We don’t get to play characters like this that are not rooted in race, sports, music, and civil rights. It has nothing to do with that. It’s just a very complex character. I want to use whatever notoriety I have to get those voices out there because I do think it shapes culture.
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