--- title: David Oyelowo About HBO Film Nightingale description: David Oyelowo talks to TIME about going method for the first time and differentiating himself from "Selma," in which he played Dr. King. canonical: https://time.com/3900269/david-oyelowo-nightingale/ author: Eliza Berman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-05-29T15:31:14.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:59:06.484Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: David Oyelowo on the Role That Made Him a Method Actor og:description: The star of "Selma" on taking on a role worlds away from Martin Luther King, Jr. og:url: https://time.com/3900269/david-oyelowo-nightingale/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt7af0f9bbdfbf0604/6988520fe20a87c467a8b922/credit-joseph-cultice-hbo.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2026 og:image:height: 1140 og:image:alt: David Oyelowo in Nightingale og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: David Oyelowo on the Role That Made Him a Method Actor twitter:description: The star of "Selma" on taking on a role worlds away from Martin Luther King, Jr. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt7af0f9bbdfbf0604/6988520fe20a87c467a8b922/credit-joseph-cultice-hbo.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # David Oyelowo on the Role That Made Him a Method Actor > Sponsored content. 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Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account. ## Video: Ava DuVernay and David Oyelowo on [Watch (HLS stream): Ava DuVernay and David Oyelowo on](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/H4cNz19h.m3u8) (2:52)  _Published 2015-01-07. Director Ava DuVernay and actor David Oyelowo discuss their new Golden Globe-nominated movie_  by [Eliza Berman](https://time.com/author/eliza-berman/)  ## Eliza Berman Berman is a senior editor at TIME. May 29, 2015 3:31 PM UTC  David Oyelowo in Nightingale David Oyelowo in Nightingale Joseph Cultice HBO  by [Eliza Berman](https://time.com/author/eliza-berman/)  ## Eliza Berman Berman is a senior editor at TIME. May 29, 2015 3:31 PM UTC There was a time when David Oyelowo saw method acting as a bit on the pretentious side. Which is saying something, coming from a drama school graduate and sometime Shakespearean actor. But when he landed the role of Peter Snowden in _Nightingale_, an unnerving one-man drama which premieres May 29 at 9 p.m. on HBO, he realized he simply hadn’t yet played a character that demanded that kind of immersion. It only take a few minutes watching Oyelowo onscreen to understand why this role is the one that changed his mind on going method. Peter Snowden is a veteran living with skeletons—literally—in his closet. After revealing his transgression to a webcam in the opening scene, he begins to unravel psychologically. Oyelowo moves Peter through the stages of his breakdown with no other actors on a set that consists of a handful of rooms in a modest house. _Nightingale_ is a major departure from the role that garnered Oyelowo accolades earlier this year, when he played Martin Luther King, Jr. in Ava DuVernay’s _Selma_. On the day of _Nightingale’_s premiere, Oyelowo spoke to TIME about inhabiting a character like Peter, how his wife felt about sharing a bed with Dr. King and his formula for a long career in Hollywood. **TIME: What was your reaction when you first read the script?** **David Oyelowo:** It was complete surprise that someone had been as brave and inventive as the script demonstrated. \[It’s\] one guy in a house, who starts out by doing something unthinkable, and we are asking the audience to stay with him for nearly 90 minutes. Frederick Mensch, the screenwriter, was breaking a lot of rules, but in a way that still felt compelling, showing a character the likes of which I personally hadn’t read and even seen. **And you went method for this role, correct?** I did. In the past, the notion of method has felt a little on the pretentious side, a little self-indulgent. I had done films like _The Last King of Scotland_ and _Lincoln_, in which both Forest Whitaker and Daniel Day Lewis, respectively, had employed that technique, and I think everyone will agree the results are undeniable. But for me, a role hadn’t come along that warranted that. The main reason I did it is that I didn’t know how to play someone who is so in their own head, so adept at creating a world within which they can survive in order to deal with what they’ve done. If ever there was a role that you would want to make that choice with, it was Peter Snowden. **What does it feel like to wake up and go to bed every day as this person who’s not you?** In employing it both in _Nightingale_ and then eventually with _Selma_, which we ended up shooting after _Nightingale_—and I don’t think I would have employed it \[in _Selma_\] if I hadn’t experienced its benefits doing _Nightingale_—the idea is to put yourself to the side enough whereby you are in the habitual mental, emotional and spiritual state of the character, so that when the cameras roll you are closer to the truth. You are making choices that the character would make because you are developing a muscle memory as to how they behave. **Did you see your family during the shoot?