Bayard Rustin was a civil rights activist who became a public advocate on behalf of gay causes in the 1980s. Because of the work he did in civil rights, a biopic called Rustin is set to be released on Netflix soon. PopCulture.com recently caught up with Colman Domingo who will play the titular character in the Netflix film. He teased what to expect from the movie that was produced by Barack and Michelle Obama’s production company Higher Ground Productions.
“I tried to make sure that I forgot that it was produced by Barack and Michelle Obama,” Domingo exclusively told PopCulture. “I sort of make sure I get very small and just think of the task at hand with humanizing one of my heroes and to give all that I can. And I think I did. We finished principal photography at the end of December. And I know that the attempt is to make sure that we illuminate this man who has been sidelined in the history books.”
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Rustin is known for organizing the 1963 March on Washington with A. Philip Randolph. The march is one of the largest political rallies on human rights in United States history, and one of the highlights of it was Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. On September 6, 1963, a photograph of Rustin and Randolph appeared on the cover of Life magazine, and the two were called “the leaders” of the march.
When Rustin died in 1987, then-President Ronald Regan issued a statement that said, ″He will be sorely missed by all those who shared his commitment to the twin causes of peace and freedom. As few men have, Mr. Rustin understood that the struggle for the two is inseparable; either we achieve them both or neither. Mr. Rustin held to this belief all his adult life.”
Rustin will also star Chris Rock, Jeffrey Wright, Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Aml Ameen who will play Martin Luther King Jr. George C. Wolfe directed Rustin and also wrote the screenplay with Dustin Lance Black. “In one way it feels like a tremendous responsibility, but I had to put the responsibility on the shelf and just think of it step by step and take the small steps and just create this vivid human, living, breathing person and take him out of just his ideology and what people may know about him, if they know anything about him and just make them a real-life human being,” Domingo said. “So I hope that I did that and that was the attempt. So we’ll see what happens in the editing room and it’s in the hands of George C. Wolf and our wonderful editors.”
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