ABOVE PHOTO: David Oyelowo Photo courtesy: David Oyelowo
By Kharisma McIlwaine
David Oyelowo visited Philadelphia on February 3 for an FYC/SAG Awards screening event for “Lawmen: Bass Reeves.” The screening of the first episode of the eight episode Paramount+ Originals series was held at AMC Dine-In Fashion District 8.
Executive produced by Taylor Sheridan and Oyelowo, “Lawmen: Bass Reeves” tells the untold story of the first Black U.S. Marshal, Bass Reeves. Immediately following the screening, Oyelowo participated in an enlightening Q&A session hosted by broadcast pioneer Patrick Stoner. The celebration continued at City Winery with a cocktail party, which included a meet and greet, butlered hors d’oeuvres and beverages.
After the screening, Oyelowo joined Stoner front and center in the theater and shared his feelings about taking on this iconic role. Oyelowo was originally attracted to the role of Bass Reeves due to his lifelong love of Westerns.
“I grew up in the UK in England, and as a kid I loved Westerns,” Oyelowo said. “I wanted to be a cowboy but didn’t see anyone who looked like Bass in movies or TV shows. I just kind of accepted that as, ‘ok maybe that’s just the reality of things.’ It wasn’t until 2014 that I was approached with the idea of doing a project around the character of Bass Reeves. I just couldn’t believe there hadn’t been a major movie, a major TV show, [or that ] I wasn’t dressed up as him at Halloween. How on earth had Hollywood had the entertainment industry miss an opportunity to tell this story?”
“When you read about him, it [Reeves’ story] almost writes itself,” Oyelowo said. “So much of what you saw there in this first episode really happened. So for me, that’s where the obsession began of wanting to tell this story.”
Despite the awe inspiring story of Bass Reeves, Oyelowo shared how incredibly difficult it was to get this series greenlit and created.
“We went out with it in 2015 after it had been brought to me,” he said. “We took it to every single studio, and the resounding statement was we are not going to do this because no one is making Westerns. Then two years later in 2017, we went out again to all the same players and they said we’re not going to do this because everyone is making Westerns. There’s clearly a reason for that, which is racism. For me, that was unacceptable. So that’s why for eight years until now when we got it made, I refused to give up.”
Black people have rarely been included in the media representation of cowboys. Oyelowo spoke candidly about some of those facts, and his perspective on the intentional suppression of that history.
“There is a reason why the fact that 1 in 3 cowboys was Black has been kept from us,” he said. “In fact, the phrase “cowboy” only exists because of Black people. It was a racial epithet. They used to be called cow punchers, but because it was a way to denigrate the sheer amount of Black cow punchers there were, it became cowboy. So again — history that we don’t know, history that is kept from us because anything aspirational, anything where there is a position of power, a supremacist mindset will look to hide that. This is stuff we should be learning about in history classes, because we’re talking about the people that built this nation.”
“Bass Reeves” is a series that makes it a point to reveal many unknown truths about Bass specifically and American history broadly throughout the series.
“He was a slave — he did escape slavery, he did live with the Native Americans for a time which is where he accrued the skills he then used as a deputy U.S. marshal,” Oyelowo said. “He did beat his enslaver almost to death. He’d go on to do things you will see if you watch some of the other episodes. George Reeves was his enslaver in the way that you see in this show. We take those key elements and then of course we have to fill in the lines around that.”
“When you start to look at someone like Bass Reeves, who dealt with enslavement, being brutalized, knowing that there were generations — that self-possession, that dignity — there’s a certain thing that comes with knowing who you are,” Oyelowo continued. “There is no way, in my opinion, you could go on to have the self-possession that Bass Reeves had, in spite of how ill-treated he was and his ancestors were, without there being something of the divine in you. That is something that fueled Bass Reeves. He was someone who believed in justice, he believed in God, he believed that he was more than he was subjected to and that’s the only reason he could go on to be transcendent despite all of those things. I also believe that is a true part of the African American experience in this country.”
To see the brilliance of David Oyelowo in the role of Bass Reeves, stream the first season of “Lawmen: Bass Reeves,” which is available with a subscription on Paramount+.
Leave a Comment