For the first time, the tragic story of Emmett Till is told cinematically in Till. The film focuses on Mamie Till-Mobley, the mother of Emmett Till, and all that she endured after the tragic lynching and death of her son in 1955.
One of the stars of the film, Whoopi Goldberg stops by to chat with Dave Morales and Backstage OL about what it was like work on such an important film.
Death, racism, and perseverance are just a few of the powerful themes covered in Till. Centering on the death of 14-year-old Emmett Till, the film comes with emotional and transcendent scenes. Whoopi tells BackstageOL about the emotional journey she took to make and shoot the film. 
Its a Journey
“Well just getting it up and running, Keith Beauchamp really has been championing this for over 20 years and to finally get the go-ahead to make the film. Two of our producing partners who happened to be white have stayed off to the side because they didn’t want to be seen as coming in as saviors. But the beauty of making anything is you get engaged people who are engaged in what you’re doing, who really want to help,” says Goldberg.
“So without Barbara, Broccoli, and Fred Zollo, we might still be fighting to get it made but the perseverance was the three of them, Keith and Barbara, and Fred. I came in and they were already trying to get it done, so we’ve been doing this so long that initially, I was going to play Mamie. That’s how young I was so that tells you how long ago we how long it’s been since we’ve been trying to get this done,” she added.
“I’m thrilled that it got done finally and as I’ve been saying to everybody this is our version of The Diary of Anne Frank. We’re telling you what happened, we’re telling you from the perspective of a young person who did not survive the murder. It’s a story that everybody is heard bits and pieces of but Keith wrote and Chinonye directed a brilliant film that allows you to come in and feel and see where we were and make yourself question why are we still there why is it still happening.”
A Big Question
With a long and storied career such as Whoopi’s, including films such as Corrina, Corrina, Sister Act, and The Color Purple. Whoopi tells Morales why she still loves acting and continues to do it.
“It just allows me to be somebody else for a while, it allows me to check out of my own stuff and be elsewhere but also I’m not really good at a lot of other stuff. I wouldn’t be good in a bank or trying to be a crossing guard, I’d be spacing out doing other stuff so this seems to be the one place nobody gets too angry at me,” she jokingly says.
Whoopi leaves Backstage OL and audiences a question to ask themselves after viewing Till. “I think you people should say ‘Are we still okay with this?’ because if we’re not, we should probably start trying to do something about it.”
Till starring Danielle Deadwyler, Jalyn Hall, Whoopi Goldberg, Haley Bennett, and Sean Patrick Thomas releases in theaters on October 14, 2022.
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