May 13, 2021
LOS ANGELES (AP) When Oscar-winning director Barry Jenkins was considering adapting Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about the Underground Railroad into a limited series, he kept hearing the same thing: Impossible.
It would be emotionally and mentally draining, Jenkins knew. And he questioned the ethics of such a production: Do people really need to be reminded about the horrors of slavery?
Ultimately, Jenkins worked through the doubts. The result is “The Underground Railroad,” an unflinching portrayal of Cora, an enslaved woman who escapes a Georgia plantation and its horrors only to be pursued by an unrelenting bounty hunter. Along the way she must confront the anger she feels for her mother, who left her at the plantation when she was 10.
The cast of ‘The Underground Railroad’ on telling the story of the black experience
Updated:
Updated:
May 13, 2021 16:44 IST
Thuso Mbedu, William Jackson Harper, Aaron Pierre, Sheila Atim and Joel Edgerton speak of picking up cues from Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel and director Barry Jenkins
Share Article
Aaron Pierre and Thuso Mbedu in The Underground Railroad
Thuso Mbedu, William Jackson Harper, Aaron Pierre, Sheila Atim and Joel Edgerton speak of picking up cues from Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel and director Barry Jenkins
Oscar Award-winning director, Barry Jenkins, has adapted Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel,
Review: âThe Underground Railroadâ Weaves an Epic Vision
In Barry Jenkinsâs dreamlike adaptation of the Colson Whitehead novel, the railway is real and so is the pain.
Thuso Mbedu is a woman on the run in an alternative antebellum America in “The Underground Railroad,” arriving Friday on Amazon.Credit.Kyle Kaplan/Amazon Studios
The Underground Railroad
NYT Critic s Pick
In Barry Jenkinsâs transfixing adaptation of Colson Whiteheadâs âThe Underground Railroad,â Martin (Damon Herriman), a white man smuggling Cora (Thuso Mbedu) as she escapes slavery, rouses her before dawn to witness something ghastly. Along the road theyâre traveling, grimly called âThe Freedom Trail,â the trees are hung with lynched corpses. âYou need to see this,â he tells her.