THERE is an entry in David Oyelowo’s prayer diary dated July 24, 2007. In it, the English actor wrote that he would one day play America’s foremost civil rights leader, Martin Luther King, Jr.
“To be perfectly frank, I felt God tell me I was going to play this role before I die. I knew it,” says Oyelowo.
“What I didn’t realise is that it was going to take seven years to get done!”
It was around this same time that the script which would eventually become Selma — honing in on King’s 1965 voting right marches in Selma, Alabama, and his battles with President Lyndon B. Johnson — got a bit of momentum.
Oyelowo met with the first director attached to the project, but was rejected as wrong for the part. Regardless, the actor went into training.