Steve McQueen And Henry Louis Gates Jr. Talk '12 Years A Slave'

Steve McQueen And Henry Louis Gates Jr. Talk '12 Years A Slave'
Steve McQueen arrives at the Palm Springs International Film Festival Awards Gala at the Palm Springs Convention Center on Saturday, Jan. 4, 2014, in Palm Springs, Calif. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)
Steve McQueen arrives at the Palm Springs International Film Festival Awards Gala at the Palm Springs Convention Center on Saturday, Jan. 4, 2014, in Palm Springs, Calif. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

When the creators of a drama that would bring Solomon Northup’s 12 Years a Slave to the big screen needed a historical consultant, Henry Louis Gates Jr., who edited a recent edition of the memoir, was a natural choice.

Gates, a Harvard history scholar, producer of PBS’s African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross and editor-in-chief of The Root, read the script and offered notes on the accuracy of the film’s unflinching depiction of the story of a man who was sold into slavery in 1841 and forced to work on a Louisiana plantation.

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