Inside Get Out

The 90th Academy Awards are this weekend, and one of the breakout films of the Oscars is Jordan Peele’s social thriller “Get Out,” which is nominated for best picture, best actor, best director, and best original screenplay. The frightening film about a town where black people’s minds and bodies have been seized gets one of its most haunting performances from Betty Gabriel (’02 animal sci), who plays housekeeper Georgina. It’s the highest-profile film role to-date for the former-future-ISU-veterinarian-turned-Julliard-trained-dancer-and-actor. Shortly after the film was released in theaters and its buzz as a surprise hit was just beginning, Gabriel sat down for an interview with Jezebel about the movie and its meaning.

“[Peele] injects all these little symbols and tidbits that hearken back to our very long history of violence that does employ racism in order to keep us separate and oppressed and enslaved – cause that’s how empires work,” Gabriel told Jezebel senior writer Clover Hope. “You can take it so many more places, and I think people have. And I think that’s why it’s so brilliant and so effective and so successful.”

Watch a clip online of Gabriel as Georgina in “Get Out.”