Throughout his stellar career, acclaimed actor David Oyelowo has played several significant roles in African-American history. He’s starred in The Help, Red Tails, The Butler,  his ground-breaking role as Martin Luther King Jr., in Selma, and several more.

Among his many accolades, Oyelowo has won a Critics' Choice Award and two NAACP Image Awards. Additionally, he was nominated for two Golden Globe Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and a BAFTA Award. In 2016, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his services to drama.

For his latest role, Oyelowo is determined that the name Bass Reeves will always be remembered in annals of history.

Starring in and executive producing "Lawmen: Bass Reeves" the series follows the life of Reeves, an ex-slave who made history as the first Black U.S. Marshal west of the Mississippi. Although he would arrest more than 3,000 outlaws during his law enforcement career, Reeves constantly deals with the duality of “the weight of the badge was heavy,”  his deep moral convictions, and the toll it takes on his family. 

In an exclusive interview, BET.com spoke with Oyelowo about discovering the story of Bass Reeves, the obstacles he overcame to bring the series to life, and his commitment to portraying the full Black experience on TV and film.

BET.com: When did you discover the story of Bass Reeves?

David Oyelowo: It was in 2014 when a producer called David Permut approached me about the idea of doing a show or film on Reeves. As a fan of westerns when I was growing up in London, I just couldn't believe that I knew nothing about this guy. Fortunately, I get approached to play certain roles, especially having done some historical films like Red Tails, The Help, Selma, and The Butler. So people know that’s a genre I suppose that I gravitate towards. So I've become a little bit of a student of Bass Reeves as a deputy US Marshal, as a cowboy, and how he was instrumental to that whole lifestyle and the cinematic genre that is the Western. After realizing who he was, I became completely obsessed with the idea of getting that story told, and I came on as a producer. It was an eight-year journey that led us to where we are now.

BET.com: It took several years to get the project off the ground. What drove you to keep persevering after being rejected so many times?

David Oyelowo: To be honest, I was offended. I was offended by the fact that Bass Reeves’ story hadn't been told. It took seven years to get Selma made, the first film centered on Martin Luther King Jr., in the 50 years since he was assassinated. But Bass Reeves’s story is 150 years ago, and one of the first images ever captured in terms of a moving image cinematically was a Black man on a horse. We've had over a century to tell this story. That is the epitome of the challenges we face in Hollywood regarding our stories being told. I just found that completely unacceptable, given that his story was so cinematic, significant, historic, and exciting. The only explanation for it not existing yet was racism. And the activist in me was as motivated as the artist in me to get the show made.

BET.com: How challenging was it for you to revisit this era with all of the trauma of slavery? How did it affect you emotionally and mentally?

David Oyelowo: I usually run in the opposite direction to slave narratives. I think that they have their place, but I think we've seen a lot of them and they are not the total of who we are as Black people. But we felt that we needed to give context to just how amazing Bass Reeves' journey was. You had to kind of show where he began. Enslavement is the opposite of a place for him to begin compared to where he ends up in terms of his family, his profession, and his place in society. That's also why putting him in his rightful place historically now, in terms of his cultural knowledge of him feels like something else that needed to be added to his legacy. But we shot some of the show on an actual plantation in Texas, where 80 people had been enslaved and you could feel the ghosts. For those of us who are Black on the set, it was burdensome and emotionally debilitating. We were shooting scenes with Lauren E. Banks, and Joaquina Kalukango, who were enslaved people so it had an effect. Shea Whigham, who plays George Reeves, took weeks, maybe months to recover because of the things that he had to do and say because he's a wonderful man. But it's an act of generosity and love, to tell the truth of how evil that system was. 

BET.com: Speaking of Lauren E. Banks, your interactions with her were incredible. One of the poignant lines she delivered was, “Every time you come back, less of you return.” How was it to work with her?

David Oyelowo: She's a magnificent talent and truly a great scene partner playing Jennie Reeves. We talked about the show early on about what we wanted it to be for us. I always felt that one of the ways to make the show feel universal was to center it around the family. Chad Feehan, our showrunner, agreed so the show is largely framed around this couple who are in love, trying to keep their family together, and the tension of his very dangerous job because the question was, “Is he going to make it back home?” Lauren was just so invested in portraying this beautiful Black family. The relationship was functional and aspirational, you know, something that you look at and look up to. She did a lot of the heavy lifting because she could have just been a housewife or just been someone who didn't bring the dimension that you mentioned. You can only get that from an actress of her skill and ability. 

BET.com: Throughout the series, there were mentions of Rosewood and Tulsa. Was mentioning those Black communities intentional for the overall framing of the series?

David Oyelowo: For sure. I think there's a reason why we haven't seen more narratives set within the Reconstruction period. It was a time when Black people were given agency, such as positions in government coming out of enslavement. Of course, what happened after those 10 to 12 years with Jim Crow came in as a direct response to the progress of Black people. We know what manifested in Tulsa and Rosewood with the lynchings that were beset upon people sharecropping, segregation, all these terrible things that came back in to try and wind the clock back to a pre-Civil War era. Although this period produced Bass Reeves, we wanted to sow the seeds that this is not how America will continue to go. Beyond this period, Bass Reeves ended his life as a beat cop in Oklahoma. He did not have anywhere near the progress and position that we showcase in this period in his life. A  lot of that was stripped away. So the show is about the rise of this Black man and his Black family, but also the looming shadow of what was going to be Jim Crow that was just around the corner. 

BET.com: The series also highlights the duality of Bass Reeves as a Black man of stature, but his occupation is to represent the US government that oppresses Black people.

David Oyelowo: Well, that's the joy for an actor to share that complexity, that duality, these gray areas that exist. Bass Reeves knows what white oppression looks like. So for Judge Parker, as played by Donald Sutherland, to be the one to give him the badge, there's an enormous amount of suspicion around it as it comes through a character the likes of which Dennis Quaid plays who Sherill Lynn a very questionable guy who symbolizes the oppression that his community and family have felt before so am I now an instrument of justice or a weapon of oppression? And that's the tension that he has through the story as you go through the episodes, especially as you know, he is deployed to bring to justice, not just white people, Native American people, but Black people. This is a country where the notion of justice was incredibly nebulous. Now he’s an instrument for that very oppression through his Christian moral compass, and that's the tension for him through the show. Having eight episodes affords you nuance.

BET.com: With all the large viewership of the series and the rave reviews that it has garnered, what are you most proud of about the show

David Oyelowo: I'm most proud that the show has become the most-watched show on Paramount+  this year globally. We've heard of states where they're trying to put Bass Reeves into the curriculum. I've heard of multiple instances where families are watching the show together with so many older Black people who have loved the Western genre. They used to watch Gunsmoke and others back in the day and it's the first time since they were younger that they have gravitated towards a Western. I really hope and pray that the byproduct of making this show is that Bass Reeves’  becomes a part of the culture and lexicon when it comes to history and that he becomes cemented in the Western genre alongside Billy the Kid because he belongs alongside those. People talk about him being the inspiration for the Lone Ranger. I think he's way more of a badass than the Lone Ranger. The Lone Ranger didn't have to deal with enslavement or anything else that Reeves had to deal with and yet went on to do what he did. My hope is the takeaway is that Bass Reeves becomes cemented in our minds as a great man, a great historical figure, and yet another amazing thing that African Americans did for this country despite how badly they were treated by it.