Oh, good question. When I finished the book, because I am a thoroughbred reader -- I call myself a thoroughbred reader -- I felt that this was an occasion where the book did more than most books do. Most books tell you a story and let you see what a person's life is like. What Beloved did was let you feel what a person's life was like. And feel the exhaustion and devastation of slavery and its impact on one person's life. And the lives of the people who surrounded her. That's what Beloved did... you felt it. That's why I wanted to do the movie. Because I wanted people to feel that. If I had a book club, I probably wouldn't have done the movie.  

So, you feel that it's a way to reach out to an audience that the book didn't necessarily reach?

No. The book does it, if you let it. But a lot of people find it difficult to get through the book. They won't now, because the movie clarifies a lot of stuff.

Did you attempt to alter anything or bring anything additional or different to the audience?

We're pretty faithful to that book. We just wanted to tell the story and to be as faithful as possible. I'm a reader and I don't go to a lot of movies, but I mostly love movies that are turned from books, 'cause that's what I do. And I just felt like nobody in the world's been more faithful to a book than we have. I certainly hated giving up every scene that Baby Suggs was in, but otherwise we'd just have a movie that nobody would ever watch, because if it had been left up to me... I was saying, "We're going to take that scene out? I can't believe we're taking her out." But in order to have the narrative to continually move as it does, some things had to be eliminated. Toni Morrison's deepest regret for elimination was a scene in the book where she finds out that Paul D has gone and they all go skating. Denver finds one skate in the house and they go skating. And the girls are ice skating on the pond and Toni didn't want to lose that scene. That's not a scene that I cared about losing. I hated to lose anything with Baby Suggs.  

When did your relationship with Beloved begin?  

I read it in 1987, when it first came out, probably the same weekend, 'cause I'm a huge Toni Morrison fan. And I would have been one of those people who went and got the book the day it came out, as I do. Some people wade through [artist's] albums, I wade through people's books. So, I would have read it immediately and actually, I tried to read it several times. [I] kept starting and stopping, because that's what you have to do with Toni. If you're in the middle of doing something else, you can't read her. Because you have to go back.... So, when I first finished, I decided that I was going to give myself a day to read it, that I would give her her propers. Because you just can't play with her. So, I took a day, took a Saturday, got up in the morning and that's all I'm going to do this day is read this book. Finished reading it that night. Called her up, I didn't know her. I got her number from the fire department in the town where she lives. 'Cause it says in the back of the book where the author lives. Usually, if the authors are famous, their numbers are not listed. But sometimes they slip by. I've called up lots of people. I called up Jackie Richards that way. A lot of people are listed. But, she wasn't listed.  

So, when was the last time you read it?

I haven't read it since the movie. I read it almost every day during the movie. It was our bible during the movie, we carried it around every day. I read it before I started doing the movie. I read it again and literally pulled out every scene Sethe had. Anything. [I] went through the book, line by line, and any scene or thought that could contribute to how Sethe would feel about herself, or how she would react, I would pull all of that out.

You acknowledge that it was difficult to read through. How do you think American audiences are going to respond to it?

I'm trusting that they're very bright, actually. That's all I deal with: regular people. This is the truth about Beloved: You will experience it in direct proportion to your own history and your own openness to your feelings. Beloved isn't just a movie. It wasn't created to be. It's created to be an experience. To let you feel. So, if you're a very closed person, who typically goes through life not seeing -- looking at things from a physical point of view and not experiencing the depth of your life and encounters -- then you will just think, "Oh, it's a movie about a girl and she had this really horrible voice, and she was crazy." If you're a person who's open to your own possibilities and open to feelings, you will see it -- you will see the many layers of it. Many, many different layers. So, it's a great film, if you are just a typical viewer who likes a good story. 'Cause it is a completely complex, complicated, interesting, powerful, devastating story. All of that. But if you're more open to the history and legacy, then you will see the layers of it.

Don't you feel like anyone could respond to the family dynamics in the film?

