Overview
Genre
DramaRelease Date
August 16, 2013 (Limited)Studio
The Weinstein Company
Cast and Crew
Director
Lee DanielsProducer
Lee Daniels, Cassian Elwes, Pamela Williams, Laura Ziskin, Buddy PatrickScreenwriter
Lee Daniels, Danny StrongStarring
- Forest Whitaker as Cecil Gaines
- Alex Pettyfer as Thomas Westphall
- James Marsden as John F. Kennedy
- Oprah Winfrey as Gloria Gaines
- Jane Fonda as Nancy Reagan
- John Cusack as Richard Nixon
- Alan Rickman as Ronald Reagan
- Robin Williams as President Dwight D. Eisenhower
- Terrence Howard as Howard
- Cuba Gooding Jr. as Carter Wilson
- Minka Kelly as Jackie Kennedy
- Lenny Kravitz as James Holloway
- Liev Schreiber as President Lyndon B. Johnson
- Jesse Williams as Rev. James Lawson
- Nelsan Ellis as Martin Luther King Jr
- Mariah Carey as Hattie Pearl
- Yaya DaCos
Story
Based on Wil Haygood's Washington Post "A Butler Well Served by This Election." It's a story of Eugene Allen, a black man who served as a White House butler for 34 years.
Allen started at the White House as a "pantry man" in 1952 when blacks weren't allowed to use public restrooms in his native Virginia. He ended up serving eight presidents and had a unique front row seat as political and racial history was being made, from the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement to the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr., President John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy Jr.
