Augustan’s story of survival featured in Hollywood movie

I try not to pay attention to all of that but that’s nice to know. “I wanted to at least go to heaven and say, God, one time I said no”.

The themes of redemption and hope are what drives the story of Captive, explained Oyelowo, who met Nichols’ mother Claritha Nichols in August. Though it starts with a slam bang escape, much of Captive’s focus is on the seven hours Nichols held Smith hostage, a choice which hones the narrative to something more like a one-act play than the police procedural it starts as.

She said the movie brought back painful memories of that rough time in their lives when she and her daughter lived apart. These kind of movies tend to be tough to make so I really wanted to push it along. Mark Rylance who I’ve seen play Hamlet in the United Kingdom as (I was) a drama student and was completely blown away by him.

Oyelowo is one of those actors who immerses himself in a character, which made playing Martin Luther King Jr.in last year’s celebrated “Selma” such a transcendent experience.

It was a big switch as you can imagine, but the commonality for me is that both stories are about light shining through the darkness. In “Selma“, people died. For the Nichols movie, portraying someone as universally reviled as King is revered was an artistic challenge, he said. This was a dark situation, but it took people of all colors and ages to declare it a wrong and to make a change.

There’s no question Nichols was a monster that day, Oyelowo said in a phone interview, but in Nichols’ encounter with Smith, “through the humanity that she had and the vulnerability that she had and the way she treated him, somehow the humanity that was in him was able to come to the fore”. “He reach down into my apartment that night into the pits of hell that my life had become and He said, ‘I love you”.

Was there a portion of the film you were nervous or excited to film once you read it?

Because especially with the announcement of you doing the audiobook for James Bond, there’s your Grammy next year.

“But I tell you what, the first scene in, I looked over at my child and saw tears rolling down her face and I just lost it”, says Smith. Was Nichols caught up in some kind of reverse Stockholm Syndrome, slowly sympathizing with his captive so much he let her step out from his captivity for her daughter’s school’s fashion show? I think the reason why black men are being cut down in the streets of America is because they are being dehumanized. I genuinely don’t think that things are way worse, I just think we’re more aware now than we were 10 years ago.

“I’ve never really regretted turning anything down”, Oyelowo said. It needs a certain amount of poetry, of magical realism, to convey the reality of the inner life without words.

Yes, Ashley was with us for a lot of the shoot.

“There was 3 times [that night] when he asked me: do you want to do this with me, how about you do this with me, why don’t you do this with me?” Smith is now a sober mother of three, and Nichols is behind bars, serving multiple life sentences without parole. She’s also a grieving widow who moves a box of her deceased husband’s clothes into her new apartment.

My fear is that secular audiences won’t see it because they’ll write it off as some poorly made, preachy movie.

This is not the typical Christian movie – more on that in a moment – but it’s also not the typical biographical film, which often struggle to be engaging when the audience already knows how it will end. “We want you to play Brian Nichols and we also want you to help us produce this movie”. “Thankfully He gave me one”. More than excitement, though, I had trepidation. “That’s your baby there that I’m playing and I didn’t get to meet him”. “Allowing him to feel seen”.

Although spiritual baths were needed, sharing Ashley Smith’s story and showing that hope, goal and second chances can be afforded to everyone was worth it. He beats the policewoman guarding him and seizes her pistol, fatally shooting the judge, a court reporter and a sheriff’s deputy.

The supporting cast of Michael K Williams, Mimi Rogers, Leonor Varela and Jessica Oyelowo are adequate, but basically just bland set pieces in the biopic. He credits the film as a result of the collaborative efforts of others.