Well, what is so exciting to me, as a person who's a descendant of slaves, to be able to have this as an offering to America, is exciting to me. Because in order for us to heal our past, we have to acknowledge our past. And it is our -- capital O -- Our past. Slavery could not have existed without white folks, you know? Our history in this country was not possible without the involvement of white people. We, together, have built this country. And it's not just Black History Month. It is day-to-day lives of black people, of African heritage, who were brought here and experienced this period called slavery. And what happens to black folks and white folks, not just with slavery, but the Holocaust, with World War I, with all the tragic experiences in our history, we label them and give them this great big formidable title. This period in our history called slavery. This period called the Holocaust and that allows you to distance yourself and not look at it one life at a time. What's exciting about Beloved is that it forces you to look at it, through one life. Just like Sophie's Choice did. Just like Schindler's List did. Just like Dances with Wolves did. We saw Native Americans differently as a result of the experience of the characters in that movie. You get to see it differently. It's not a movie about Indians (sic). It's a movie about one life. This story has two lives. The Diary of Anne Frank isn't a movie about the Holocaust. It's seen through the life of one girl, one experience.  And we so often try to tell our stories because they're so few, you know? With this whole big blanket of "This Was The Time." You know, the Civil Rights period. Well, the Civil Rights period was lived one life at a time, one person at a time. We don't try to defend the humanity of black folks, we assume it. We're not trying to say, "Oh, we're just like everybody else. We love our children. We like them. We feel too." We assume you know that. So, when Paul D. and Sethe are in bed together, it is a moving experience based upon your openness and your history. If you're just a person who's regularly going to see movies, you might see one thing. But if you're an African-American person who knows that most of the movies depicting us -- yeah, we see each other in bed with each other, kissing each other, sex scenes -- we don't see tenderness and complication. And what it takes to love, what it would take for Paul D.... "Eighteen years I figure. How long you been walking?" The history of those 18 years when he said it the first time... Oh, honey, [it] made my knees weak. And then Jonathan [Demme] said, "Sethe's knees don't go weak."

Made of steel.

Yeah, made of steel. Iron will, made of steel. But, what it would take with that history of 18 years, having run through the woods, not knowing. 'Cause at the moment they're in bed together, not knowing why Halle (Sethe's husband) didn't show up, not knowing what happened to Halle. That whole, you know, taking of the milk scene, knowing that she was fleeing from a people who believed that she was less than human, less than human. And to be able to get in bed and try tenderness one more time. What that takes. Extraordinary.

Years ago you said you weren't going to do any more shows about racism. But this seems like another attempt, in some way, to get people to understand what slavery did to black people, what slavery did to white people, what slavery did to people in this country.

Well, it certainly is a try. Interestingly enough, I wasn't trying to tell a story about slavery. 'Cause I don't see it as a story about slavery as much as I see it as a story about triumph. It's a story about a person's ability to triumph over the most tragic of circumstances. And what Paul D says to Sethe at the end of this movie, "You your best thing," is my theme. I was trying to say, you your best thing. You might be in a bad situation, he might be mistreating you, you might not have the best house to live in, you might not have the best job, but if it's going to change, you've got to do it. You have to take responsibility for your own existence. So, this is just a broader, deeper, more powerful way of saying it.  One of the reasons I'm frustrated with trying to do shows about racism is because I can't get people to see that it's about humanity. What is so exciting about Beloved is that there's not one stereotypical thing there. When Paul D walks up that road, you see black folks in period costume. Everything in our psychological history has prepared us for this moment, but you don't know if he's going to dance a jig, speak in some kind of dialect or whatever. That's what your psychological history has prepared you to see, that's true. So, you're not prepared for when he opens his mouth: He's just a tender, complicated black man who's been traveling. There's nothing about the movie that is expected. That's what's so dynamic about it. Nothing expected or stereotypical.

When Beloved was finally gone, I wanted Sethe to be free. I wanted her to get up out of bed and be able to walk out of her front door, too.

That's not the way it's done. There were many different variations of me. And the original one was really, far more hopeful than the one we ended up with. You have to take it one day at a time. And in real life, the realization wouldn't have come that quickly, in real life. When she's almost near death, didn't even expect to see him that day. So, when he says, "You your best thing." It triggers just deep inside of her maybe the memory that I could be ... me.

Do you feel like Jonathan Demme brought something unique to the film that another director couldn't have?

Jonathan Demme was born to do this film, as I was born to do this film. I met with lots of different directors. Black directors, white directors and foreign directors. Originally, I thought only a foreign director could do it, because I thought it needed a foreign sensibility.

So it wouldn't be tainted by an American perspective?

