Cast Members Preview TV One’s ‘Behind The Movement’

TV One’s original film, Behind The Movement, highlights how unity in the face of adversity can make all the difference. This film gives us a glimpse of the days leading up the to the first day of the Bus Boycott in Montgomery, Alabama that would go on to kickstart the Civil Rights Movement in America.

After the court’s decision to free Emmett Till’s murderers, Rosa Parks and everyone who helped her, including E.D. Nixon and Jo Robinson, use Park’s arrest to reveal the lapping flames of inequality that helped Black Americans realize that they were in a burning house.

This past week, I got the chance to interview the phenomenal leading cast members and the genius behind the script, Katrina O’Gilvie, on the red carpet where we talked about the film, the characters, and the importance of this movie in America’s current social and political climate.

“I think it’s important now because hopefully, it’ll inspire people to know that they can do what she did,” O’Gilvie said. “We all have living rooms, and it’s much easier now with social media to get people together. I think what’s important is to follow suit in that they were respectful and they were careful and they were educated and their intents were very clear.”

In the same vein, leading actress Meta Golding, who plays Rosa Parks, believes in this activism and using history as a template to pattern how American’s protest in the face of current inequalities. She explained how the bus boycott in the 1950s didn’t just happen: “There was so much strategy that was put into the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Even the fact that it was Rosa Parks that became the face of it. It was all very strategic.”

“Everyone was able to pull together. So, I think that if we want to have change, we need to come together and we need to strategize and we need to participate. We can’t just say, ‘Oh, this is terrible… we have to actually have a plan,'” Golding continued. She thinks “it’s really interesting to think about the fact that one woman made one act that changed things. But it wasn’t just her, it was a community that made the movement.”

The power of a community plays a large role in TV One’s Behind The Movement. Kristina O’Gilvie made sure her screenplay showed the contributions of many people who are likely forgotten in history, such as Alfonso Campbell, the organizer of the Transportation Committee that ensured working boycotters still got a ride to work and other necessary places.

The actor who plays this pivotal character, Sir Brodie, highlighted the importance of unity.

“The ability for people to unify and come together for a common cause — any race, multi-races — because the movement wasn’t just about Rosa. Rosa became the face of the movement, but what you find from this film is everyone was able to come together to accomplish this goal from the newspaper editor to the NAACP Head to Alfonso Campbell to [Jo Robinson].” Brodie stressed how “everyone came together and unified to achieve a common goal. And our nation needs that right now.”

Shaun Clay, the actor who plays Martin Luther King, also felt like unity was a key aspect of the film Americans could apply to their lives today. “We are not weak. Not just for us, but for the unity of everybody else. It’s not just about black people. It’s about all colors of people coming together at this point in time.”

Martin Luther King is not one of the people who is usually forgotten in the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Although he is a well-known figure who has been adapted in many previous renditions, Clay knew that in order to play the grassroots minister Dr. King, he had to break away from the “weathered… very secure” version of the reverend, as he put it.

“In Behind The Movement, we’re talking about a very young… Martin King. He’s a reverend at the time and he’s not necessarily looking to start any fires, but he’s prepared. So, for them to come in and to get him and say, ‘Hey, we need your voice to be a part of this movement,’… for me, it was like, ‘OK, well how would he speak to his peers?'”

Clay explained that “[Dr. King was a very charismatic individual, but he knew how to turn it on and turn it off. He was very much a person. So, I wanted to approach it from the perspective of, ‘OK, who is he, as a person, and how does he approach things as Martin Luther King when he’s speaking to someone on his level and they have the same goals in mind.'”

Devine also had to take on a different approach in her rendition of Jo Robinson than in the previous roles she has played in past movies like For Colored Girls and A Different World. Although Robinson hasn’t been highlighted in many past recountings of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Devine knew Robinson’s real place in history meant she needed a lot of research to tackle the reality of Robinson’s personality.

“It was a very interesting role to do. I really liked her because I wish I was as strong as she was,” Devine admitted. “She was very outspoken. She had such an interesting ambition.”

“This is the first time that I’ve gotten a chance to do one with a character as important as hers. … I got a chance to go on the Internet and to look at some of her books. … I played an interview over and over, so I got a sense of what she sounded like and how important it was to her that this got done.”

Unlike other scripts that may reimagine history, O’Gilvie wanted to stay as true to the events that happened after Rosa Parks’ fateful arrest as possible. But as she explains, it wasn’t very hard for her to do.

