A passionate champion for justice

Jurnee Smollett makes a statement in 'Great Debaters'

Jurnee Smollett (with Nate Parker, center, and Denzel Whitaker) stars in "The Great Debaters." Her character is based on the first female member of the Wiley College debate team. (David Lee/TWC)

HOLLYWOOD - In Denzel Washington's new film "The Great Debaters," we are introduced to a young woman who is poised, talented, and determined to succeed as a college debater against a field of men, but she knows that to accomplish that goal she will have to overcome not only prejudice based on race, but also based on gender.

Her name is Samantha Booke and in the film, which is set at Wiley College in eastern Texas during the Great Depression, she becomes the first woman selected by coach Melvin B. Tolson to compete on the debate team at the historically black school. It would go on to defeat numerous white teams from larger, more prestigious colleges and universities. The movie is inspired by real-life events.

Jurnee Smollett knew from the moment she read Robert Eisele's script that the role of Samantha Booke embodied all the dramatic elements that young black actresses of this era crave but so seldom get to play.

"I've gotten so many scripts where if you're not on the sideline cheering your boyfriend on, you're fighting with him about cheating on you or you're just set dressing," Smollett said, looking down and shaking her head.

"I always told my representatives, Look, I come from the 'School of Janet' - that's my mom - she raised me to know that I'm more than just set dressing. So, getting a script like this is rare."

Smollett, 21, no longer is standing on the sidelines. Her powerful performance - especially in one scene where she is at the podium, fire in her eyes, steel in her voice, demanding "Freedom now!" - makes Booke emerge not only as a top debater among her male peers, but also as a fearless champion for justice during a period of American history when blacks were still being lynched by the side of the road.

Washington, who directed the movie and stars in it too as Professor Tolson, has said that Smollett was the first and only actress to read for the pivotal part.

Smollett has spent a lifetime before the cameras, from the time she was 10 months old appearing in Pampers commercials; to childhood roles in TV sitcoms such as "On Our Own," where she starred with her real-life sister and four brothers; and CBS's "Cosby," or in films such as 1997's "Eve's Bayou." More recently, she appeared in "Gridiron Gang," starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, and "Roll Bounce," starring Bow Wow.

Smollett said that when she first read the script for "The Great Debaters," she became "obsessed with the character" of Booke.

Some characters in the film, such as Tolson, team member James Farmer Jr. (Denzel Whitaker) and the boy's father (Forest Whitaker), are based on historical figures. Farmer would become a leading figure in the civil-rights movement, co-founding the Congress of Racial Equality. Booke's character was inspired by Henrietta Bell, class of 1934, who was not a member of the award-winning debate team but was its first female member.

Smollett said she had tried to imagine how to play the role, but it wasn't until Washington put her in touch with Bell, now 96, that she found the way. The two women's budding friendship allowed the actress to alter in some ways her interpretation of the character.

"There were a number of things about her I ended up making adjustments for. It was more of a quiet storm type of thing," Smollett said. "From the beginning, I knew she was a girl from an affluent background, or as affluent as you could be back then for a 'colored' girl, [but] I was pleasantly surprised how similar the character I was building was to her."

Smollett credits much of her success to her mother, Janet.

"She marched and she did the sit-ins and she did voter organizing," Smollett said. "It built that whole warrior spirit inside of all of us."

Although debating was new to Smollett, public speaking was not. Since the age of 12, she has delivered numerous speeches on behalf of Artists for a New South Africa, a nonprofit working in the United States and South Africa to combat HIV/AIDS.

But her years of activism couldn't prepare her for one of the film's most harrowing scenes, in which the debaters encounter a crowd of whites lynching a black man. Smollett said it was difficult for the actors to watch, even though it was a re-creation.

"You know what I felt?" Smollett said. "I felt it could be me. If a few of the numbers - the mathematical equations were changed a little bit - it could have been me [living back then]."