Academy Award winner Octavia Spencer said she doesn’t know if her hit film “The Help” could be made today.
While appearing on Bruce Bozzi’s “Table for Two” podcast, Spencer said since the movie premiered 12 years ago, society has taken a “very, very, dangerous” turn in regards to history.
Here’s what she said.
What did Octavia Spencer say?
Fox News reported that the actress said she doesn’t know if the film would have been made today, but that it absolutely should be made.
“Why can’t the story be told? I think what’s happening in society right now is very, very dangerous because, you know, we are scrubbing the history books. And if we can’t point to our historical references, and we can’t point to things like that in art, in history, we’re repeating history now, because we’ve been stripping those truths away,” Spencer said.
Spencer was promoting the third season of her Apple TV+ series “Truth be Told” while on the podcast but affirmed that she believes “The Help” should be made today, if it hadn’t been made already, due to its important story.
“Could ‘The Help’ be made today? I don’t know. Should ‘The Help’ be made today? Absolutely. It represents real people who made real contributions to society who were never rewarded for those contributions,” Spencer said.
Why did Spencer say this?
The actress didn’t give a reason for her statement but her co-star, Viola Davis, made headlines for saying she “regrets” her role in the film back in 2018, according to Vanity Fair.
“Not a lot of narratives are also invested in our humanity. They’re invested in the idea of what it means to be Black, but ... it’s catering to the white audience,” Davis told Vanity Fair, according to Bustle.
“I just felt that at the end of the day that it wasn’t the voices of the maids that were heard. I know Aibileen. I know Minny. They’re my grandma. They’re my mom,” Davis said, according to KVUE. “And I know that if you do a movie where the whole premise is, I want to know what it feels like to work for white people and to bring up children in 1963, I want to hear how you really feel about it. I never heard that in the course of the movie.”