David Oyelowo: ​‘The best of us is to love and be loved’

Amma Asante’s A Unit­ed King­dom drama­tis­es a his­tor­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant love sto­ry between a white woman and a black man. She was Ruth Williams (Rosamund Pike), an Eng­lish insur­ance clerk. He was Seretse Khama (David Oyelowo), heir to the king­dom of Bechau­na­land (now Botswana). Begin­ning in the 1940s, the film shows how every­one from fam­i­ly mem­bers to the South African gov­ern­ment pres­surised the pair to separate.

British actor, David Oyelowo has the poise to play men stand­ing tall amid rag­ing big­otry. He does so in A Unit­ed King­dom, and he did so, most mem­o­rably, as Mar­tin Luther King in Ava DuVernay’s Sel­ma. The roles that he choos­es con­nect to the fact of racism per­sist­ing in exist­ing in this world. He talked to us in com­pelling detail about the pri­vate mean­ing – in the form of Chris­t­ian faith and famil­ial love – that enables him to with­stand the storms of life.

LWLies: There’s a quote in A Unit­ed King­dom: ​“Let us not allow the ugli­ness of this world to take our joy away from us.” To what extent does hav­ing faith enable you to take a philo­soph­i­cal view of things that are destructive?

Oyelowo: I have a wife who I’m des­per­ate­ly in love with. We’ve been mar­ried for 18 years and I have four chil­dren who are my every­thing, and they are a big means of putting aside the ugli­ness of this world. All you have to do is turn on the news to be steeped in the ugli­ness of this world, but when I hug my daugh­ter and when I look into the eyes of my sons and am any­where near my wife, a lot of that fades away and I’m filled with hope and filled with joy and filled with the best of what it is to be alive. The best of us is to love and be loved. That’s my pri­ma­ry source of push­ing that stuff aside.

Some­times if you have some­thing like a cocoon, things not being that way else­where can be a shock to the sys­tem, but you find that it pro­tects or empow­ers you in some way?

Well, it gives me hope and it gives me belief in us as human beings. I’m also a Chris­t­ian and that’s a big part of my life. It’s a big rea­son why I think I’m able to be the kind of father I aspire to be, and the kind of hus­band that I aspire to be – which is one who is self-sac­ri­fi­cial. Chris­tian­i­ty is a reli­gion that is built on self-sac­ri­fice and when I am able to do that, and when I feel that from oth­er peo­ple… A lot of the ugli­ness in the world is to do with peo­ple who are being self-serv­ing, peo­ple who are – on the basis of prej­u­dice or greed or what­ev­er is – tak­ing from oth­er peo­ple. Love is flow­ing in the oppo­site direc­tion. And so, between my faith and what it speaks to me about, and my rela­tion­ship with God, and my rela­tion­ship with my fam­i­ly, I am con­sis­tent­ly in a state of what sac­ri­fi­cial love feels like. My hope in the human expe­ri­ence is topped up, even though I am sur­round­ed by evi­dence that we are not always the best at what we can be.

Were you raised to have faith and to believe in the Bible?

I was raised in the church, but in my teenage years I just didn’t believe in it. I was pig­gy-back­ing on my par­ents’ faith. I was more of a cul­tur­al Chris­t­ian than one who had a real faith. I made the mis­take at the age of 16 of say­ing, ​‘God, who­ev­er you are, if you’re out there, I’m going to go to a dif­fer­ent church because I find mine so bor­ing I want to kill myself. I’m going to a dif­fer­ent church and you have three months to turn up for me‘ All I can say to you is that, real­ly beyond my expec­ta­tion, that hap­pened. I had an encounter with God that tran­scend­ed the Bible. It went on to be some­thing I just couldn’t shake, and trust me I tried, because it cut across my own under­stand­ing of what God is and faith is. It was out­side The Bible. It was out­side of all the norms of what I had per­ceived reli­gion, Chris­tian­i­ty to be. It was a per­son­al infu­sion of the notion that I was loved in a way that could not be cir­cum­vent­ed by any­thing I could do. It floored me and I was nev­er able to turn away from that real­i­sa­tion and revelation.

What form did that real­i­sa­tion and rev­e­la­tion take?

In all hon­esty, it was an audi­ble voice. I felt I heard a pres­ence say to me, ​‘There is noth­ing you can do to make me love you less.’ I felt that if God, as I under­stood him to be at that point, was the judg­men­tal, obsti­nate, con­fus­ing enti­ty that I thought him to be, if that had been what was revealed to me, it would have giv­en me the fan­tas­tic and per­fect excuse to run in the oppo­site direc­tion – which is what I want­ed to do – but all I felt was love.

How do you incor­po­rate abstract beliefs into the prac­ti­cal busi­ness of living?

Well, a rela­tion­ship can only be con­duct­ed if you are relat­ing to the indi­vid­ual. My faith went from being some­thing that was root­ed pure­ly in reli­gious rit­u­al and tra­di­tion to an inter­per­son­al rela­tion­ship. I spoke to God. Any­one who has been in any kind of func­tion­ing rela­tion­ship knows that the more you talk, the more you get to know each oth­er, the more you want to be with each oth­er. That’s basi­cal­ly what it was for me. It wasn’t a dog­mat­ic reli­gious prac­tice of pray­ing a cer­tain set amount of times a day, or at a cer­tain hour, it was just an ongo­ing dia­logue that start­ed at the age of 16 and has car­ried on all the way till now.

