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Octavia Spencer explains what it was like to play the character she inspired…
"I’m a prototype [for Minny]. I’m short, chubby and can have an attitude. But there are so many more things about her. The fact that she was living in an oppressive time, she was smart but uneducated, she had six kids and was an abused wife—all of which are not hurdles that I had to jump.
"So I had to do a lot of research about spousal abuse and the Civil Rights movement. We were taught it, but it’s another thing to try to recreate it and the mindset. It was definitely challenging. My world isn’t a completely black world—I have friends of all races, genders, sexual orientations—it’s very difficult playing a character that had to have a completely black world."
