Going into the Oscars (now just five days away), Chiwetel Ejiofor has a little bit of momentum. Not much. But some momentum. He has lost out on the Golden Globe, Critics Choice and SAG awards, but he picked up the BAFTA for lead actor two weekends ago. Is it possible that Chiwetel could still pull off an upset at the Oscars? Sure. Anything’s possible, and there’s at least one big surprise every Oscars, and this year my awards-season sixth sense is telling me that the “surprise” will be in the Best Actor category. But maybe that just means that Leonardo DiCaprio will win, not Chiwetel. I’ve been a little bit disappointed that Chiwetel hasn’t done more press during the Oscar season, but maybe he hasn’t done a ton of interviews because most of his interviews all sound alike – he’s polite, respectful, dignified and lovely. It’s not really newsworthy, unfortunately. But since I enjoy writing about him, here’s a new Chiwetel interview that he did with Ebony:

Whether he feels uncomfortable being cast as a slave: “Solomon Northup is one of the most remarkable people I’ve ever encountered in my life; [it’s] one of the most amazing stories I have ever been in any kind of contact with,” he says. “To not tell that story would have been disgraceful, in my opinion. I think we cannot be in the business of self-censorship. ’Cause there’s no point. Is it better not to tell the story? Of course not.” Ejiofor, 36, takes a sip of beer, wipes the wetness from the glass on his jeans and continues. “It was one of the greatest privileges of my life to tell that story. I wouldn’t change that for anything, certainly not for some kind of political notion that somehow it’s not important or doesn’t serve a very specific agenda. No, that’s not something that I subscribe to.”

The year in black cinema: “We always want to live in an environment where there’s no artificial block to good work. I don’t think anybody wins [in] that situation. I don’t think that the public wins, because [people have] not been exposed to what could potentially be great stories. Obviously, Black actors don’t win, because they’re limited in how much work they can do. There’s tons of talented people doing good stuff. There need not be a block to telling the stories that feature, in prominent parts, Black people. Let’s hope that it is that banner year; that [industry] people let the public decide, as opposed to [assuming] that just because somebody’s Black, the public is not going to be interested. There’s room. Let the stories roll. That’s what we all want.”

His raised profile: “It’s hard to know whether there’s a shift [in Hollywood] because your own profile is rising or because what you would call a revolution is occurring,” Ejiofor says of this moment. He laughs freely. “I just don’t know where to pinpoint that. Things have changed in my life and my work, and where that comes from is probably anyone’s guess. My optimistic mind would say it’s a combination of all those things. I still have to say that I did Dirty Pretty Things 11 years ago. That was a very sudden shift in my life and my relationship to my work, and it didn’t feel it was impossible to make a film like that.”

What he learned for 12 Years: Ejiofor learned to chop wood, shuck sugar cane and pick cotton for the film. Northup himself took pride in his sugar cane, and Ejiofor says that taking an ax to trees can be a stress-relieving affirmation of manhood. But picking cotton was potentially the hardest experience of the entire film. “There’s something very mindnumbing about [picking cotton],” he says. “The heat when you’re down there—108 degrees. The overseer: You can hear the crack of the whip in the background. And then the cicadas rising and falling. It’s a completely different universe. You can see how [slaves] can lose their minds. There’s no recourse.”

In the end: “I don’t know what Steve [McQueen] could have come up with that I wasn’t prepared to go to and investigate and try to tell his story,” Ejiofor says. “I didn’t have a hard day in that sense. I had the most extraordinary shooting experience in my [career]; one of the greatest experiences of my life.”

[From Ebony]

It strikes me that Chiwetel might not have campaigned that much for the Oscar because he really and truly feels like the award is the work. The award is being offered the part and doing the part so well that he got nominated for an Oscar. Does Chiwetel feel like he needs that Oscar statue? Maybe, maybe not. This reminds me of his sister, Zain Asher, and her tears of joy on CNN when he was nominated. It just felt like Chiwetel really does want this, that if he won, it would be a legitimacy to his career that he’s never known. But maybe he’s happy where he is. I don’t know.

Here are the CNN interviews with Chiwetel’s sister:

Photos courtesy of WENN.