Right. I met with lots of different people. And it wasn't until I sat down with Jonathan that it felt absolutely like I'd come home. Like this was the right thing. Because, the key to me wasn't a black person has to do it. And then I thought a woman has to do it. What I ultimately ended up with was someone who would share my vision. Because, up until Jonathan, nobody shared my vision. Everybody had different takes on what it was. Some people thought it was a ghost story, some people thought, "You can't produce it and act in it, too." And it wasn't until Jonathan said, "We'll give it a try." He was concerned that I wouldn't be able to pull it off. He thought it was because of the Oprah Winfrey persona. And also I didn't have a great body of work. I mean, people still go, "Well, can you really act or was that just a fluke?" And it was going to be a long time. It was a three month period, and how am I going to get off [work] and all of that stuff. But I wasn't worried. And I said to him "I'm going to channel her. I know I can bring her up. I'm going to call her up, and I will open myself up to her. I will not try to act her because I don't have anything to even act from. I don't know that pain." I am African American, but I was born in '54. The very essence of being born in 1954 was that it was the year of Brown vs. Board of Education, which meant that my life would be different from all the lives before me. Because, I didn't have to be segregated and have to go to a segregated school. My life was completely different than the lives of even people who were born five years ahead of me.I had a hopeful future.  I did the preparation for this with a young black man named Anthony Cohen, who I had read about at the Smithsonian. He did the entire Underground Railroad. He shipped himself in a box from one state to the next. He did the trek from Kentucky to Canada. I called him up when I was trying to prepare for Sethe. I called him up and said, "I wanted to know, for myself, the sensation of running and not knowing where to go." How do you find your way? I mean, which way is north? I mean, I know six blocks on Michigan Avenue. Which way is north? And even now in Chicago, I go, "OK, the lake is east, so that must mean north is there." That's me. So, God help me if I was Sethe trying to find the Ohio River. So, I wanted to know the sensation of that. So, I wanted to know the sensation of that.  So, he brought me to a place in Maryland, blindfolded me the Saturday before we started filming and they did a slavery reenactment. And they said, "We're going to try and regress you, try to hypnotize you." I can't be hypnotized. I am too strong for that. But he said, "Well, we'll try and blindfold you. Would you just try and open yourself up to it?" So, they blindfolded me, told me, this is my name, this is what's happened to me. "It's 1861, you were a free woman, stolen overnight, brought to this location. When you take the blindfold off, it's up to you to do what every slave did. And that is to decide for yourself, the definition of your life. Take from this experience what you believe to be true, and discard that which isn't." Which is what every slave had to do -- ultimately what Sethe decided was, "I'm better than this. I'm not an animal. I'm not who you say I am." Every slave had to do that at one point.  So, anyway, I'm sitting in the woods, blindfolded under a tree for a very long time. I hear these horse's hooves coming. A man gets off a horse, obviously a white man. I can smell alcohol on his breath. He starts calling me, "Well, nigger, who are you." So, I think, "I'm supposed to play along. What is going on here? I'll play along with him." And I say, "My name's Rebecca and there's been a mistake. I was brought here overnight. If you could just see my free papers, you'd know that there's been a mistake." And he says, "You don't think nothing gal, because you belong to me. You belong to me. Niggers don't think nothin'. What you doing thinkin'? Oh, you're one of them smart ones..." That whole thing. So, anyway, all of this is ad-libbed. And then he leaves me under the tree, I'm sitting there and other people come and stuff. And then he leaves me under the tree, I'm sitting there and other people come and stuff. But I'm sitting there under the tree for a long time, blindfolded. So I'm thinking, "Well, that's interesting. 'You don't think nothin' gal...'" And then I start to cry hysterically. Something happened to me. I don't know what it felt like. It felt like electricity. Felt like... I don't know. I now call it cellular memory. But I'm sitting there under the tree, just trying to take it in and started to cry like a fool. I mean, that ol' snotty nose cry. And then I thought, "Well, let me just take this blindfold off, 'cause I'm just going back to the hotel and get this over with."  And then I thought, "Well, let's just try to go there. Let's just feel this out." And I sat there blindfolded, crying and touched that place that says, you are nothing. What does that feel like? You are nothing. And I realized that is the essence of slavery. All these years, even as an African American who's studied it. It was not the beatings, it's not the labor, it's not the mistreatment, it's not being called a nigger, it's not working in the fields. It is living every day with the knowledge that your thoughts don't even matter, because you belong to someone else. It is having no free will. Every human being is born with free will. That's God's gift. That you have the right to choose whether to be a fool or not. Whether to succeed or fail -- you have the right to choose. But slavery said that you can't even decide to act a fool if you want to. You can't. And that is why, for me, that was the connection. So even after that, they had me working in the fields, and, you know, I did that whole run through the woods that night. The running, the running, the running, the working in the fields, all that. The physicality. It's really just that. Physical labor. Physical work. But was necessary for me because I got more than I expected. I was like, "What's it like running?" What I connected to was that Negro spiritual that says, "Before I be a slave/I'll be buried in my grave/And go home to my lord and be free." I sang that song it for years. That day, I knew it. I knew what that was like.  I knew why anybody would... if faced with a life where somebody doesn't think I'm human and I've go to live that everyday? Oh, no. You will not have me. And before that I always thought, "Well, make the best of it." I'd always thought, "Well, you try and get you a job in the big house and be nice and try and make peace. One day, we'll go home to our lord and be free." No. 'Cause there is no humanity without choice. Your humanity comes from your right to choose who you will be; how human you will be. And so, I understood why Sethe would take the children out and take herself to the other side. I will go home to my lord and be free. I will not be a slave. You will not have me. And I wanted to touch that place because even when she's making biscuits, even when they're at the carnival, and even when they're running through the house with ribbons, she carries that past. Not the beatings, not the taking of the milk, not any of that. It's that feeling, that hollowness -- that I won't go back to that. No, I won't go back to that. And so, when in the shed, when school teacher calls her animal, that's why she doesn't even bow. She has no remorse. And that's exactly why I did what I did. Because I know that's what she thinks.

