On Movies: Oyelowo's long wait to play MLK Jr.

Midway through Lee Daniels' The Butler, 2013's true-story portrait of a black man who worked at the White House under eight presidents, the character played by David Oyelowo is in a room with an actor in the role of Martin Luther King Jr.

Oyelowo's Louis Gates, the radicalized son of the titular servant played by Forest Whitaker, is talking to the civil rights leader, a champion of nonviolent protest. It's a telling moment, with King addressing the "subversive role of the black domestic" in American life.

And it was a tough scene for Oyelowo (pronounced oh-yellow-oh) to play - not so much because of the internal conflict his character faced, but because Oyelowo had long committed to star in a film in which he was going to play King.

"It was a bit weird," says the actor, who finally can be seen as King in Ava DuVernay's searing and powerful Selma, opening Friday in area theaters.

"To be in a scene with Dr. King in The Butler was strange because at the time we had been struggling to get this film, Selma, off the ground, and hadn't managed it. And then here I am playing opposite the very character I'm supposed to have played. To be perfectly honest, it felt like a bit of a mocking situation. 'Really? I'm not going to get to play him, but I get to act opposite him?'

"So yes, it's very nice to now be able to say I did that scene - and now I've done this film."

Selma finds King at a pivotal moment in his life, in his quest for equality: the 1965 campaign to secure voting rights for Southern blacks, leading to the historic march through Alabama from Selma to Montgomery - a march that came in the wake of bloody protests, pitting blacks against whites, police and Ku Klux Klan against civil rights leaders, the clergy, and activists from the north. News footage of protesters being beaten by police, of women and children corralled by police dogs, shocked a nation. And DuVernay's restaging of the historic events holds a chilling resonance in a year that has seen similarly explosive protests in Ferguson, Mo., and across the land where racial tensions have flared.

"We made this film to entertain, to inform, to highlight this incredible time in America's history," says Oyelowo, on the phone from Toronto recently. "But we also did it to honor these incredible heroes, some of them who are known, some of them who are known less than they should be known .. . . People like Andrew Young, John Lewis, Julian Bond, and Diane Nash. These are incredible human beings who put their lives on the line for this nation, standing against injustice."

Ironically, in casting Selma, DuVernay went to four Britons to play key roles: Oyelowo as King, Tom Wilkinson as Lyndon Johnson, a president depicted as reluctant to push the Voting Rights Act forward (a depiction whose accuracy has been challenged by historians and by a member of Johnson's cabinet), Tim Roth as Alabama Gov. George Wallace, and Carmen Ejogo as Coretta Scott King.

"I really was just thinking of the best person for the role," says DuVernay, on a recent Philadelphia stopover. "But I realized afterward that because David, Tom, Tim and Carmen are so removed from the iconography, they had deeper explorations to make. They had no local memory, no emotional pull. King was just a historical figure to them, a historical figure from another country. . . .

"I mean, I wasn't alive when Johnson was in office, but my grandmother had a picture of him on the wall. . . . I know what people felt about him. And my father, who is from Alabama, would talk about Wallace. . . .

"But these were just names in books to [the English actors], so they had to dive deep. Especially David - he had so much to explore. And I think we benefited from that in some ways. Even though" - she says with a laugh - "I feel like I have to apologize."

For Oyelowo, the Oxford-born son of Nigerian parents, the challenge was daunting: to honor the legacy of King, to capture the poetry and power in his oratory, the intensity of his demeanor, his resolve and sense of purpose.

"As a Brit coming to this, you put an extra amount of pressure on yourself to get it right, because inevitably you're going to endure a little bit more scrutiny than maybe you otherwise would," he says. "But I think even if you're an American, even if you're from Atlanta and playing Dr. King, you couldn't just walk in off the street and think, 'I know what he sounds like, I know who he was,' and just throw yourself in front of a camera. . . .

"The thing that I really wanted to get right was to join the dots between the man we know and the man we don't. . . . You have to be able to evoke his oratory, you have to be able to get to a semblance of what he looked like, but what we know less about is who he was behind closed doors. Who he was in solitary moments. And so that's where I had to imbue the character with humanity. . . . And to join those dots in a way that feels integrated and believable."

Oyelowo, who lives in Los Angeles now with his wife and children, has been acting since the late 1990s. First in the U.K., on stage and television, and then in the U.S. Recent titles include Interstellar and A Most Violent Year. He was in Lincoln, The Help, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, The Last King of Scotland. He was in DuVernay's 2012 Sundance winner, Middle of Nowhere, and in Daniels' The Paperboy that same year. Almost always in supporting roles, in service to other actors.

Asked to consider Selma's Oscar possibilities, and whether Academy members will follow the Golden Globes with a best director nomination, DuVernay quickly deflects.

"I know that for me it's the longest of long shots," she says. "There's no precedent for it. It's never happened. . . . But David, I see that performance and I know what he did, the work that he put it into it - and it's not just work. It's something transcendent, you can see it in his eyes.

"And you know, he's been in so many films. He's in every film" - she laughs. "Always on the margins, always on the side doing great, solid work. And now he's at the center of this and he deserves to be recognized. . . .

"If any of this awards stuff matters, that's what I want to see. I really want to see that nomination for him. I will be so happy."

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