Oprah Winfrey and Forest Whittaker on Their New Movie Video - ABC News
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Stars of "The Butler" discuss their decision to make the movie together.
4:35 | 08/02/13
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Transcript for Oprah Winfrey and Forest Whittaker on Their New Movie
Oprah winfrey and forest whitaker, stars of a big new movie, "the butler." It's about choices we make, how to show up for what we believe and how a gentle voice can sometimes change the world. Along with the smoking, drinking, and very high spirit id wife. I'm seeing something I never thought I would see in my entire life. &#9834; disco. I didn't realize that was so funny. That's your best move? THOSE ARE MY '70s MOVES, AND I'm still doing them, yes. You show up in a puff of smoke. I'm not a smoker and the very first time I tried it, they said the cigarette is backwards. Turn it around, you lit the wrong end. Ek smoing drinking approximately. Loneliness and love. Based on the true story of the man who brought dignity into the white house. Searching for his role in a time of change. The real butler who served a panorama of presidents. Alan rickman and jane fonda as ronald and nancy reagan. The movie shows us that we're in this living history, this living civil rights history. And that there are a lot of different ways to be a warrior. Yes. That you use the strength. In the end, that's what it's all about. I'm the daughter of a maid. My mother was a maid. My grandmother was a maid. And I'm proud of that, because had they not been who they were, I couldn't be who I am. But what is a noblest course for a man at a time when people are out in the streets and the freedom buses. You heard a scream and some younger people said, did that really happen? And I want to say, yeah, it really, really happened. I don't think I would have had the kind of courage to put myself on a bus. You would have been on the bus. I believe he would have been one of those people who would have gotten on the bus. Would have risked his life to get on the bus. I'd like to believe that i would live by my ideals and I'd want to fight to make sure justice was done. I believe I would have been on that bus. Trayvon martin, we've just been through. What are we to do with this moment? I do not know the answer to that question, diane. I do not know the answer to that question. There were so many people on the other side of that question who didn't understand why so many black people were upset. I think this movie offers an answer. We're still trying to live up to what the ideals of this country is. So we watch this movie, which is a constant string, hasn't been broken. It's a continual motion and that's what's happening today. This is a complex, moving, and human story that brought oprah winfrey back to acting after 15 years. Was it like getting back on a bike? Not exactly. Because I saw in the script there were places where she needed to go and I started thinking about a crime scene weeks before. Like, what am I going to do when I get to that moment and have to cry? But she and her co-star were determined to prove that history is lived in the beauty and bruises of daily life, where we can all go forward if we learn and live together. It has been rare as an african american, when I've ever seen intimacy on screen between two african americans. I remember years ago, I saw it on the cosby show at the end of a credit, and I started to tear up. Because I thought, why am i tearing up? I don't even know what the story was. Because I had not seen that on television in my lifetime. Intimacy, connection, and tenderness between two black people. You see everything, you see lust and all that, but you don't see connection that says to the world, this is who we are. We're just like you. This is who we are. We love the same. We live the same. Our sorrows are the same. Our joys are the same. Our worries. And so I think that's what this film does in a way that really opens my heart space. We choose oprah winfrey and forest whitaker, and you can see this movie, "the butler," on AUGUST 16th.
This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.
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