![]() During filming, Wolfe told Winfrey to channel the feeling of her character, Henrietta’s daughter Deborah, from an “internal” rather than “external” place. Winfrey admired Wolfe’s ability to see emotion in an actor’s eyes and movements. He also thought it was important for the actors to get to know each other better and develop their characters’ feelings more authentically in chronological order. Wolfe decided to shoot in a consecutive order, feeling that the reactions from actors were more genuine. The nakedness of Skloot’s story and the Lacks family’s ferocious desire to better understand their mother was what drove the filmmakers to tell the story how they did. “Not all of us have cells that transform modern medicine, but we all want to know who our parents were more than we already know.” CAPTURING AUTHENTICITY ‘The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks’ director George C. “It became about longing to know your story,” said Wolfe. Winfrey and Harpo Films’ Carla Gardini commissioned writers to begin adapting The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks with an eye toward Winfrey to star, but it wasn’t until Wolfe came along that they finally found an “in” to the story. ![]() ![]() Winfrey said that there was also a commonality in the human experience found in Lacks’ story, and referred to a quote from Maya Angelou: “We are more alike than we are different.” To deepen and widen the bond of humanity that we all have,” Winfrey said. “I wanted to tell her story because I live to tell stories that allow people to see African-American women, in particular, as culturally relevant. It thus became Winfrey’s goal to bring the story to a larger audience. Oz, though even he only knew of HeLa cells and was not familiar with the actual woman who unwittingly donated the cells. After reading Skloot’s book Winfrey discovered the only other person she knew who was familiar with Lacks was Dr. Wolfe, Oprah Winfrey and Elvis Mitchell (L-R)Īlthough Lacks and her story hail from Baltimore, a city where Winfrey lived and worked for eight years as a news reporter in the late 1970s, she’d never heard of Lacks-which was one of the main reasons she wanted to be a part of this project. FINDING THE UNIVERSAL IN THE EXTRAORDINARY George C. The film co-stars Renée Elise Goldsberry as Lacks herself, Rose Byrne as Skloot and Reg E. Wolfe and Henrietta Lacks executive producer and star Oprah Winfrey, who plays Henrietta’s conflicted daughter Deborah. Following the screening, Film Independent at LACMA curator Elvis Mitchell sat down for a conversation with director George C. On April 20, Film Independent at LACMA hosted a screening of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, HBO’s new film adaptation of Skloot’s nonfiction novel. ![]() A journalist and freelance science writer, Skloot’s acclaimed account focuses on the ethics medical research as related to race, as well as Lack and her family’s experience under the (literal and figurative) microscope. HeLa is the oldest and most commonly used human cell line and has an imperative role in 20th century medical and scientific research. Rebecca Skloot’s hit 2010 nonfiction book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks chronicles the real-life story of its titular subject, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American woman diagnosed with cervical cancer in the 1950s whose unique “HeLa” cancer cells became part of what is now termed the immortal cell line, able to be grown for prolonged periods of time in vitro.
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