‘Birth of a Nation’ Actress Katie Garfield on Rape Accusations Against Director

The film tells the story of how Nat Turner led a slave rebellion in 1831 prior to the American Civil War. Garfield plays Catherine Turner, the daughter of Turner's slave owner, the notorious Samuel Turner. "Samuel's character's definitely had caught the bug of hatred a little bit more so than Elizabeth, who was my mother," Garfield says. "She and I knew that things were horrible; we just also knew that we were sort of powerless as women to do anything about it. So that was interesting."

The film comes from actor Nate Parker, who plays Nat Turner and also co-wrote and directed the film. He became one of the most buzzed about Hollywood players in January when The Birth of a Nation opened to rave reviews at Sundance. "It's a film very much in tune with the current state of heightened racial friction," Hollywood Reporter critic Todd McCarthy said in his review. The film won the Audience Award and Grand Jury Prize in the US Dramatic Competition, and Fox Searchlight then spent $17.5 million acquiring the distribution rights.

Between the Sundance acclaim, Parker's auteurship, and the film's historical basis, The Birth of a Nation was primed for Oscar glory. It's the kind of movie that could take a TV actress like Katie Garfield and push her into meatier roles. Jennifer Lawrence was starring in the failed TBS sitcom The Bill Engvall Show a year before she received her first Academy Award nomination for her performance in Winter's Bone. Garfield may play a much slimmer role in The Birth of a Nation than Lawrence did in her breakout film, but appearing in an Oscar-worthy movie still elevates her career in a similar way.

"I definitely wasn't expecting getting to do that at 22," Garfield says. "It's sort of a dream come true to get to do a historical drama that is so important and socially relevant." Then in August of 2016, Deadline reported that a woman accused Parker and Jean McGianni Celestin, the co-writer of the movie and Parker's then Penn State roommate, of raping her in 1999.

Parker was acquitted of all charges. A jury found Celestin guilty of sexual assault, but a superior court judge overturned the ruling in 2005. Since then, the victim's brother has told Variety that the victim killed herself in 2012. A Fox Searchlight representative did not return Broadly's multiple requests for comment from the distributor or Parker, who previously told Deadline, "I will not relive that period of my life every time I go under the microscope."

His stance places The Birth of Nation's actors in an awkward spot, as the rape scandal has become a part of the film's public narrative. Garfield's co-star Gabrielle Union penned an op-ed in the LA Times about the rape accusations and has been outspoken about her own experience as a survivor of sexual assault. She also relates her own experience to that of the character she plays, who was raped and remains silent throughout the film. "In her silence, she represents countless black women who have been and continue to be violated," she wrote. In the end, Union defends the film, and says she hopes it will allow for more open conversations and education about sexual assault and consent.

Garfield finds Nashville more peaceful than LA. "There's so much success here and so many actors [in Los Angeles]," she explains. "It's really easy to lose your perspective here because you see a 16-year-old driving a Lamborghini. I don't see that where I come from. "

She grew up in North Carolina, where she remembers teachers brushing over Nat Turner in school. "I didn't know he was a preacher," she says. "I didn't know that he traveled around from plantation to plantation preaching to other slaves at other plantations." She hopes the film will teach audiences about the American history that's too often left out of the textbooks.

To prepare for her role, Garfield threw herself into reading historical background about the pre-Civil War years in the South and Southern women's lives. "We were sort of just placeholders in society," she says. The research dictated many of her choices as an actress on set.

"I think an interesting part for me was realizing as a woman back then you had no voice, so even if you saw—when you saw—these horrible things happening to other people, you couldn't do anything about it or speak up because nobody in society would listen to you," she says. "Women in that time were very stoic, and they didn't speak with their hands like I do, so I had to sort of practice that and not [make] full eye contact with men, like we do now that women are equal."

"I think I really respected and appreciated the fact that Nate did his research and found some real historic places for us to film because those places have stories and really dark stories," she says. "Being in that element, while all the houses and properties were beautiful, we knew what happened there."

When I ask Garfield about the rape scandal near the end of our interview, she reiterated the importance of using the film to better educate the public about the history of slavery.

"I wasn't worried about [the rape scandal] because I believe in the film," she said. "I really do, and I believe in the people behind the film. I think the message of Birth of a Nation is so clear and so necessary right now, and I have faith in the audiences that they will hear that message loud and clear and hopefully be open to what the movie stands for and what the intentions behind the film were, which is to tell a really important story that is still so necessary."

The film raises the importance of history, arguing that we should remember the horrors of the past and consider how history continues to influence the present. I ask Garfield if these same lessons can be applied to Parker's rape accusations.

"I think forgiving and forgetting are different things," she says. "I think certainly forgetting is not something we can really do in any situation. Like you said, in Birth of a Nation he's remembering all the atrocities his people had gone through. I think forgiveness is a different thing."

Before I leave, I ask her about the biggest misunderstanding about the movie.

"I hope there are no misunderstandings about it," she says. "I haven't heard any yet."