Harriet Tubman Biopic Scheduled for Release in 2019

(EMPIRE NEWS NETWORK—ENN)— Over a century after her death, a Harriet Tubman biopic is finally scheduled for release in the fall of 2019.

The biographical movie, Harriet, will focus on the freedom fighter’s escape from slavery in 1849 and her heroic efforts to free hundreds of slaves as a conductor on the underground railroad.

While many remember Harriet Tubman as an influential abolitionist speaker and a Union Army scout during the Civil War, these aspects of her life will not appear in detail throughout the film. According to the film’s director, Kasi Lemmons, they made the choice to document the earlier portion of Tubman’s life to provide people with a new perspective on the popular historic figure.

“The images that we see of Harriet Tubman and the way we’re used to thinking of her is of a much older person, but to think what she did when she was a young woman is quite extraordinary,” she told Refinery 29. “That period of her life [is what] we often refer to, [but] we don’t really have a lot of [visuals] from that period, when she was really doing her superwoman thing.”

Cynthia Erivo, a British actress known for her Tony and Grammy award-winning role as Celie in the 2015 Broadway revival of The Color Purple, will be playing the role of Harriet.

According to Lemmons, Cynthia perfectly fit the image she had in her head of how she wants to portray Harriet.

“When I met Cynthia, I already had this picture of who this young woman was: very petite, very powerful and very spiritual, who could sing and who was an incredible mimic, and who had to be an incredible actress,” Lemmons said. “All of a sudden, I’m looking at this woman that is all of these things.”

While other actresses have played tribute to the historic figure in productions such as WGN’S Underground and NBC’s Timeless, Cynthia will be the first actress to represent Harriet Tubman in a biopic about her life.