To the long list of achievements that this British actor, born in Oxford to Nigerian parents, has accumulated in his 47 years of life, he can now add that of having popularized the story of Bass Reeves, a former American slave who at the end of the 19th century became the first black police chief west of the Mississippi River. As David Oyelowo, who is also executive producer of Lawmen: Bass Reeves, tells it in this interview, being able to complete the role that just earned him his third Golden Globe nomination as an actor was not easy at all. After several attempts to find someone who wanted to bring the story to the screen, he came across Taylor Sheridan, who, now the king of television westerns thanks to Yellowstone, helped him make it a reality. The SkyShowtime platform has just premiered the series in Spain.
Did you know the story of Bass Reeves before you were offered to star in the series?
The truth is that I was completely unaware of it, and I can’t understand how I have never heard of it. In 2014, a producer contacted me to tell this story, and when I found out who it was, I was surprised that there weren’t several movies, TV series, or comics about him. This man should have been up there with Wyatt Earp and Billy the Kid. And yet, it was not like that. I think there are some insidious reasons why that never happened, which explains my obsession with correcting that absence, and the eight years it took to get to the current moment. Now the world has finally learned who Bass Reeves was.
What was your relationship with westerns before this role?
I have been fascinated by westerns since I was a child. When I was little I dreamed of riding a horse, and I remember that he made the galloping noise hitting the furniture in the dining room of my house to the despair of my mother. I loved westerns like True Grit, but at some point I realized that one in four cowboys was black and that was never seen on screen. To be honest, I began to have a problematic relationship with Westerns because I felt like they were a lie, an imagined version of the Wild West. And that made filming Bass Reeves an obsession.
How arduous was the filming?
This was the hardest filming I have done in my entire career, and I have performed classic works, particularly Shakespeare, which are far from simple. Filming this series was physically exhausting. It took us five to six months to complete, in incredibly inclement weather. But also, personally, it was very demanding. We had to film on a plantation where 80 enslaved people had lived during the times we portrayed on the screen. Those days of filming were very hard. You could sense their ghosts, which influenced the way we filmed some scenes there.
Why was it so hard?
I had to learn a lot of things to be able to play this role. I rode for a year to be ready when filming started. When I watch something, I connect more when I feel like the people telling the story are in full command of the talents their character is supposed to have. I remember when I saw Kevin Costner in Dances with Wolves, I was so impressed because he was totally connected to the rocks and the dust and the terrain of that place. I thought back then that if he ever had the opportunity to do something like that, he wasn’t going to waste it. So I took everything very seriously, and that included learning to speak Creek and Choctaw.