When you want­ed to run away from it, why did you want to run away from it?

I want­ed to be off hav­ing sex with girls and play­ing foot­ball on a Sun­day, instead of being in church and doing all those things that I thought God, judge­men­tal­ly, didn’t want me to do. Because he was stern and not much fun. What hap­pened is I then realised that actu­al­ly my best inter­ests are what are at heart. If I had gone on to con­duct my life the way I want­ed to I wouldn’t have four beau­ti­ful chil­dren. I wouldn’t have mar­ried the woman I did because I would have made choic­es that flew in the face of get­ting mar­ried at the age of 22, hav­ing met some­one who shared my val­ues and my faith, and who real­ly was, to my mind, a gift from God.

It sounds like a dis­ci­pline that keeps you from slid­ing off into dif­fer­ent direc­tions accord­ing to your whim­sy. Is that fair?

The by-prod­uct is dis­ci­pline, but it’s like any­thing – if you love doing some­thing, if you love the life that some­thing gives you, it’s not a chore. If I love being around my wife, going on a date night with her or watch­ing a movie with her or hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with her doesn’t become a point of dis­ci­pline. It’s just some­thing I enjoy because it edi­fies me. And that’s the same in terms of my rela­tion­ship with God. Yes, there’s a dis­ci­pline to it, in that you’ve got to try and make sure that you don’t take the rela­tion­ship for grant­ed and that you keep on nour­ish­ing that rela­tion­ship. But if, like I say, you love that per­son and you love how they make you feel, then it’s just some­thing you do because it feels natural.

Wow. Erm. It sounds so per­fect. Not per­fect, but it sounds like you know what you want.

It’s sim­pler than we like to think. It’s too sim­ple. That’s what threw me. ​‘What? There’s noth­ing I can do to make you love me less, and that’s it? We’re not going to go into some big dia­tribe. I’m not going to have a burn­ing bush or a Red Sea part. It’s going to be lit­er­al­ly as sim­ple as that?’ And it’s remained as sim­ple as that. You talked about that line ear­li­er from the film. ​‘Let us not allow the ugli­ness of this world to steal our joy away from us.’ That – like you say – is huge, but it’s very sim­ple. I think the great­est truths that we ever expe­ri­ence are very sim­ple. We’re the com­pli­cat­ed one. We’re the ones who want to com­pli­cate it because we can’t take things on face val­ue because some­times we strug­gle with the notion that we are wor­thy of love. What – there’s no con­di­tions here? There’s noth­ing I have to do? I don’t have to have a sac­ri­fi­cial lamb or any­thing like that? No – it’s a sim­ple as that. I love you. Done.

Do you think that it’s an impor­tant thing with­in a lov­ing rela­tion­ship to be joined togeth­er by a spe­cif­ic purpose?

Yeah, and obvi­ous­ly it doesn’t need to be as lofty as going up against gov­ern­ments, cul­tures, pol­i­tics and all that kind of stuff. If you can find some­one with whom you are uni­fied spir­i­tu­al­ly, emo­tion­al­ly, intel­lec­tu­al­ly, phys­i­cal­ly, inevitably you are going to want to go in the same direc­tion. You are going to find sim­i­lar things egre­gious. You are going to find sim­i­lar things wor­thy of fight­ing for. That in and of itself builds your love for each oth­er: a) you have things in com­mon b) you both togeth­er can go up against them, and c) through that strug­gle you grow clos­er togeth­er because you are mak­ing each oth­er bet­ter. The Bible says one can put a thou­sand to flight. Two can put ten thou­sand to flight. When you’re with some­one who you love and have a com­mon goal with they make you bet­ter because they are encour­ag­ing you to be your best self and hope­ful­ly you’re doing the same for them.

Were there peo­ple that you were attract­ed to that weren’t right for you, because – it’s like you say – things are sim­ple, but things are only sim­ple when they’re in place and when you don’t know if someone’s right for you that’s con­fus­ing. Did you expe­ri­ence that?

Oh absolute­ly. I mean, that’s why I didn’t mar­ry them. And also, I should make it clear, that get­ting mar­ried at a young age, which is what I did, was not on the table for me at all. My dad didn’t get mar­ried until he was 40, didn’t have me until he was 42. My dad’s my hero. I was not in a rush to get mar­ried to any­one. I had had rela­tion­ships with peo­ple I didn’t envis­age spend­ing my life with. They were not per­fect sce­nar­ios. We weren’t sim­pati­co in a way that felt like that was the way to go. I was tak­en aback at the age of ¹⁸⁄₁₉ when I met Jes­si­ca that I had met some­one with whom I felt so much affin­i­ty. By the time we got mar­ried at the age of 22 I couldn’t imag­ine my life with­out her in it, which also took me aback. I was just grad­u­at­ing from dra­ma school. I had not worked a day as a pro­fes­sion­al actor. We had no mon­ey. Every­thing about our lives sug­gest­ed inse­cu­ri­ty, and that was the oppo­site of what I want­ed going into mar­riage. But I just couldn’t, I couldn’t… I couldn’t under­stand sev­er­al more days with­out us going through our lives as a unit and I was just very blessed to have that hap­pen to me ear­ly in life.

What do you love about movies?

I love the fact that movies are a huge means of hold­ing a mir­ror up to us as human beings. They reflect our human­i­ty back to us. They shape cul­ture. They edu­cate. Of course, they enter­tain as well, but the pri­ma­ry thing is I think they help doc­u­ment who we are and how we are and where we’re at.