The Nate Parker Interview: What’s Next for ‘The Birth of a Nation’

Nate Parker (photo)

Story by Variety
Written by Ramin Setoodeh

Two weeks ago, Nate Parker was a different man — on the verge of making it on Hollywood’s A-list with his American period drama “The Birth of a Nation.” He strolled into a restaurant in Sherman Oaks, Calif., with his 6-year-old daughter in tow. “My wife just had a baby, so I’m taking the burden off her,” he told a Variety reporter about his fatherly duties. He talked about how his oldest of five daughters is gearing up for her freshman year in college, and how he recently surprised her with a visit to New York to see “Hamilton.” And he seemed most proud of the legacy he was leaving for his children as the director, star, producer, and writer of “The Birth of a Nation,” the Sundance Film Festival darling about the slave revolt of 1831 led by Nat Turner, which sold for a record-shattering $17.5 million to Fox Searchlight.

This story first appeared in the August 23, 2016 issue of Variety. Subscribe today.

But since then, all hell has broken loose. Parker spoke in this interview for the first time in years about a dark incident from his past that’s come to define him. In 1999, as an undergraduate at Penn State University, he and his roommate Jean Celestin (the co-writer of “The Birth of a Nation”) were charged with raping an 18-year-old student. Although he was acquitted in a 2001 trial, details from the case generated a media firestorm, and the blogosphere turned on Parker with calls to boycott his film. The situation heightened when Variety uncovered that the victim had committed suicide at 30 in 2012, a development that caught Fox Searchlight and Parker off guard. (Both declined request for a follow-up interview.)

Now, some potential ticket buyers have already sworn off his movie months before its October debut in theaters. “You collaborated on a rape 17 years ago, and now you pull him in to make this film together,” says Kamilah Willingham, 30, one of the campus-assault survivors featured in the documentary “The Hunting Ground.” “I’m trying to picture a way this could turn out in which the film can still be celebrated. I can’t.”

Parker is still scheduled to appear at the Toronto Film Festival, but a source in communication with him says that he’s in a low place. He vacillates between thinking the case is resurfacing now after 17 years because of a Hollywood conspiracy against him or just bad luck. He’s disappointed over the backlash on social media and that the African-American online community hasn’t been more supportive. And he’s even mad at himself, for underestimating the public’s interest in a court case that happened so long ago.

“Seventeen years ago, I experienced a very painful moment in my life,” Parker told Variety last week. “It resulted in it being litigated. I was cleared of it. That’s that. Seventeen years later, I’m a filmmaker. I have a family. I have five beautiful daughters. I have a lovely wife. I get it. The reality is, I can’t relive 17 years ago. All I can do is be the best man I can be now.”

It’s not clear what Parker’s path forward is from here. He will have to navigate difficult waters, given that his statements about the film, as well as the movie itself (especially a fictional rape scene involving key characters), will be viewed under a different lens. “I say if you have injustice, this is your movie,” Parker said about “The Birth of a Nation,” a line that could be met with raised eyebrows now. He wanted to use the movie to inspire a movement — he even recorded a PSA to run before the film — to talk about the wounds that slavery inflicted on generations of U.S. citizens. “Americans suffers from post-traumatic stress syndrome from a time that we refuse to address,” Parker said. “Healing only comes from honest confrontation. Any psychologist will tell you that.”...

...Read more: http://variety.com/2016/film/news/nate-parker-interview-rape-trial-birth-of-a-nation-1201841223/