Home Q News Entertainment Watch now: Oprah Winfrey featured in trailer for “The Immortal Life of...

Watch now: Oprah Winfrey featured in trailer for “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”

631

OWN – 2017(LOS ANGELES) — HBO has released the first trailer for the upcoming biopic The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, starring Oprah Winfrey.

The movie, which is told from the perspective of Henrietta Lacks’ daughter, Deborah, played by Winfrey, tells the true life story of Lacks, an African-American woman whose cells were harvested without her permission in 1951 for use in medical research. The story follows Deborah’s search, with the help of journalist Rebecca Skloot, as she learns about the mother she never knew and discovers how her cells helped create important medial breakthroughs, such as the polio vaccine and gene mapping.

In the newly released trailer, Deborah and Skloot, played by Rose Byrne, are seen discussing Henrietta’s important contribution to medicine. “What you don’t understand is, we didn’t know nothing about nothing,” Deborah tells Skloot in a heated exchange.

Courtney B. Vance, Leslie Uggams, Adriane Lenox, Roger Robinson, Melvin Van Peebles and Renée Elise Goldsberry,who plays Henrietta in flashbacks, co-star in the film from writer-director George C. Wolfe, based on Skloot’s 2010 book of the same name.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks premieres April 22 at 8 p.m. ET on HBO.

Copyright © 2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.