12. 12 years a slave was one of the most amazing and hardest to watch films I've ever

seen.

Adapero O'Douye, this week's guest, was in 12 years of slave and she said making it,

yeah, it was hard and yet, well, I'll let her tell it. How'd you research that role, 12 years of slave?

I read a lot of narratives written by enslaved people,

because at that point, I don't know how I got into

that stage in life without reading any.

I'd see maybe some performances like when I was younger,

you know, on stage, but I had never read so I read I read a bunch of anything I can get my hands on obviously for Frederick Douglass and

Obviously I read the book 12 was a slave and that kind of that's what I knew and

instinctively I needed to I needed that because there's nothing in my life that I could

relate to absolutely nothing I could relate to. Absolutely nothing.

I could relate to being enslaved.

You know, sometimes you can kind of, you know,

with the role you can say, oh, well, that's kind of like

there was nothing, absolutely nothing. And so instead of reading obviously I could read you know read

articles or books about it but I I needed to feel and read what it was like for people who

would have actually experienced it.

The movie is obviously genius and brilliant and affecting.

I watched it shortly after it came out,

to be perfectly honest, and I told Steve McLean was on this show, I told him the same thing. I don't know if I could watch it again. I don't know if I could go through that journey again. Because it was hard to watch. You know, which is partly the genius of the film that it sucked to be in.

It wasn't an exercise. I was there with them.

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