Anderson Cooper To Interview Nate Parker
With his “Birth of a Nation” hitting theaters Oct. 7, embattled writer-director-star Nate Parker, in full damage-control mode, is set to appear on CBS’ 60 Minutes. Anderson Cooper is the correspondent, and the segment will air this Sunday. (How ironic he’s talking to Cooper: Parker has said he wouldn’t take a gay role because it would “emasculate” him.) Parker, whose film centers on the Nat Turner slave rebellion of 1831, has been under fire since the summer, when he spoke in several interviews about a 1999 trial in which he and Jean Celestin (who later co-wrote “The Birth of a Nation”) were accused of raping a classmate at Penn State. Parker, who maintained the sex was consensual, was acquitted, while Celestin was convicted. (Celestin’s case was overturned on appeal.) After it was revealed this summer that the accuser committed suicide in 2012, Parker issued a lengthy statement saying, “I am filled with profound sorrow.”
