Russell Simmons wants everyone to know he is sorry for the Harriet Tubman sex tape parody fiasco.
His solution: team up with the icon’s descendents to bring her story to the big screen.
The hip-hop impresario ignited a public relations firestorm when his All Def Digital YouTube channel posted a Tubman spoof that angered just about everyone who watched it.
The tasteless three minute video was billed as “the off-record account of how Harriet Tubman blackmailed her master into letting her run the Underground Railroad!” In it, Tubman secretly tapes herself having sex with her white slave master, so she can use the video against him.
Many were outraged by the video, especially Tubman’s living relatives.
“When I looked at it [the Harriet Tubman sex tape] tears streamed down my eyes,” Tubman’s great-great-grand-niece Rita Daniels said in an interview with The Grio. “This is a woman who helped people. She was not about this.”
Simmons, for his part, said he was heartbroken by the outcry, and pulled the video from the channel.
“I can now understand why so many people are upset,” he wrote in a post on his website, Global Grind. “I have taken down the video.”
Taking things a step further, he reached out to Rita and Geraldine Daniels to offer a personal apology.
In a series of tweets over the weekend, Simmons said that not only had his apology been accepted, they were now all going to team up to get a Tubman biopic off the ground.
The last few dayz I have been speaking to some of the direct descendants of Harriet Tubman. (Rita and Geraldine Daniels).
— Russell Simmons (@UncleRUSH) August 17, 2013
They have not only accepted my apology but we agree that we should begin immediately to develop the story of Harriet Tubman.
— Russell Simmons (@UncleRUSH) August 17, 2013
God works in mysterious ways. Thank you Rita and Geraldine Daniels You and your great great grandmother are amazing inspiration. #newfriends
— Russell Simmons (@UncleRUSH) August 17, 2013