Exclusive: Daveed Diggs On Playing Frederick Douglass In Showtime’s The Good Lord Bird
Airing this Sunday, October 18 at 10 p.m. ET/PT on Showtime is the third episode of its limited series The Good Lord Bird, executive produced by and starring Oscar nominee Ethan Hawke as the controversial abolitionist John Brown.
based on the National Book Award-winning novel The Good Lord Bird by bestselling author James McBride, The Good Lord Bird is told from the point of view of Onion (Joshua Caleb Johnson), a fictional enslaved boy who becomes a member of Brown’s motley family of abolitionist soldiers during Bleeding Kansas – a time when the state was a battleground between pro- and anti-slavery forces – and eventually finds himself participating in the famous 1859 raid on the U.S. Armory at Harpers Ferry.
Brown’s raid failed to initiate the slave revolt he intended, but was the event that started the Civil War. The Good Lord Bird weaves a humorous, dramatic and historical tapestry of Antebellum America, spotlighting the complicated and ever-changing racial, religious and gender roles that make up the American identity.
In Episode 3, John Brown travels north with Onion, taking refuge at the home of Frederick Douglass and his two wives. When Brown and Douglass clash over methodology, Onion discovers just how complex the fight for justice and human equality really is.
Diggs is best known for originating the roles of Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson in the musical Hamilton, for which he won both a Grammy Award and Tony Award. He also wrote, produced, and starred in the 2018 film Blindspotting and recently starred in the TV adaptation of Snowpiercer.
He will next be heard as one the character voices in Disney and Pixar’s Soul, starring Jamie Foxx.
BlackFilmandTV.com’s Wilson Morales recently spoke with Diggs about playing Douglass.