There is a role from Jessica Chastain’s past that she would very much want to reprise at some point.
During a visit on Entertainment Weekly’s The Awardist podcast — which was taped before the SAG-AFTRA strike — the actress who won the Academy Award for Best Actress indicated that she would welcome the opportunity to reprise her part as Celia Foote from the film The Help, which was released in 2011.
“Do you know who it is that I always think about, and how I wish that I could play her [again]? Celia Foote,” Chastain, who is 46 years old, said.
Celia was a housewife who formed a close friendship with her maid, Minerva “Minny” Jackson (played by Octavia Spencer), after experiencing a string of miscarriages and facing criticism from her husband. Minny was Celia’s lifeline during this difficult time. The Help tells the narrative of a college student who returns to her hometown in the South to tell the story of African-American housekeepers who have cared for wealthy white households. Viola Davis and Emma Stone also feature in the film, which tells the story. Although Chastain received a nomination for an Academy Award, the award for Best Supporting Actress went to Octavia Spencer.
Chastain has said that she already has the plot for the picture in her possession, and that if she were given the opportunity, she would choose to develop both her and Spencer’s characters further in the part.
She spoke the following words to Celia and Minny: “I just want to do something and see what happened.” You are aware that they ended up being roommates and that they raised the child together since they were the greatest of friends. Imagine how incredible that movie would be. I was able to let my guard down around her since I loved her so much.
She continued by saying, “I feel like I got to experience a lot of what my characters go through.” Celia, it was such a profound exploration for me to do. I put a lot of myself into that character, but since I had a supporting role in that narrative, I wasn’t given the opportunity to dig too much material for it. That is a character whose company I would like seeing again.
While Spencer hasn’t replied to her co-star’s demand for a sequel, Davis has been vocal in the years after the film’s premiere about the part she played and the broader message sent by the picture that was nominated for an Academy Award.
Davis stated her remorse over agreeing to take the part in the film in the year 2020.
Davis said at the time, in an interview with Vanity Fair, “There’s a part of me that feels like I betrayed myself, and my people, because I was in a movie that wasn’t ready to tell the whole truth.”
According to Davis, “the truth” is that “The Help” wasn’t produced for the people that it’s about; rather, it was “catering to the white audience.”
“There aren’t too many stories that are also involved in the fact that we’re people. They have an emotional investment in the concept of what it is to be Black, yet… “It is geared toward the white audience,” she went on to say. “The white audience may, at most, take a seat and get an educational lecture on how we are. They discuss the film as they walk out of the cinema, trying to make sense of what it all meant. They are unmoved by who we were in the past.