The Help: Book vs. Movie
Tate Taylor’s 2011 film The Help is based on Kathryn Stockett’s 2009 novel. In segregated Mississippi, two Black maids and an aspiring writer begin a secret project about domestic workers’ experiences.
From Books Adapted
How it was adapted
Three narrators become a story led by Aibileen’s voice
Aibileen, Minny and Skeeter take turns telling the book. The movie covers the novel’s main story in one film, while making Aibileen its principal narrator.
It opens with Aibileen answering questions about her life as a maid, before showing how the writing project began. Skeeter and Minny still have their own scenes, but the movie does not reproduce the book’s rotation between three first-person accounts.
Tate Taylor said the chapters that took him into Aibileen’s home, friendships and life beyond work determined his approach. He wanted the adaptation to be her story, rather than moving its center toward Skeeter.
About the book and the movie
- Author
- Kathryn Stockett
- Year
- 2009
- Pages
- 479Buy book
- Audiobook length
- 18 hr 6 minGet audiobook
- Narrator
- Cassandra Campbell, see all
In 1960s Jackson, Mississippi, Aibileen and Minny work in white households where their employers expect loyalty while enforcing segregation. Their accounts join that of aspiring writer Skeeter, who proposes a book about the maids’ experiences, creating a secret collaboration whose consequences fall hardest on the women with the least protection.
- Director
- Tate Taylor
- Writer
- Tate Taylor
- Year
- 2011
- Runtime
- 2 hr 26 minWatch on Amazon
- Cast
- Emma Stone, Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, Bryce Dallas Howard
- Genre
- comedy drama, Drama, female buddy, white savior
- IMDb
- View on IMDb
Skeeter returns from college to a Mississippi social circle whose treatment of Black domestic workers increasingly troubles her. Aibileen agrees to speak about her working life, and Minny joins the risky writing project, bringing experiences that could expose the women’s employers while endangering their own livelihoods and safety.
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