Morgan Freeman Talks ‘The Gray House,’ His New Civil War Drama With Kevin Costner

Morgan Freeman just turned 87 and remains as passionate as ever about his chosen profession. The legendary actor and beloved “voice of God” in varying documentaries has amassed quite a body of work. One that will be honored by the Monte-Carlo Television Festival where Freeman receives the Crystal Nymph by Prince Albert II of Monaco. Past honorees have included Donald Sutherland, Helen Mirren, and Michael Douglas. Along with accepting the Lifetime Achievement award, he’ll also attend the premiere of The Gray House.

The eight-episode limited series centered on unsung women who headed an underground spy ring during the Civil War. Mary-Louise Parker, Amethyst Davis, Daisy Head, and Ben Vereen lead the ensemble cast. This project was made possible thanks to Freeman and Lori McCreary’s Revelations Entertainment production company alongside Kevin Costner’s Territory Pictures and Leslie Greif’s Big Dreams Entertainment. It is a Republic Pictures title being distributed by Paramount Global Content Distribution.

We sat down with producers Freeman and McCreary about why it was important for them to help bring The Gray House to the forefront. Freeman also reflects on the 30th anniversary of The Shawshank Redemption and the one role he wished he got to play.

Morgan, what does it mean to you to be recognized as you will at the Monte-Carlo Television Festival with the Crystal Nymph Award at this stage of your career? 

Morgan Freeman: I’ve been at this for some time now. What I’d come to realize is when you get a pat on the back, you welcome it. You just say thank you. It is a wonderful pat on the back though when you get it from a world-class organization, so I’m thrilled.

Have you been to this festival before? 

Morgan: I don’t think so. I’ve been to Monaco though. I’ve got great pictures of me and Prince Albert together walking, and talking.

Lori McCreary: I don’t remember specifically being invited to the festival in particular. So for us, it’s a big honor

You’re also premiering The Gray House. What makes the festival a good place to unveil the project? 

Lori: I love the fact that it’s an international festival because this production is truly international, even though it’s a very American-centric story. We had a very big international crew. Roland Joffé is the director. We filmed in Romania. We have an amazing DP from Europe and amazing costume designers all working on this team. We’re in post-production in Toronto now. It’s kind of a labor of love for a lot of people around the globe. I think the fact it’s in Europe and having the premiere there is fun for all of this.

Lori McCreary

You’ve teamed up with Kevin Costner’s studio to bring this story to audiences. Morgan, I know you worked with him on Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Any fun memories you can share from that shoot? 

Morgan: I remember training quite a lot. I thought I was a good horseman. I learned there that I wasn’t. I remember I got hit in the head with a sword. I thought, “Wait, this is great. Real blood.” They were saying, “We don’t want people with real blood, Morgan.” So off to the hospital, I went to get some stitches.

Lori: I don’t think you want real blood because it’s hard to recapture that unless you keep getting hit on the head.

Mary-Louise Parker, Daisy Head, and Amethyst Davis in The Gray House (2024)

How has it been coming together to help get The Gray House to the masses? 

Morgan: We’re not in contact or cahoots. We’re producers. I can do that way away, which is really what I did. I’m just part of the team.

Lori: Morgan, you’re being a little humble because we were brought into this project 12 years ago. So, this is something we’ve been working together for a long time. This producer Leslie Greif came to Morgan and me and asked if we could help him find a Civil War story that was female-centered. We thought it was a good idea. We hired John Sayles. This was many years ago. John really wrote the first draft of this project, which was really laid out as six hours. For some reason, times were different 12 years ago. A female Civil War story wasn’t in the cards and sat for a while. Then luckily we brought on Kevin Costner, I think around the time of Hidden Figures. This feels like Hidden Figures for the Civil War. Kevin loves history just like Morgan.

He spent a year with the writers working on the drafts of the scripts before they told us they were ready to go. Morgan and Kevin walked into Paramount. They are both beloved at that studio. They said, “Please, we want to make this here.” They both used their extensive clout to help us push this forward. It’s what we need in allies. I’m fortunate to be in business with Morgan, but Kevin loved the story enough and wanted to see it on the screen and used his power at Paramount at the time to help us get us through. That is gold to a producer. People who will come beside you and say, “This is worth telling.”

Morgan, what stands about this project and this story that many didn’t know about before? 

Morgan: It’s incredible that such historical events and contributions have been glossed over. Here again, I guess maybe, because it was dealing with women. There are a lot of great stories concerning women’s input of all wars. This one in particular, you have three women in collusion to help defeat the Confederacy. That’s an amazing story. It’s the sort of thing when we got together we said, “These are the types of stories we have to tell.”

Tell me your thoughts on casting including Mary Louise-Parker, who you worked with before. 

