Emperor (2020) on Netflix
PG-1320201h 39mDramaHistoryWarWestern
Shields Green is enslaved on a Charleston plantation that his master gambles away. When a new overseer tortures him and whips his son Tommy, Shields kills the man and flees north.
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- Netflix3.2/5
- IMDb6.0/101,757 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes67%
Trailer
Plot summary
In 1859, Shields Green, called Emperor, works on a plantation in Charleston, South Carolina. His master gambles the plantation away, and a cruel new overseer takes charge. The overseer has Shields tortured and whips his son Tommy. Shields kills the overseer and flees, and his wife Sarah is killed during the escape. He goes north, evades capture, and learns a bounty has been placed on his head. His master and the neighboring plantation owners hire the bounty hunter Luke McCabe to catch him.
Cast
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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Emperor (2020)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
SPOILER
The film shows Shields Green escaping Harpers Ferry, but the real Green was captured, tried and convicted along with John Brown of treason against Virginia, murder and inciting a slave insurrection, and hanged two weeks after Brown.- The real Shields Green, the man Dayo Okeniyi plays, had broken speech and was hard to understand, possibly from a speech defect, and Frederick Douglass described him as "a man of few words".
- What the real Shields Green did as a slave in South Carolina is unknown, and his managing a plantation is very unlikely; in Rochester he lived in Frederick Douglass's house and worked as a barber and launderer.
SPOILER
There is no evidence that the real Shields Green saw his son again after he left South Carolina, or that his son wrote a book about him.
