Leading Lady

Twenty-three years after her first bit part, Oscar-winning actress OCTAVIA SPENCER is calling the shots

- Christopher Bagley

I am going to be 100 percent real with you,” Octavia Spencer says when we sit down at a restaurant one morning in L.A., not far from her home in the San Fernando Valley. She seems to mean it. Over the next hour, whether we’re discussing her salary negotiations, her stage fright, her dyslexia, her hairstyles (wigs included), or her issues with the way the fashion industry treats non-skinny people, Spencer has a knack for speaking the truth.

But if you’ve seen a certain movie trailer in recent weeks, your most pressing questions might be about another topic: her starring role as a murderous psychopath. In the horror film Ma, out May 31, Spencer plays an isolated woman who lures a group of teenagers into her home and proceeds to torture them one by one. After two Oscar nominations (for Hidden Figures and The Shape of Water) and one win (for best supporting actress in The Help), it’s her first titular role.

Spencer has always insisted that her films have something important to say. What about Ma? “This one might be the exception,” she says, letting out a long laugh.

In fact, the more Spencer talks about Ma and everything else, the more it’s clear that this is all part of a well-considered plan. Over the past few years, despite her growing collection of awards and despite Hollywood’s efforts to address its chronic diversity problem, Spencer, 49, was still getting offers for types of characters she’s played all along: sweet nurses, sassy maids. (“I didn’t realize there were so many maid roles in the pantheon,” she jokes.) So she issued a challenge to her old friend Tate Taylor, who directed The Help: “Find me something to do that I haven’t done.” Taylor came upon the script for Ma, whose deeply damaged protagonist, Sue Ann, was originally written as a white woman.