00:00What is the last film or TV show you watched that made you cry?
00:04Probably Coco.
00:06Oh my gosh! Yes!
00:08Probably Coco. My daughter.
00:11It was the second movie. I have a two-year-old.
00:14It was the second movie that we allowed her to see.
00:17So when you have these little people that come, they're blank slates.
00:21So we're super intentional about, okay, now we introduce this one.
00:25And my sister showed her Coco before, you know, so like we, you know.
00:31Anyway, it happened before we could like decide if it was okay.
00:34So I sat down and watched Coco with her and I was done with Coco.
00:46It's a historical adventure film about Harriet Tubman.
00:48The first theatrical film about Harriet Tubman.
00:50And it really takes place in freedom.
00:53It starts just before she runs for the first time.
00:57And it really follows about a decade, a little more than a decade of her life
01:02when she was at her most active and doing her most kind of exciting work.
01:06My main priority was for people to see the human woman behind the hero.
01:12You know, we know of her heroics.
01:15We know of the incredible things that she had done.
01:18But I felt like knowing how human she was, the losses that she had suffered, the love of her life leaving her,
01:28all of that made her heroics even more incredible.
01:32Because it's one thing to do something and be a hero.
01:35But it's quite another to be very human, suffer a loss and decide to keep moving forward.
01:41And that's what she did.
01:42Paul Taswell, who did our costumes, allowed us to sort of work with him to discover who these people were.
01:50His intention, I believe, was to also tell the story of each person's growth through what they wore.
01:57Definitely for Harriet, her costume would change as she went through another phase in her life,
02:05another moment in the time that she was working.
02:08So by the end, it felt really rich and heavy.
02:14And it felt like I was wearing a superhero costume by the end of the movie.
02:18And it progresses right from the beginning to the end.
02:22And to be able to be on the set with the people in that place.
02:27We were in Richmond, Virginia shooting.
02:29So it felt rural.
02:32It felt connected.
02:35And Leslie, for you, what was it like to step into this character?
02:38How did you sort of find out who he was and what was sort of driving his work?
02:44William's a storyteller in this movie and in life.
02:50He understood the importance of not just helping anybody who wound up on his doorstep.
03:00Anybody who had the courage and the great luck and fortune to make it all that way to him in Philadelphia.
03:09So he'd help them.
03:10But he really knew the importance of recording that.
03:14Of putting that down for all time.
03:17Writing that down, which was an act of bravery and risking his life and everybody else's life to write those narratives down.
03:25But I'm so glad he did.
03:27History is so heavy.
03:28It can be so heavy.
03:29But there's so much amazing inspiration in it.
03:33You know what I mean?
03:34These people were so amazing to have fought and survived and achieved so much.
03:42And these incredible acts of bravery and bravado.
03:48You know?
03:49I think of William still like hiding that book every night in the graveyard.
03:53You know?
03:54These wonderful stories.
03:55And Harriet was so, became such a guiding light in my life.
04:00She became very, very present to me.
04:04Like with us all the time.
04:07With us all the time.
04:08And you know, Cynthia really brought her.
04:10So she was just, it was like, it was a blessed, you know, couple of years of my life that I spent really deeply involved with Harriet.
04:19And take care of you.
04:20Thanks as well.
04:21Thanks, hon.
04:22ç»éČ and
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