Salt Lake Tribune – Bewilder Films

‘You can’t walk away from these roles’: ‘Jane and Emma’ star knew little about black Latter-day Saint trailblazer, but she’ll never forget her (Salt Lake Tribune)

October 24th, 2018Admin0 Comments

What, if anything, did you know about Mormonism before accepting this role? I wasn’t that versed on Mormonism. I knew about Brigham Young University and Brigham Young but I didn’t know anything about Joseph Smith at all. Strangely, I had read a small blurb about Jane Manning James. It’s kind of uncanny. It was like, “I know about this woman.” I had encountered a small inkling of who she is in written form on the web two years prior. It didn’t click for me until I was sitting in a hotel on a short film — before I came to …

Utah film about Mormon heroines Emma Smith and Jane Manning James gains Hollywood honor for its gender balance and racial diversity (Salt Lake Tribune)

August 30th, 2018Admin0 Comments

A Utah-made film about two famous women from Latter-day Saint history — a determined black convert and the first lady of the faith — earned a place on a new Hollywood list of “gender-balanced and racially diverse films both in front of and behind the camera.” The movie, “Jane and Emma,” tells the story of the unlikely, even risky, friendship between Jane Manning James and Emma Smith, wife of church founder Joseph Smith, in the 1840s as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was facing mounting opposition. The film, with a scheduled showing in Los Angeles next month …