Tapped to portray Mamie, the mother of the slain teen, in the John Singleton-written movie, the 'Empire' star shares her belief that it will be the hardest role she will ever do.

• Jan 26, 2019

AceShowbiz - Taraji P. Henson is convinced playing slain teen Emmett Till's mother will be her toughest role to date - and she hasn't even finished reading the script yet.

The actress tells Playboy she's nervous about her role as Mamie Till-Mobley in the upcoming John Singleton film, because it's so "brutal".

"I can already tell that the hardest one (film) I'll ever do is playing Emmett Till's mother, and I haven't even finished reading the script yet," she explains. "John Singleton wrote it, and it's just brutal. Every page is making me ugly-face cry."

"The way John has magically and beautifully written his story, you get to know this kid, and that makes it worse. Why did they have to do this to a child? What threat was he that they had to mutilate him like that? What's so hard is that it gets me thinking about (slain African-American teenagers) Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown and that nine-year-old kid in Brooklyn a white woman accused of touching her a**. That's what got Emmett Till killed...! That s**t is still happening. I don't know if people are ready for this movie. I don't even know if I am."

Till, an African-American teenager, was brutally beaten, shot through the head and dumped in the Tallahatchie River with barbed wire tied around his neck after he was falsely accused of flirting with a white woman in Mississippi in 1955.

Following her son's murder, Till-Mobley become a civil rights leader and teacher. She passed away in 2003.

Henson's film is not the only Till project in development - in 2015, it was reported rapper Jay-Z and Will Smith had teamed up to executive produce an untitled mini-series, and late film critic Roger Ebert's widow, Chaz Ebert, is also executive producing a film based on the book "Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America", which was written by Till's mother and award-winning journalist Christopher Benson.

Whoopi Goldberg is also planning to produce Till, which will be based on producer Keith A. Beauchamp's 2004 documentary "The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till" and Simeon Wright's Simeon's "Story: An Eyewitness Account of the Kidnapping of Emmett Till".