Can movies get to the place where you were? Blindfolded, under that tree, when you got to that bottom? Do you believe that movies can do that?

Mmm-hmm. I think movies are probably the strongest force for doing that. For taking you to the bottom. What is interesting, for all of us, and you'll talk to Kimberly (Elise), is everybody in their own way uses their own process -- but we all say we channel those ancestors. We all do. And, that bottom, that we bring to it is what makes people come out speechless, when they say, "I don't know quite what to say about it." That bottom is when you wake up the next morning and you're still thinking about it, you're still feeling it. That's the bottom that we bring to it. Because you're not used to feeling that and you don't even know what to call that. What is that? You wake up, saying, "Yeah, I'm still thinking about that movie. That thing's still going in my head."

Why didn't Amistad work?

I don't like to compare it to Amistad because then everybody compares black movies. But, what Amistad lacked was the emotion and it became a legal story.

Like a courtroom drama?

A courtroom drama and not about what happened in the lives of those people. What the slaves were feeling. It wasn't told from their point of view. I would have made a different choice. Is that what it was about, the legalities? Will they get set free? Will they not? But you never really knew what they were feeling.

As if it's that simple...

Maybe. I don't know. What I'm hoping it will do is that people will see the heart and humanity of it and be encouraged to tell other stories, whether they be through television, film, sitcoms, dramas -- that express the heart. I think if you do that, that's been the secret to my success. Then good follows you. Because people respond to the heart.  I think programmers are uncomfortable with the idea of anything that is different, and so if you're going to do a sitcom, then you have to have them jumping around. Gail was saying this to me, who watches every sitcom on TV, that how come when we do the Tide commercial, when they do it for the black market, that mother's got to be dancing around and she's listening to rap music and they're bebopping around, when in other commercials they're not. It's because of the perception. And that's gonna take some time to change the perception. [Beloved] is one giant step in that direction. And the way you change perception is through the heart.

You've got to take tiny steps...

Well, yes, it is steps. You know, the problem is, I think, a lot of young people in this generation, my nieces included, is that they want everything right now. They want everything to change right now. They want it to be different right now. But you're in the process. It's about evolving. It's about all personal human evolution. And I'm very much in touch with that.

What do you want to have done by the year 2000?

I don't know. I don't live with goals, I really don't. I live in the moment. I say, "God can dream the bigger dream for you than you can for yourself." So, I don't dream or want anymore. I open myself up. I meditate. And I expect to be put in the best place to be used. And that's the truth. So, I don't know anything. I think whatever is going to come is exactly what I was supposed to have. Somebody asked me what was my expectation for this film. I don't have one. Whatever happens, that was what was supposed to happen. And I will move from there.  I think my expectations for each person to see it is for them to open themselves up to it. I encourage people not to go in with any preconceived notions, 'cause you're not going to get it. You can't predict what's going to happen in this movie. Even Toni said, when she saw it for the first time, she's anticipating what's going to happen. It was hard for her to see it. But the truth is, when Paul D leaves, you don't know.... You don't even expect him to leave at that time. Who would have thought he was going to get up from that table and leave and not come back? They come from the carnival. Who is that on the stump? Where'd she come from? "Oh, now she's gone and messed in the bed." You don't expect that. One scene to the next. That's what's exciting to me. Not predictable at all.

Interview from 1998