Jessica Chastain revealed on Entertainment Weekly’s The Awardist podcast (recorded before the SAG-AFTRA strike) that she would like to reprise the role of Celia Foote in the sequel to the 2011 film The Help. As a lonely housewife bereaved over several miscarriages, Celia forms a friendship with her maid, Minerva “Minny” Jackson, played by Octavia Spencer, for which she won an Oscar. “You know who I think about all the time, and I just wish I could play her [again]? Celia Foote,” Chastain said. “I just want to do something, Celia and Minny, and see what happened. You know they ended up living together and raising the baby together, they were best friends. How amazing would that film be? I loved her, and I got to be a bit silly.”
“A lot of my characters I feel like I got to experience a lot,” Chastain continued. “Celia, it was such a deep dive for me. I really threw on that character, and I didn’t really get to mine that much material because I was a supporting part of that story. That’s a character I wish I could revisit.” The movie The Help, adapted from Kathryn Stockett’s 2009 novel of the same name, earned four Oscar nominations, including best picture. Chastain and Spencer were both nominated for best supporting actress, which Spencer won. Among the film’s ensemble members, Chastain, Spencer, Viola Davis, Emma Stone, and more won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture.
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While the movie The Help had a successful box office run, it also caused controversy. The lead actress in the film, Viola Davis, told Vanity Fair in 2020 that the story was “created in the filter and cesspool of systemic racism.” “Not a lot of narratives are also invested in our humanity,” Davis said. “They’re invested in the idea of what it means to be Black, but… it’s catering to the white audience. The white audience at the most can sit and get an academic lesson into how we are. Then they leave the movie theater and they talk about what it meant. They’re not moved by who we were.” “There’s no one who’s not entertained by ‘The Help,’” Davis added. “But there’s a part of me that feels like I betrayed myself, and my people, because I was in a movie that wasn’t ready to [tell the whole truth].”
