The road to getting any movie made is always a stressful one, but in the case of Selma it was especially bumpy. After many false starts the film finally made it to the finish line with some good luck and Oprah Winfrey magic.

The television titan was brought on board to produce and co-star in the film by lead actor David Oyelowo, who had been with Selma from the beginning. In fact, it’s his portrayal of Dr. Martin Luther King that ignites Selma from its opening scene and guarantees the thespian a place in this year’s Oscar conversation.

Oyelowo recently arrived in San Francisco to premiere Selma in front of an ecstatic crowd and things got even crazier when he also brought Winfrey to the stage. The film played beautifully at the advanced showing and the following day Oyelowo sat down with us to talk about the difficult task of getting the film made and humanizing Dr. King like never before. This is a transcription of that conversation.

Q: You spoke earlier about how difficult it was to get the rights to Martin Luther King’s historic “I have a dream” speech to use in the film. Obviously it didn’t work out, but why was it so difficult?

David Oyelowo: Steven Spielberg owns the rights to the speech. He has wanted to make a more cradle-to-the-grave film for a while and he’s Spielberg so he can buy the rights.

Q: But Oprah is Oprah.

Oyelowo: (laughs) Yes, but Oprah came a bit later to it. Not for lack of trying, by the way, but in all honesty I’m hugely relieved that we didn’t get it because the last thing I want as an actor playing Dr. King is people comparing and contrasting word for word the speeches he had given. At the end of the day we didn’t want to do an impression or beat-by-beat of this man.

Q: There’s a lot of vulnerability in your depiction of Dr. King. How integral was that to your process?

Oyelowo: It was absolutely necessary. There’s a lot out there on him but in my research the one thing there’s not a lot of is the man behind the speeches and the iconography. In many ways, why make a movie if it’s not going to be revelatory? If it’s just going to be stuff you can find in a documentary, then go watch the documentary. I was more interested in who was the guy at home taking out the trash, putting his kids to bed, having doubt, shame, guilt, about what is going on.

Q: What was your process like to get Dr. King’s cadence and mannerisms down?

Oyelowo: It was a layered approach. Thankfully there’s a lot of footage and recordings and part of my job as an actor is doing accents, that’s something I love. I barely do films in my own accent now. (laughs)

Q: You must have had a lot of fun experimenting with the role.

Oyelowo: Well, Lee Daniels, the director who originally cast me in this role, said to me, “You’re the only one who’s come in here and played him without any reverence.” That’s because I didn’t grow up like many African-Americans with pictures on their wall of Jesus, JFK and Martin Luther King. I hadn’t grown up with Saint King, I very much approached him as a man first. I think being a foreigner helped me get there quicker.

Q: You just mentioned Lee Daniels and I know his version of this film was a bit different. How did his version differ from what we have now?

Oyelowo: The original script was more focused on LBJ. King was not the focal point. When Ava DuVernay came on board to direct she felt very strongly that the film should be about King and the movement.

Q: You mentioned before that you brought Ava to the project after Lee Daniels dropped out. How easy or difficult was it to get her on board?

Oyelowo: It wasn’t easy because the movie we made together prior to Selma was a $200,000 movie. This is a $20 million movie and you almost never get that with black directors. You never get that with black female directors. I went in and tub-thumped on her behalf and luckily her film Middle of Nowhere is very persuasive.

Q: You’ve been in the business for a while. In that time how have you seen the landscape changed in Hollywood for people of color?

Oyelowo: What’s happening right now is that movies like Selma, 12 Years A Slave, The Butler, Fruitvale Station, these are films unlike other films which will remain nameless, where a white protagonist isn’t crowbarred into the center to tell a black story. That has been a tradition that has long existed in Hollywood at the highest level and it’s become a self-fulfilling prophecy because of course those films do well because the story is interesting. But we’re not following the right people.

Q: Which of your films do you wish audiences would seek out the most?

Oyelowo: Nightingale. It’s a film I did recently and it comes out next year.

Selma opens in limited release December 25.