‘Selma’ star David Oyelowo brings a song-less ‘Les Mis’ to TV
Twelve years ago, a vaguely known British actor with an unusual surname decided — like thousands of hopefuls before him൩ — to take a gamble on moving to Hollywood.
Except that David Oyelowo, fresh from a three-year stint as intelligence officer Danny Hunter on the BBC drama “Spoo🃏ks” (re-titled in the US), couldn’t just chuck a few things in a bag and find the nearest motel on the Sunset Strip. The actor was a married man, with two kids in tow and another on the way; this would have to be a family decision.
“We literally said, ‘Let’s sell up and give this a go,’” Oyelowo recalls. “We deliberately decided we didn’t want to have a safety net. ‘Go big or go 𝔍home,’ we said. And we so nearly went home. I didn’t work for 14 months.”
It’s hard to imagine Oyelowo — who would go on to perfectly embody Martin Luther King Jr. ⛦in “Selma,” star alongside Tom Cruise in “Jack Reacher,” work with Christopher Nolan in “Interstellar” and steal scenes in Lee Daniels’ “The Butler” and “The Paperboy” — struggling for a single ꦡmoment. But, he tells Alexa, the struggle was real.
“We knew there may be tough times, but we didn’t know they were 𓆉going to be as tough as they were,” he admits. “To make ends meet, I taught drama at [the University of Southern California] for a little bit, and that Trader Joe’s application was burning a hole in my pocket. Oh yeah, it was tough.”
Today, Oyelowo, his actor/producer wife Jessica and their four children (Asher, 17, who’s a runway model for Dolce & Gabbana; Caleb, 14, who’s keen to follow in dad’s footsteps; Penuel, 11; and Zoe, 7) are all living th✤e California dream. Well, except for the weather part.
The actor is currently draped in a bathrobe and🦂 r🐲olled in a blanket, shivering on an unseasonably cold beach in Playa del Rey for our Alexa cover shoot.
After it wraps, we head into his trailer, which is as warm as his per🃏sonality. Oyelowo may be a serious actor, but he also laughs easily. His clipped and precise British accent, he says, is a consequence of studying drama at the prestigious London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. (“They knock all the London out of you,” he jokes.)
Although he’s gone on to become a huge Hollywood success by anyone’s standards ꧂— as an increasingly powerful actor, writer and soon-to-be director — those fallow 14 months left their mark.
“I🎉 don’t know — as an actor — if you ever really feel like a Trader Joe’s application is far from reach,” he says. “And that’s why I have a production company. I’m not very good at waiting by the phone for the agent to ring.”
He says he learned a great deal about the production process during the seven years it took from the “Selma” script landing on his doorstep in 2007 to the film actually being released in 2014. Oyelowo watched five directors come🅷 and go over that period, and ultimately helped to se𓄧cure acclaimed director Ava DuVernay for the job.
These days, Oyelowo is doing as much of👍 his own producing and writing as he is acting🎃, co-founding the production company Yoruba Saxon with Jessica.
In April, his six-part TV miniseries adaptation of Victor Hugo’s classic will air on PBS. Oyelowo executive produced the project and stars as Javert, 🎶alongside recent Oscar-winner Olivia Colman as Madame Thénardier and Dominic West as Valjean. And, perhaps as a surprise to Les Mis’ Broadway fans, not a single person will burst into song for the entire six-hour production.
“With six hours of television, we can offer so much more nuance and complexity and dimension than the m൩usical could ever give you,” he says. “Plus, I just felt it really spoke to the time we’re in: the erosion of the middle class, revolution in the streets. Living here in America, I don’t think we’ve seen this many protests and marches since the civil rights movement.”
Oyelowo will also soon start work on his directorial debut, the draꦇma “The Water Man,” which is being produced by Yoruba Saxon and along with Opr꧋ah Winfrey’s Harpo Films. “I’m very nervous. It’s no joke directing a movie,” he says.
That project comes on the heels of his starring role in the psychological thriller (from horror stalwart Blumhouse Productions), which debuted in January at the Sun🍸dance Film Festival. Oyelowo describes it as “a love story between an uncle and his n꧒iece.”
“His niece gets💙 murdered and somehow time splits, and he realizes that she is in the past and he is two weeks in the future, and he has to save her,” he explains. “It’s really just about trying to reach someone you love and take them from any harm which — as a father — is something I live with every day.”
The actor pauses to take out his phone and proudly show off a picture of his oldest boys, Asher and Caleb. Oyelowo is in the picture, too, but you can barely see him behind their towering frames. He’s an extremely proud💟 family man.
“My mother passed away a couple of years ago, and my father came to live with us,”🎃 he says. “He gets to hang out with his grandchildren, and be looked after by me — which I think of as a huge privilege.”
His father, Stephen — a prince from Nigeria (“which sounds more impressive than it is,” Oyelowo explains modestly) — has completely adaptedꦚ to LA life.
“For some reason, he’s obsessed with leaf blowing and he goes to the movies about twice a week, which he never used to do,” Oyelowo says. The family, along with their three dogs, has set up home in Tarzana, an LA suburb about 20 miles from archetypal celeb enclaves 🐭like Beverly Hills or Malibu.
“I like that it’s a bit further out, not in the middle of the crazy,” he explains. “I mean, my wife and I just kept having children, and ꦆit’s a good place to have a lot of space.
“Jessica just doesn’t like cities, and where we live, people walk down the street with their horses.”
Oyelowo may have separated himself from the center of celebrity culture physically, but he’s as entwined as any A-list power player.ဣ Not that he’s entirely used to his current social circle.
“Oh, I definitely 🍒pinch myself,” he laughs. “This is going to sound so conceited to your readers, but I’m going to say it anyway. I was in my bathroom yesterday, and I was on the phone to Oprah Winfrey while Mel Gibson was texting me. I got off the phone, and I went, ‘Who are you? What is this life🍷?’ Oprah had said to me, ‘Look at God, look at us, aren’t we blessed?’ And I went, ‘Yes. Yes we are.’”
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