The legend of Bass Reeves lives on! If you’re not already familiar with the first-ever Black Deputy Marshall in the U.S., Paramount+ is here to tell the fascinating story with a new series backed by actor/director Taylor Sheridan (Sicario, Hell or High Water). Created by Chad Feehan and starring David Oyelowo in the titular role, Lawmen: Bass Reeves offers an insightful look into the historical icon’s rise to notoriety.

That fame includes Reeves’ family, including Bass’ wife Jennie, who is played to perfection by rising star Lauren E. Banks. We recently caught up with Banks to learn more about the benefits of collaborating with a big name like Oyelowo and her other projects in the works.

Playing ‘The Heartbeat’ of the Reeves Family

Sure, the show is primarily focused on Bass Reeves’ career in the 1800s, but that doesn’t mean his family wasn’t a large part of his life, and he certainly didn’t raise them single-handedly. In describing her character, Banks told MovieWeb:

“Jennie Reeves is the young matriarch of the Bass Reeves family. She is a wife to Bass and, when you meet her, she’s a mother to four. But they have a huge family, and she’s definitely the heartbeat of their family.”

As confirmed in our separate interviews with creator Feehan and director Damian Marcano, there are a number of perks to working alongside Oyelowo. He and Banks share a number of heartfelt, powerful scenes across the episodes released thus far, and she provides some of her own insight into the leading man: “He’s one of the most generous actors that I’ve worked with… which makes the work on-screen so seamless and therefore so real, and truthful and safe in a way that you’re like, ‘OK, well, we’re here together.'” Banks went on to say:

“I met David early in the process, so just he and I were signed on to the project. And I understood him to have played Martin Luther King, Jr., and when I saw that performance, I was blown away. So the fact that David Oyelowo had faith in me standing next to him and gave me a considerable amount of confidence… We understood the job that was in front of us was to really anchor ourselves in the love and the courage and the faith of these two people taking on and doing something unprecedented for not only themselves, but literally the whole country.”

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And the fun behind the scenes didn’t stop with Oyelowo. As Banks mentioned, the Reeves family is sizable and just keeps growing with time, so she was able to share the screen with a number of other talented performers in the show: “The scenes that I have with Demi Singleton, who plays Sally Reeves, their mother-daughter dynamic is so fun to me, and especially because Jenny is in an interesting position… She’s the mother and has the experience of having been mother to at least four to five children when we first meet her, and yet she’s still a young woman.” Banks continued:

“She’s not a day over 34 when we meet her, and so an interesting dynamic was with the first-born who is only maybe 16 years younger than her. And in their lives is a lot of play, a lot of fun, a lot of sass, but also a lot of warmth and love. And so it was really fun to do those scenes with Demi.”

Bass Reeves: ‘A Long Time Coming’
Paramount

Lawmen: Bass Reeves is a period piece about an instrumental time in U.S. history, and looking ahead, Banks seems eager to further embrace the television genre. “There’s no doubt about the fact that I would love to continue to do these kinds of projects,” Banks explained. “Bass Reeves has been a long time coming, and you can only imagine some of the characters that I could play, which are women of these various time periods of our history.” She continued:

“I was actually just in a museum the other day, and I said, ‘I wouldn’t mind playing a character from every era of our experience here in America, something like August Wilson did with his 10 plays of the century cycle.’ And there’s something about just the truth that is inescapable that marry to a fictional work when you have a foundation of something that is as big and grand as the legend of Bass Reeves.”

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And on the subject of history, Banks can also be spotted in a recent Starz series that captured yet another monumental period in U.S. history: Gaslit, which explored the Watergate scandal. “I was so happy to to work on that, too,” said Banks. “I thought it was a fascinating time in history… but we didn’t know that kind of insider information. So it was really fun to dig that apart.”

Banks continued to discuss her future in Hollywood and a certain other genre she hopes to tackle, thanks to the sort of training she received while co-starring in Lawmen: Bass Reeves. “Thanks to the waiver system [during the strike], I was able to do a film called The Dutchman, and it is a remake of a 1960s film of the same name that starred one of my teachers from Howard University, Al Freeman, Jr.,” said Banks. “My lived experience and my personal, spiritual understandings of things calls me to those works, whether I look for them or not.” She continued:

“And I also am really inspired and excited about the world of action and adventure… In Bass Reeves, it’s steeped in the history, but there’s a lot of action and a lot on horseback, with the weapons training that we got to do on the show. And I have a lot of skills that you’ll see, but I have even more skills from this show that I look forward to taking on to something else.”

In the meantime, you can stream Lawmen: Bass Reeves on Paramount+ below, with new episodes on Sundays.

Watch on Paramount+