Ma: Octavia Spencer said yes to new horror film because she wasn't 'the first black person to get killed'

The Oscar-winner turns up the creep factor in new Blumhouse chiller

Octavia Spencer had a fantastic reason for signing up to star in new horror film Ma.

The Oscar-winning star, best known for roles in The Help and The Shape of Water, plays against type in the Jason Blum-produced release that follows a lonely woman who befriends a group of teenagers.

Though the original draft was written with a white woman in the title role, director Tate Taylor told CinemaBlend that the decision to cast Spencer was inspired by a conversation in which she told him she was “sick of only being offered the same role and never getting to be a lead.”

Spencer had one question before agreeing to star in the horror film: “Am I the black person who gets killed first?”

Taylor said: “I go, ‘No, you get to kill the people.’ She goes, ‘F*** yes, I don’t need to read it, I trust you.’”

The filmmaker, who also directed The Help, added that the pair worked on fleshing out the script so that Spencer’s character, Sue Ann, was a monster that audience members could also sympathise with.

“There was no back story [in the original script],” Taylor said. “The shifts in the script came from me creating her backstory, which has empathy, and as it came in some of the scenes just had to reflect that.”

Ma is in cinemas now