If there’s one bright light to come out of the thorny revelations about The Birth of a Nation director, writer, and star Nate Parker’s rape allegations from back in 1999, it’s been cast member Gabrielle Union’s beautiful outspokenness about sexual assault and its effect on survivors like herself. Union doesn’t have any lines, or much screen time, in the soon-to-be-released biopic of slave rebellion leader Nat Turner, who headed up the massacre of 64 members of slaveholding families in 1831, but her presence is powerful, as a slave who is one night wrenched from her husband’s hands (Coleman Domingo) so her body can be used as entertainment for visiting slave owners. At the film’s Sundance premiere, Union told me that she’d actually asked Parker to cut her character’s lines. “It’s just more symbolic of the lack of control or power that black women had, and have, over our own bodies,” she said. “As a rape survivor, I know how powerful and voiceless I felt myself for a very, very long time, and the shame and the rage. It’s only relatively recently that I found the power to have a voice. But part of that comes with the entitlement of celebrity. Our ancestors were never afforded a voice, so to me, it was important that she stay voiceless so you really get that they didn’t have one.”
Two weeks ago, Union wrote an op-ed for the L.A. Times about her own struggle in reconciling her distaste and confusion over the allegations against Parker with her passion for the movie and its message of resistance. And at today’s Toronto Film Festival press conference for the film, she vigorously defended the film, just as she had at a post-premiere Q&A two days earlier. “We’re not creating a movie, we’re creating a movement,” she said, adding she invited those fighting against sexual violence, or transphobia, to join them, and to see the movie first without passing judgment. “If you were confused why Ryan Lochte was called a child, was referred to a kid, and was celebrated and rewarded with a Dancing With The Stars appearance, but you’re wondering why Tamir Rice was never referred to as a child but murdered within seconds for acting like a child, and you have a problem with that,” she said, “this movie is for you as well. If you’re a decent human being who wants to take part in a conversation at the very least about things that bug the crap out of you, this movie is for you as well, and I hope you don’t sit it out.”
But it was when asked about Hollywood’s response to her op-ed that Union really proved herself to be an amazing spontaneous orator. Ninety percent of the response had been amazing, she said, then there were the “five percent [that] feels I threw Nate under the bus, and five percent [that] feels I’m a rape apologist.” But that ten percent of negativity wasn’t going to deter her from speaking her mind, even if at times it meant speaking out in a way that could damage Parker. “Every time I talk about sexual violence I want to puke,” she said. “There’s never been a time in the last 23 years where I did not want to vomit, but my personal discomfort is nothing compared to being a voice for people who feel absolutely voiceless and powerless… So if there’s any message I can give anyone who’s ever sat in my seat, it’s, ‘You are not broken, you are not alone, you have a tremendous amount of support. Whether you speak out or you opt to keep your pain personal, you are real, you are valid, you are loved, and you are worthwhile.’”
Read her full remarks below.