LP: The Human Genome Project at the National Institutes of Health ultimately came around to working with the family of Henrietta Lacks to give them some voice in how her cells are being used in research. S&F: How has Rebecca Skloot’s book influenced science?
#HE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS MOVIE#
I work with HeLa cells everyday and this movie will open up my world and what I do.” The issues of racial and social injustice in medicine that the movie raises will be an important focus of the conversation as well. She said, “this is going to be great for science. She was giddy with excitement when she saw an early screening of the movie. Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital, works with HeLa cells everyday. A friend of mine who is a scientist, the head researcher at the Multiple Sclerosis Research Center at St. I think the interaction between our identity of self and our own cellular being is a powerful concept that we don’t think about every day. People respond with incredible emotion to the story they find it very powerful. LP: I know from the screenings we have done that people will be moved. S&F: How do you think it will be received? All of the consultants have been involved in reading the script, giving feedback, visiting set, and now they will be involved in bringing the movie to the public. We offered these members the opportunity to be consultants on the film, and Henrietta’s sons Zakariyya and Sonny are consultants, as well as Deborah Lacks’s son Alfred, and daughter LaTonya. LP: There are members of the Lacks family who have been very involved in promoting Henrietta’s legacy. S&F: Was the Lacks family involved with the making of the film? But the idea that scientists knew what was happening with Henrietta Lacks’s cells and the family didn’t is one of the crowning injustices that needs to be talked about. In essence, it is a story of a woman discovering her mother. He is known for authentic storytelling and he knew he would tell it differently than anyone else.
Lydia Pilcher: George Wolfe has put his own light on the emotional story of the family. Science & Film: Do you know what drew George Wolfe to this project?
Science & Film spoke with Lydia Pilcher on the phone the week that THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS was completed. Pilcher is also producing the Sloan-supported feature film RADIUM GIRLS, about women in the 1920’s unwittingly exposed to radium.
She has worked with HBO on eight other projects, including IRON JAWED ANGELS and YOU DON’T KNOW JACK. Lydia Dean Pilcher (VANITY FAIR, THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST) is executive producer of THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS. The film focuses on the relationship between Skloot and Lacks’s daughter Deborah, and their mutual desire to understand Henrietta Lacks. Abbreviated HeLa, they became famous among research scientists beginning the 1950s but the Lacks family only learned about their mother’s legacy in 1973. The cells have been used in the development of drugs from the polio vaccine to HIV treatments. THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS is based on the true story of Henrietta Lacks, whose cancer cells were the first that scientists were able to reproduce in a laboratory. Oprah Winfrey stars as Deborah Lacks and Rose Byrne plays Rebecca Skloot. Wolfe has written and directed a new HBO film adapted from Rebecca Skloot’s bestselling book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Tony-winning director and producer George C. Lydia Pilcher on The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
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