** Anyone who sees the film will agree that that’s not a human being you want around four young children and a lovely wife. Thankfully it was only three weeks because I’m never apart from my family for more than two weeks. Around about the 13th or 14th day I snuck back to see my family for half a day. Admittedly, it was a bit of a weird experience, because they are with somebody who looks like daddy, sounds like daddy, but daddy isn’t all there. **Is that fun for your kids or is it strange for them?** My kids are quite young—they’re 13, 10, 7 and 3—and they’ve lived a lot of their lives on movie sets. It’s their normal, in a sense. It was weirder for my wife, I think, who felt while we were doing _Selma_ like she was having an affair with Dr. King. **Did you study performances by other actors for this role?** \[I tried to find\] other films like this, where it’s just one person in a very confined location, and I struggled. There are films like _Castaway_, that focus on one character but they do have interactions with other characters. At some point my search stopped because I realized this is something singular and I should embrace that. Since doing the film I did see Tom Hardy in _Locke_, and that’s the film that I think is most in the same hemisphere. **There’s a lot of ambiguity in Peter. Did you find it necessary to fill in some of the gaps of his backstory?** You can’t afford for there to be gaps in your pool of knowledge when it comes to a character, otherwise what ends up onscreen is generalized and unspecific. Whether the audience knows where he went to high school or not, it’s something you have to have a notion of because it all works itself into the truthfulness of a portrayal. I spent time with a psychiatrist asking if he had met people like Peter, and he had. They tended to be people who have associative identity disorder, what used to be called multiple personality disorder, where you establish different versions of yourself in order to deal with trauma. Once I locked in on that, I was able to pinpoint that there were about seven different versions of Peter, and that enabled me to be more specific in a given situation. **Given that a lot of people got to know you as Dr. King, how important was it to take on a role that was very different?** Hugely important for me. _Nightingale_ is the kind of film that could, and often does, slip beneath the radar. We were not anticipating the platform that HBO has so wonderfully given the film. So it’s absolutely what I look for in the characters I play, not just for me, but for the audience. I believe the path to a long career is to keep the audience guessing. Daniel Day Lewis is my absolute hero from that point of view. I literally will pay to see anything he does because I know it’s going to be something different than I have already seen. That’s exactly the kind of career I would like to emulate. ## Transcript Well they don't teach anything about Dr. King or the Civil Rights Movement in ,- Is that true? In schools. In the UK? Well it's the United Kingdom, not the United States. No. But he's a worldwide icon. What do you know about the United Kingdom in your schools? Oh. True. Touche. [ LAUGH ] But, you know, Dr. King is an icon, in the same way that Mandela is an icon, in the same way that Gandhi is an icon, and so, therefore, you are aware. Aware of him, and I was aware of him admittedly in a very peripheral way. What I need to know right now what' Martin Luther King about to do next? I have a dream. I can think of nothing worse than having to do the I have a. I Have a Dream speech. I mean really, I, I, it's like doing to be or not to be in Hamlet. It's just at that point not to denigrate the speech. It's a bit like doing a karaoke song. What you want in playing a character like Dr. King is you want it to a revelatory otherwise go and watch a documentary, go and read a book. One of the genius, elements of. Of Selma is choosing to do just those three months because ironically you get more of a sense of the man by going into a time where he's under pressure. [ INAUDIBLE ] when a mans stands up and says enough is enough. These are all the things that reveal who the human being. Is great storytelling, great, writing, is always going through the highest moment of tension. The deepest moment of conflict. And that's what this represented. And it's also the greatest moment of triumph for this, for SCLC. [ MUSIC ] You think about a couple of years ago, where we were very focused on the tragedy around Oscar Grant. And we would say, Oscar. Oscar Grant. We think about last year when we were talking about Trayvon Martin, we'd say the Trayvon Case. Around this summer, we kept hearing, Ferguson, which is the name of a whole community. Similar to the way people talk about Sama and not when Jenny legi, Jackson and it, something different. A catalyst that has triggered action within a whole community and a community that. You know, stands up to police aggression, raises its hand and says breaking up a black body is not acceptable. And maybe not knowing exactly how to articulate that. And maybe it comes out initially in rage or unrest or whatever but, it's been really beautiful to me over the last months to see the way that that unrest has blossomed. [ MUSIC ] Into a very targeted civil disobedience, with a lot of boots on the ground. A lot of people really organizing themselves. Selma is not a film that takes place in the context of history. You watch those images, and you, you understand how it feels to be someone in 1955, being shocked about what they see on TV. 'Cuz it just happened to you in August. 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