Jessica Chastain Wants to Bring Back ‘The Help’ Character: “I Didn’t Really Get to Mine that Much Material”

Jessica Chastain earned her first Oscar nomination over a decade ago for her supporting role in the 2011 film The Help, and she’s now ready to return to the character that made her a household name.

An adaptation of the Kathryn Stockett novel about a white journalist and two Black maids in Jackson, Mississippi in 1963, The Help was a box office hit, grossing over $216 million at the box office from a modest $25 million budget. Chastain played Celia Foote, a bubbly housewife dealing with the stress of miscarriage and marriage through her friendship with her maid, Minny Jackson, played by Octavia Spencer.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly’s The Awardist podcast, Chastain shared her idea for a sequel that would involve the return of her and Spencer’s characters.

“I just want to do something, Celia and Minny, and see what happened,” Chastain said. “You know they ended up living together and raising the baby together, they were best friends. How amazing would that film be? I loved her, and I got to be a bit silly.”

The film, directed by Tate Taylor, helped to boost the careers of Emma Stone, Bryce Dallas Howard and Viola Davis, who also earned an Oscar nomination for her leading role as Aibileen Clark. 

Davis, however, has since criticized the film’s limited view of race. In 2018, she told The New York Times that she regretted taking her role in the film. Despite loving the cast and crew behind the film, she shared that the film didn’t really center the voices of the maids.

“I just felt that at the end of the day that it wasn’t the voices of the maids that were heard,” she shared. “And I know that if you do a movie where the whole premise is, I want to know what it feels like to work for white people and to bring up children in 1963, I want to hear how you really feel about it. I never heard that in the course of the movie.”

Since The Help, Chastain has gone on to have a wildly successful film career and has played an array of interesting, challenging characters. 

“A lot of my characters I feel like I got to experience a lot,” Chastain added in her interview with The Awardist. “Celia, it was such a deep dive for me. I really threw on that character, and I didn’t really get to mine that much material because I was a supporting part of that story. That’s a character I wish I could revisit.”

Chastain won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in 2021’s The Eyes of Tammy Faye.

The Help is now streaming.