NEW YORK – Janelle Monae says she “felt so much rage and anger” when she stepped onto a former slave plantation for the first time to film the psychological thriller “Antebellum.” In the movie, set for release Friday, the pop star and actress plays a successful modern-day author that finds herself trapped in alternate time periods, including the terrifying reality of a runaway slave.
Remembering the moment she arrived on that plantation set, she becomes visibly emotional. “My ancestors were stolen. They didn’t steal slaves or servants.
They stole doctors. They stole lawyers. They stole musicians. They stole mothers, fathers. Humans that mattered,” she said. Much of the horror of “Antebellum” is in its unflinching depiction of the violence.