Jessica Chastain has had her share of memorable acting roles recently, including “The Eyes Of Tammy Faye,” “The Good Nurse,” and “George & Tammy.” But there’s one role she’s itching to return to, if her co-star is up to it: Celia Foote from 2011’s “The Help.”
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People reports (via EW’s Awardist podcast) that Chastain spoke about how much she’d love to reprise her role from Tate Taylor‘s 2011 film. “You know who I think about all the time and I just wish I could play her [again]? Celia Foote,” Chastain said on the podcast. “I just want to do something, Celia and Minny, and see what happened.”
Octavia Spencer played Minny in “The Help,” based on Kathryn Stocker‘s 2009 novel of the same name. The film follows a young woman’s attempt to become a journalist in the American south in the 1960s, but told from the perspective of the African American women who work in her house. Both Spencer and Chastain received Oscar nods for Best Supporting Actress for their performances in the film, with Spencer winning. Other cast includes Emma Stone, Bryce Dallas Howard, Sissy Spacek, Allison Janney, and Cicely Tyson.
If a sequel to “The Help” were to happen, Chastain envisioned it as an odd-couple story centered around Cecily and Minny. “You know they ended up living together and raising the baby together,” the actress said about the two character. “They were best friends. How amazing would that film be?” As Chastain continued she talked about why she relishes her role from the film so much. “I loved her, and I got to be a bit silly,” the actress said. “A lot of my characters I feel like I got to experience a lot. Celiua, it was such a deep dive for me. I really threw on that character and I didn’t really get to mine that much material, because I was a supporting part of that story. That’s a character I wish I could revisit.”
But despite “The Help” being a box office hit upon release, it sounds unlikely that Chastain’s wish will come true and a sequel will happen. That’s because in recent years, both critics and cast members have been vocal about how the film centers on a plot about White voices in a story that’s supposed to be about the experience of Black working women in Mississippi. Spencer and Chastain’s co-star Viola Davis stated as much in a 2020 Vanity Fair interview. “There’s no one who’s not entertained by “The Help.” But there’s a part of me that feels like I betrayed myself, and my people, because I was in a movie that wasn’t ready to [tell the whole truth],” Davis said.
Those comments followed up previous ones Davis made about the movie in a 2018 interview with The New York Times. “I just felt that at the end of the day that it wasn’t the voices of the maids that were heard,” Davis said then. “I know Aibileen. I know Minny. They’re my grandma. They’re my mom. And I know that if you do a movie where the whole premise is, I want to know what it feels like to work for white people and to bring up children in 1963, I want to hear how you really feel about it. I never heard that in the course of the movie.”
Of course, the movie Chastain wants to make with Spencer sounds very different than “The Help,” so maybe Spencer acquiesces to a sequel. But if Spencer feels similarly to Davis about “The Help,” she may meet the idea of a sequel with less enthusiasm than Chastain. If that’s the case, then don’t expect Chastain’s wish to see Cecily and Minny reunite happen, as much as she’d like it to.
