Thandiwe Newton is known for an array of projects ranging from Mission: Impossible 2 to Westworld, which won her an Emmy back in 2018. Newton will be seen next in Reminiscence, a new sci-fi/thriller written and directed by Westworld‘s Lisa Joy that also stars Hugh Jackman and Rebecca Ferguson. ComicBook.com recently had the chance to chat with Newton, and the star brought up another HBO series, Watchmen. Newton went on to explain the show’s impact, talk the importance of re-evaluating history, and why “we need to protect our artists.”
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“Listen, [Watchmen is] an established comic book that people love, but the filmmakers, the fact that they embedded the Tulsa Massacre into that as an origin story is genius. And how can America be questioning Critical Race Theory? How? How? How?” Newton wondered. “When literally, that is an example of Critical Race Theory is to bring Tulsa into a story, superhero story, which is set in the future and to show how it’s affected us now and how it could affect us in the present in the future. It is genius!”
“Our lives depend on art now in a different way,” Newton added later in the interview. “I mean, literally our lives depend on art because art is being removed from us. It is… Slowly but surely there is a desire to remove freedom of thought. And if the arts isn’t freedom of thought, I don’t know what it is. Okay? The arts is fighting for its life. A lot of people don’t realize it. You want to take away Critical Race Theory? You’re basically taking away most of art, because art is all about re-evaluating history. And if you don’t want to re-evaluate history from an ethnic point of view, you’re not part of the human race. So I feel like we’ve got to really be careful about protecting our artists.”
She concluded, “Our artists are our freedom fighters. They’re our shamans because they have a connect… Artists have a connection to the existential out there. Not all of them. Some of them are just charlatans who just want to have sex with young people, which makes me want to vomit. But art is a place where we can just pontificate and imagine, and we need to protect our artists.”
You can watch our full interview with Thandiwe Newton at the top of the page.
Reminiscence is scheduled to be released in theatres and on HBO Max on August 20th.