Lori: Fern Champion was an amazing casting director for us. We’d get casting tapes remotely. We were able to send Morgan tapes, so he was able to help us narrow it down, especially a fairly newcomer Amethyst Davis, who plays Mary Jane Bowser or Mary Jane Richards depending on when you meet her in the life.  Mary Louise-Parker signed on fairly early on. She is one of the most professional [actors]. It’s kind of triumphant the way she portrays this woman Eliza Van Lew.

Morgan: Yeah. That’s what you get when you have great actors. How they can embody a role. She does it to great effect.

Lori: We were really excited to have Ben Vereen. To have the pleasure of working with the Ben Vereen on this show is quite extraordinary. He was kind of the moral center of our show. Whenever something was going awry, we would bring Ben over.

Morgan Freeman in Story of God on NatGeo

Speaking of the Civil War, one of the best movies ever that captured this point in American history was Glory. I even remember first watching that one in school. Do you find these historical pieces have renewed importance in today’s time looking back at that landmark project and now this one? 

Morgan: You know what is happening in today’s times in this country. We’re on the verge of something cataclysmic. Same thing as the Civil War. When we tell these stories, I think it has the tendency or ability to remind us of where we came from and who we are and make up our minds where we want to go. And what was that all about?

Lori: And who do we want to be now?

Morgan: Yep.

Your production company Revelations Entertainment launched in 1996. What are some of the projects you are most proud of? 

Morgan: Oh my goodness. We have had a long run. There was The Story of God. That was a major mounting, put it that way. Then there was The Story of Us.  We had Invictus. That is one we are really proud of. I got a nomination for playing Madiba [Nelson Mandela]. A feather in the cap for me.

Lori: The first movie Morgan and I collaborated on [Bopha!], he was the director and I was the producer, so it was a good way to be introduced to Morgan. Not just as the international, iconic superstar movie star. We made that movie a long time ago in 1992. I think some of the films we’ve done like Mutiny where we talk about the mutiny [in Port Chicago] where we got some of the men who were involved with what happened in the 1940s and were pardoned by President Bill Clinton.

We had a film called The Killing of Kenneth Chamberlain a couple of years ago where we talked about this 70-something vet accidentally hit his life alert that calls the police and hospital when you need medical help. It was 24 hours after he called them and he ended up being shot. Through that movie, he was able to get a retrial in New York. I think the kinds of projects we like to do like Madam Secretary. We loved to see more women in public service. Obviously, we have Hillary Clinton. We started that project when we thought there would be the first female president. It was nice we had this statement to make, even when she wasn’t president.

I think The Gray House for me was really kind of right in line with the projects we like to make. To show people the unsung heroes of our history. Morgan is amazing about history. If you ask him almost anything, he’ll most likely either have a story or tell you something about it. I always learn something talking to Morgan, so he is really responsive and responsible for a lot of projects we are able to push through that are historically based.

Morgan: We’re developing another wonderful story about women. After our invasion, D-Day, troops were moving so fast mail was not keeping up with them. So they had a battalion that went to France and managed to distribute all of that mail.

Lori: And they were all female African Americans.

Morgan Freeman sitting outside with a hat and prison uniform on in a scene from the film ‘The Shawshank Redemption’, 1994. (Photo by Castle Rock Entertainment/Getty Images)

That sounds fascinating. I’m looking forward to finding out more about that one. Also, incredible we’re coming up to the 30th anniversary of The Shawshank Redemption. What are your thoughts on the durability of the movie and why it resonates so much still today? 

Morgan: I really believe we are all quite surprised at the noise that developed around that movie and how much noise that continues to be made about it. When you’re working, you never know what the ultimate outcome is going to be. But to me, what always set Shawshank apart was the fact it was that love story. A pure love story between these men. I think looking at it, it was just well-written. It was written by one of our better writers. Stephen King. Stephen also wrote The Green Mile. So, to get a writer like that who can really put you into a story and manage to get it into the right hands. That is what happened with Shawshank. The cinematographer, director, screenwriter, and actors, they were all there.

The stars aligned.

Yeah, they did.

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Is there a role you’ve always wanted to play but never have before? 

Morgan: Yeah. Years ago I was working with Robert Redford on a movie [An Unfinished Life] where Alan Ladd Jr. was the executive producer. We spoke about Shane. Remember the movie Shane with Alan Ladd? I wanted to do that part. I want to do it again and play Shane. I think it would just be perfect, but as things go, life slipped on by. I didn’t get to do it.

Lori: It’s so hard to get the rights too from the business and practical side of things.

Morgan: Paramount wouldn’t give them up.

You just celebrated your 87th birthday. How does Morgan Freeman celebrate his birthday these days? 

Morgan: As quietly as possible. On the big ones, you have some sort of blowout. All the other ones you just let them ease on by. No big deal. You don’t want to be reminded that you’re getting older and older and older.

For more information on the 63rd Annual Monte-Carlo Television Festival, visit https://www.tvfestival.com/en.