Chiwetel in the danger zone

 

Chiwetel Ejiofor remembered that for such a dark moment it was a very hot, beautiful day ‘and blue sky as far as the eye could see’.
The award-winning actor was in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, where he had to act in a scene for Steve McQueen’s masterpiece, 12 Years A Slave. 
Chiwetel portrays the real-life Solomon Northup, a freeman who was abducted and sold into slavery. All of a sudden, every-thing he’d held dear — his wife, his children, his name and his  freedom — were stripped from him. He was someone else’s property.
The scene I’m referring to involves Michael Fassbender as Edwin Epps — a cruel, Bible-quoting plantation owner — Chiwetel’s Solomon and Patsey (played by Lupita Nyong’o), known as the Cotton Queen for her high cotton-picking yields, who is forced to satisfy ‘the predilections and peculiarities’ of Epps at any time of the day and night.
In this particular scene, Epps wants Patsey flayed alive — and demands Solomon does it. 
‘When Solomon describes the beating of Patsey in his book, he feels that nowhere else in the world was there a darker moment happening,’ Chiwetel told me.
We were talking in London on Monday about the making of the film, which has received seven Golden Globe nominations and is expected to haul in many more when Bafta and Oscar categories are revealed next month.
‘I remember I rode in with Lupito that day. It was early and we had a conversation about it,’ he said.

During shooting, a stunt man monitored the whipping and marked an area that Chiwetel and Fassbender could not cross.
‘It was very technical. If you stepped across the mark, you would be in the danger zone and Lupita would have been lashed for real.

‘Of course, we never got that  close. We just did the best we could to recreate the dark moment.’
When Solomon is abducted, Chiwetel, too, was beaten — whacked with a wooden paddle until it splintered for real. ‘There was no way of avoiding that. You couldn’t tell the story without showing what the psychological humiliation was,’ he said.
Yet, strangely, in a way the film is a love story. The yearning and longing Solomon has for his family is raw.
‘It’s about how powerful the connection we have to our family and the ones we love, and how when that’s disrupted it creates a whole other kind of fire,’ Chiwetel told me



 ‘Solomon doesn’t want to survive — he wants to live. 
‘It’s that belief that he will see his loved ones again that helps him. It’s also part of what puts him in danger of losing his  mind.’
That the actor can convey such a complex set of emotions without going over the top marks his  performance as the best of  his career so far in the  hottest picture of this year — and probably the next one, too.









 Baz Bamigboye