Was the Underground Railroad Real? How Enslaved People Used Network to Escape From the South
On 5/14/21 at 10:23 AM EDT
The Underground Railroad, from Oscar-winning film-maker Barry Jenkins, premieres on Amazon Prime Video on May 14.
The drama is based on the Pulitzer-winning novel of the same name by Colson Whitehead. It is set in the early 1800s and follows an enslaved woman s desperate bid for freedom.
The show and the book are set in an alternate reality, in which the Underground Railroad is a literal subterranean train system.
The actual Underground Railroad was a network of people offering shelter and aid to enslaved people escaping from the South. Members included escapees as well as abolitionists who helped slaves get to the North.
(Warning: This column contains descriptions of racialized violence and discusses some plot points in The Underground Railroad series.) For this Black TV
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In Barry Jenkinsâs reimagining of Colson Whiteheadâs popular novel âThe Underground Railroad,â it is as if the land speaks. In the light of high noon, cotton fields are menacingly fecund, owing to the work of the enslaved laborers who stand painfully erect among the crop, like stalks themselves. At night, a path leading somewhereâwhether to freedom or execution, we donât knowâpulses with death. We have known Jenkins, the director of âMoonlight,â as a portraitist. Here, working again with his longtime collaborator, the cinematographer James Laxton, he is a virtuosic landscape artist. With âThe Underground Railroad,â a compositional achievementâpictorial and psychologicalâJenkins has done for the antebellum South what J. M. W. Turner did for the sea.
Krypton, plays Caesar, another enslaved person searching for freedom. Pierre s character is an initial love interest for Cora, and the person who encourages her to run away from the plantation. Jenkins cast Pierre in the production after seeing him in
Othello at the Globe Theater in 2018. After the performance, Jenkins messaged Pierre on Twitter, asking him to audition. Shiela Atim as Mabel Amazon/Getty Images
Atim is a British actress, singer, composer, and playwright, having won the 2018 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Musical. She acts in this series as Mabel, Cora s mother. Series director Barry Jenkins saw much of his own relationship with his mother in the dynamic between Cora and Mabel. He told