“I think that the tone was set and it had nothing to do with me,” O’Gilvie revealed. “I think I was just listening. I read a lot. I read biographies and I researched as much as I could. It was kind of already there, so I just had to tell it as honestly as I could. And that was my thing. For me, I just wanted everything authentic. So even a lot of the lines I pulled from dialogue in interviews.”

“The most flattering thing is that I can unearth some of these great stories and that seemed like they might be like Hollywood additions, … [but] as cool as it is on-screen, I’m sure that’s how it was there,” she continued.

Actor Roger Guenveur Smith, who plays Rosa Parks’ husband Raymond Parks, also took the time to explain how he wanted to convey his crucial role in Behind The Movement.

“I wanted to convey a sense of integrity, of discipline, ultimate and all-encompassing respect and love for his wife and for the community which they serve. And he is a community leader. He is not a formally educated gentleman,” Smith added.

“He grew up in a predominantly white county in Alabama. So, his access to formal education was very limited, but people who knew him felt that he was a college educated man because he took it upon himself to educate himself and to educate others.”

His wife and the face of the Montgomery Boycott, Rosa Parks, has also been an unsung hero in regard to her own presence in movies or television. Although we know about her from the limited recountings in our history books, she usually gets a paragraph before the passage moves on to Dr. King and the whole of the Civil Rights Movement.

Meta Golding echoed this sentiment when she said, “even though… we know who Rosa Parks is, we don’t know the story behind her. So, I think that the more that we learn about the people that came before us… that made things better for us… the more we can be inspired by them.”

Golding stressed her desire “to show that [Rosa Parks] was part of the movement.” However, she expanded on this with the explanation: “But I also wanted to show her as a regular woman, not as an icon. … We think about Rosa Parks, Reverend King as these giants, but they were human. So, I wanted to humanize her, so that everyone can see Rosa Parks in themselves. That’s it’s not some big thing, that it could be me or you.”

Not unlike what was going on in America in the 1950s and the 1960s, today’s current political and social climate is divisive on the heels of Trump’s 2016 election, political scandals, sexual assault reform, immigration reform, and all of the other civil and political injustices that Americans are currently facing.

In the same way E.D. Nixon tells the head of the NAACP that the people must realize they are in a burning house, O’Gilvie revealed that she thinks “we’re in a burning building right now. If we look at our administration.”

“I sadly think that we are battling away the flames and we have to move a little faster,” said O’Gilvie.

“I think if we can stay in that one message [of unity and purpose,] we can accomplish a lot. And we’ve seen a lot,” O’Gilvie added. “In the past year, we’ve seen two Women’s Marches. It’s an extraordinary outcome that affected not just the United States, [but] actually the entire globe. We’re seeing the #MeToo Movement, which is women feeling empowered enough to stand up and say, ‘You know what? I’m not going to allow this anymore.’ I think we’re seeing it in small pockets.”

However, O’Gilvie stressed that it’s not just people working on the ground. “We’re seeing a lot more women running for office… [these are] very essential impacts. And so, changes have to be made on many levels. Those are some of the most extraordinary levels so we can do it because of one is public, some are quiet and private, and then the other ones are at legislative levels where we need to have more women representing more minorities.”

Activism can be seen everywhere, and hopefully, this movie galvanizes current Americans to take a note from Behind The Movement and inspire them to make their own stamp in society’s history against inequality.

“I think that the movie will give young people a sense of how important it is to have a voice… and to speak out about the needs that they have and the things that they want changed,” Devine explained. ” The only way that [people] will get those things to happen is to say, ‘This is what I need to have for me to feel equal and human here in the United States.'”

Behind The Movement Los Angeles Screening Photos

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

And the cast feels like the new generation of activists cannot be afraid to make this difference.

Roger Guenveur Smith uses the words of Frederick Douglass to beautifully encompass all of these ideals Behind The Movement symbolizes in today’s society.

“‘If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet the depreciate agitation are those who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.'”

“Now we’re living in a moment where we’re being hit by earthquakes, hurricanes, fires, floods,” Smith continued. “So, we recognize the power of that and that’s what Douglass talked about; the power of nature and how it relates to the power of the human impetus — of how we can organize ourselves to be strong like an earthquake, to be strong like a tsunami, to be strong, but to fight for the good and not for the destruction of the society.”

—

Are you guys as excited as I am to see Behind The Movement on our TV screens? What does this movie and the Montgomery Bus Boycott mean to you? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!

Behind the Movement airs tonight, February 11th at 7/6c on TV One.

Follow us on Twitter @telltaleTV_

Want more from Tell-Tale TV? Subscribe to our newsletter here!