Octavia Spencer made her feature film debut in 1996’s star-studded John Grisham adaptation A Time to Kill, but it would be almost two decades before she became a recognizable talent and serious player in the industry, thanks to her Academy Award winning Best Supporting Actress performance in The Help, a category she’s since been nominated in a further two times.
She’s now firmly established a regular fixture on our screens, showcasing no shortage of versatility in projects as diverse as Hidden Figures, The Shape of Water, Green Book, Pixar’s Onward, Netflix superhero comedy Thunder Force and many more. Spencer even proved herself capable of headlining a low budget Blumhouse psychological chiller in 2019’s Ma, which earned in excess of $61 million at the box office on a $5 million budget.
The premise revolves around Sue Ann Ellington, a lonely middle-aged woman who lets a group of teenagers use her basement as a place for them to party, before things take an increasingly dark turn as she becomes obsessed with the youngsters, leading to a series of revelations that date back decades and span several generations.
Critics were mixed on Ma when it first released, but everyone was in agreement that Spencer was easily the highlight of the entire film, which didn’t come as much of a surprise given her undoubted talent and ability. Director Tate Taylor teased a few months back that a sequel could be on the cards, too, while the opener is currently dominating the Netflix most-watched charts having exploded out of nowhere to become one of the 20 most-watched movies on the platform around the world, proving that there’s definitely an audience willing to see more.