In the HBO TV movie, Oprah plays Deborah Lack who explores the real life story of her mother and it leads her to a complicated truth.
- Feb 18, 2017
AceShowbiz - HBO finally gives us a glimpse of its Oprah Winfrey-starring film, "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks", in a newly-released teaser. The television movie is based on Rebecca Skloot's best-selling nonfiction book of the same title, which follows a black woman named Henrietta Lacks whose cancer cells provided the foundation for staggering medical breakthroughs.
The poignant teaser shows Deborah Lacks (Oprah Winfrey) decades later trying to find the truth about her mother, Henrietta Lacks (Renee Elise Goldsberry), only to find the fact that her mother's cells are used by the scientist, without her consent. The cells are used to develop medical vaccines, gene mapping, vitro fertilization and more.
The video opens with a man, seemingly a doctor or scientist, saying, "The patient should be referred to as Hela. And her name should not be used." Later the video offers a glimpse of scene when Henrietta visits a hospital. Deborah is accompanied by Rebbeca Skloot (Rose Byrne) to discover the real story as she says, "My whole life what I care about is knowin' about my mother." During the exploration, she also faces difficulties and hard times. A man tells her to stop the search as he dubs it "digging up her graves," but Deborah boldly states, "I am not stoppin'."
The trailer continues to show several touching and heartbreaking scenes, including when Deborah tells Rebecca while crying, "This hurt...This hurt ain't nothin' compared to my momma." At the end of the video, when the music stops, Deborah is heard softly saying, "You famous. Just nobody knows it."
Henrietta Lacks died in 1951 at the age of 31 after battling cancer. Although her cells, which were used illegally in several studies, led to numerous medical breakthroughs, Lacks was never credited to the finding. "Hela" itself was coined by taking only the first two letters of her first and family name.
"The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" airs on Saturday, April 22 at 8 P.M. on HBO.
