Latest in Kasi Lemmons

It is no secret that the Hollywood Foreign Press was put under fire for shutting out women in the Best Director category at this year’s Golden Globes. In fact, the amount of women, people of color and underrepresented voices were fairly thin across all categories. Deadline talked to female filmmakers, producers and…

The Broadway revival of The Color Purple netted Cynthia Erivo a Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album. It also led, by chance, to her movie breakthrough: the opportunity to play famed 19th century abolitionist and escaped slave Harriet Tubman in Harriet. "I went to go see The Color Purple…on Broadway and sat…

The determined struggles of true-life heroes, whose tales look to resonate loudly this awards season, were at the heart of Focus Features' Contenders NY presentation Saturday at the DGA Theater in New York City. For Harriet writer/director Kasi Lemmons (who helmed both Eve's Bayou and Talk To Me) the task was to offer…

"I had known about her since I was little," Harriet star Cynthia Erivo said of the iconic Underground Railroad hero Harriet Tubman. "I felt like she was a superhero to me and I wanted to make sure the world saw her as a human being and a woman," added the British-born Tony and Grammy winner. In our discussion about…

There is absolutely no denying Harriet Tubman’s significance in American history: a famous conductor of the Underground Railroad who freed many enslaved people, a Union Army spy and an activist for women’s suffrage. But the story of the much-lauded perennial figure of the Civil Rights movement never had been…

The Oscar show this year will be led by two women with strong producing credentials, sending us this message: There's a new generation of self-styled “badass” women filmmakers out there, ready to leave their mark on the film culture. The arrival of awards season, however, may carry a different portent: The possibility…

Eddie Murphy will receive the Career Achievement Award, and Nia Long, Chiwetel Ejiofor and director Kasi Lemmons will also be honored December 2 at the Celebration of Black Cinema presented by the Critics Choice Association (formerly known as the Broadcast Film Critics Association). The event at the new Landmark…

Harsh reality takes center stage in Focus Features' Harriet, the harrowing story of abolitionist Harriet Tubman (Cynthia Erivo), and Dark Waters, the tale of attorney Rob Bilott (portrayed by producer and star Mark Ruffalo) ,the Cincinnati lawyer who took on DuPont, which was dumping toxic materials into the water in…

Harriet Tubman, the much admired African American abolitionist, Civil War spy, philanthropist and just about everything else she could pack into 91 years, died in 1913 just as the movie industry was in its infancy. Now more than a century later this true hero is finally, finally, getting her own motion picture. Even Ha…

Setting out to score Harriet, composer Terence Blanchard was inspired and driven forward by the iconic subject of Kasi Lemmons' drama—Harriet Tubman, the slave-turned-abolitionist who repeatedly risked her life to save hundreds of other men, women and children from the horrors of an inhuman institution. Marking…

When Kasi Lemmons saw that Cynthia Erivo was attached in the titular role of Harriet, Lemmons knew she wanted to direct the film. Then together, the pair worked hard to present an authentic picture of legendary abolitionist Harriet Tubman. “I can remember you being at my house and [talking about], 'Look at her face to…

It's been almost a year since Cynthia Erivo first stepped into Harriet Tubman's shoes in Harriet—a biopic about the historical heroine who escaped slavery and freed hundreds of slaves via the Underground Railroad. And it's almost a year, too, since Erivo first felt the wrath of Twitter. As a British woman of Nigerian…