Jovan Adepo And Juliana Canfield To Star As William And Ellen Craft In ‘Everlasting Yea' From Lynn Nottage And Tony Gerber

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Jovan Adepo and Juliana Canfield will star as abolitionist couple William and Ellen Craft in the upcoming film Everlasting Yea!. Everlasting Yea! will follow the love story of the Crafts and their rise to international fame in the abolitionist movement after escaping their enslavement in Georgia. 

The Crafts are famous for the way that they escaped their enslavement. Ellen disguised herself as a white Southern gentleman, and William played the role of her obedient slave.

The film is set in the North before the Civil War and will follow the couple as the fall in love, escape slavery, and handle the fame that comes along with becoming an international news story and celebrities of the abolitionist movement.

Lynn Nottage has commented on the project stating, “Our film centers the complex reality of free Blacks in the antebellum North, posing the question, what is freedom, and what price must one pay in order to maintain it?”

Lynn Nottage and Tony Gerber co-wrote and will also co-direct the film as well. Its so interesting that the Craft's great, great-granddaughter, Julia Ellen Craft has joined the project as a consultant. I just find that to be an amazing way of honoring the Craft's and their descendants. 


In 2018 it was reported that Zendaya was attached to an adaptation of the Craft's 1860 autobiography, ‘Running A Thousand Miles From Freedom’. However, I never heard anything about the project since the initial announcement. 

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