'Harriet' Screenwriter Reveals Studio Exec Once Suggested Julia Roberts to Play Harriet Tubman

Tommaso Boddi/FilmMagic; Glen Wilson/Focus Features

(L-R) Julia Roberts and Cynthia Erivo in 'Harriet'

In a recent interview, Gregory Allen Howard said that when challenged on the casting, the Hollywood exec who allegedly floated the idea said, "It was so long ago. No one is going to know the difference."

A Hollywood studio executive once suggested the idea of Julia Roberts playing the iconic abolitionist and activist Harriet Tubman in a biopic, according to Harriet screenwriter Gregory Allen Howard.

In a recent interview, that has gone viral on social media, Howard was asked about the production history of the long-gestating Tubman biopic which became Harriet. The scribe said it was his first Hollywood assignment and that it had been in development for 26 years. "I wanted to turn Harriet Tubman's life, which I’d studied in college, into an action-adventure movie. 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.""...........

Read more on The Hollywood Reporter

Back to Cinema-movietheater.com