"The Help", a collaboration between lifelong friends Kathryn Stockett, who wrote the best-selling novel of the same name, and Tate Taylor, the film's writer-director, portrays three unlikely cohorts who expose scandals and civil-rights injustices in 1960s Jackson, Miss.
The feature film is lead by a strong female cast, including Emma Stone, who plays Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan and breakout star Octavia Spencer, who plays Minny Jackson, an outspoken maid with a devilish secret.
In a video interview with ComingSoon.net, the leading lady Emma Stone, in her first major dramatic role, reveals how she stepped into character as the ambitious writer Skeeter.
"Since it's based on a book, I felt so lucky," said Stone in the ComingSoon.net exclusive video. "When I read a book, it's like I know those characters and my interpretation of those characters so well. I've never gotten to be in a movie version of a book before, so Skeeter felt pretty fleshed out for me as a reader...there's 120 short pages in a script; there's 444 long pages in "The Help". It was just so incredibly helpful because I didn't know too many people who were 23 in 1963."
However, for one actress, her inspiration came from real-life experience and deeply seeded raw emotions.
"These characters, like Aibileen, and Milly, and Constantine and Yule May, they're my family," said Viola Davis, who stars as the kind-hearted maid Aibileen. "I know those women. Those women are very specific in my history. My aunt Joyce, my mom May Alice, my grandmother...I know those women. I didn't even have to search. I could just have emotional recall."
The flick has already been getting Oscar buzz, so this is definitely one film you won't want to miss. "The Help" opens this Wednesday.
To watch the entire interview with Stone, Stocket, Taylor and the rest of the cast, click over to ComingSoon.net.