#2 years a slave edwin epps role movie
#2 years a slave edwin epps role free

Samuel Bass (Brad Pitt) did have a discussion with Epps about slavery as portrayed int he movie, leading Northup to believe he could trust Bass with a letter home. Northup is saved, thanks to a letter written by a kind-hearted carpenter named Bass Epps did not believe Patsey’s story and compelled Northup to whip her as punishment. Patsey leaves the plantation to borrow a bar of soap from a neighbor. Patsey did, however, suffer greatly from Epps’ alternative affection and rage, getting both raped and beaten, especially when Edwin was trying to prove to Mary his lack of affection for Patsy.

#2 years a slave edwin epps role movie

However, he never writes anything about Mary (Sarah Paulson) becoming moved to violence or, as the movie shows, hurling a decanter at her face. Northup does write in his autobiography about Epps’ affection for Patsey (Lupita Nyong’o) - and the jealousy aroused in Epp’s wife.

A sailor on the ship that brought Northup south sent a letter to Northup’s friends (but was unable to share Northup’s whereabouts).įrancois Duhamel / Fox Searchlight Mary Epps injures Patsey in a jealous rage What the movie doesn’t show, though, is that this wasn’t the first time Northup had asked someone to send a letter for him. As in the film, Northup is able to convince Epps that Armsby’s story is a lie. Armsby betrayed Northup by telling Epps that Northup was trying to write a letter to his friends in New YorkĪrmsby (Garret Dillahunt) was trying to obtain a position as an overseer with Epps, which is presumably why he ratted out Northup’s attempts to write home. The second incident, not in the film, involved Tibeats chasing Northup with an axe. The first one-in which Tibeats attacks Northup, and Northup is able to overcome him in the attack by hitting and whipping Tibeats-is depicted accurately in the film: Tibeats tries to hang Northup for revenge, but Ford stops him. However, Northup had to be sold to a much crueler master, Epps (Michael Fassbender), when he got into not one, but two, conflicts with the overseer Tibeats (Paul Dano). Northup is sold to Edwin Epps after he gets into a fight with planation overseer of his first ownerĪs shown in the movie, Northup’s first master, Ford (Benedict Cumberbatch), is a much more lenient man than the other plantation owners in the film and holds some affection for Northup. He was not knifed to death trying to save a woman from being raped as they show in the film. They got very close to executing their plan, but then one of Northup’s co-conspirators got smallpox and died. On the South-bound ship, one of the slave traders murders one of the slavesĪs in the movie, Northup and two others try to plan an escape from the ship. As a result of the incident, he hides his true identity for years.

Sent to Louisiana, Northup is given the name Platt and is beaten when he protests he is a freeman. He had a wife and three children, not two: Elizabeth, Margaret and Alonzo, who were 10, 8 and 5, respectively, at the time of his kidnapping.

#2 years a slave edwin epps role free

Soloman Northup was indeed a free man who played the violin. Soloman Northup was a free man living in upstate New York with a wife and two children before being enslaved Here’s how the film and the biography match up: Director Steve McQueen and screenwriter John Ridley film were largely faithful Northup’s 1853 biography, Twelve Years a Slave. Follow moving -and utterly brutal-film 12 Years a Slave tells the real story of Soloman Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a free African-American man living in Saratoga who is kidnapped in 1841 and sold into slavery.