Julia Roberts as Harriet Tubman

Overview

Julia Roberts as Harriet Tubman refers to a story told by screenwriter Gregory Allen Howard in which a Hollywood executive suggested that white actor Julia Roberts play African American political activist and abolitionist Harriet Tubman in a film biopic. Online, people reacted with outrage towards the story.

Background

On November 1st, 2019, Gregory Allen Howard, the screenwriter of the 2019 biopic Harriet, participated in an interview with Focus Features.^[1] During the talk, Howard told of the history of getting the film made. One story involved a studio executive suggesting that Julia Roberts play Harriet Tubman. He said:

The climate in Hollywood, however, was very different back then. I was told how one studio head said in a meeting, "This script is fantastic. Let's get Julia Roberts to play Harriet Tubman." When someone pointed out that Roberts couldn’t be Harriet, the executive responded, "It was so long ago. No one is going to know the difference."

Developments

Online Reaction

On November 19th, 2019, the story appeared in the LA Times^[2] (shown below).

Picture 1994: “This is a great script. Let’s get Julia Roberts to play Harriet Tubman,” said the then-president of a studio sublabel. Fortunately, there was a single black person in that studio meeting 25 years ago who told him that Harriet Tubman was a black woman. The president replied, “That was so long ago. No one will know that.”

Following the release of the LA Times story, people online began reacting to the story.

Twitter user @jackieaina tweeted^[3] a series of screenshots of the article and corresponding reaction images. The post received more than 29,000 likes and 9,100 retweets in less than 24 hours (shown below, left).

Twitter user @EoinHiggins_ tweeted,^[4] "Staring at this headline for the last 14 minutes." The tweet received more than 1,400 likes and 245 retweets in less than 24 hours (shown below, center).

Twitter user @nancywyuen posted^[5] a series of photographs of actors playing people of color. They captioned the tweet, "Can’t believe that some studio head wanted to cast Julia Roberts as Harriet Tubman!" The tweet received more than 2,300 likes and 600 retweets in less than 24 hours (shown below, right).

Twitter^[6] user @Asia_Bean posted a photograph of Tubman as part of the Gonna Tell My Kids meme. They wrote, "Gonna tell my kids this is Julia Roberts." The post received more than 25,000 likes and 5,000 retweets in less than 24 hours (shown below).

On November 20th, Redditor ^[7] lamb_shanks posted about the story in the /r/nottheonion subreddit. The post received more than 815 points (94% upvoted) and 115 comments in less than 24 hours.

Media Coverage

Several media outlets covered the story, including Entertainment Weekly,^[8] TMZ,^[9] US Weekly,^[10] CNN^[11] and more.

Search Interest

Not Available.

External References