Q: Did you have any anxiety going into the movie about playing someone who is still alive?
HS: The idea of playing a real-life person has a lot of responsibility that comes with that. I would hate to have been a part of telling a story that Betty Anne and her family saw and they looked at it and thought, “What were you thinking!” I wouldn’t have been able to live with that. That’s something that would be a disaster. So having Betty Anne, I mean, she’s not intimidating in anyway. She’s just selfless and she wears her heart on her sleeve. She was actually very helpful. She was never there to point a finger or anything like that. An example that Sam and I were giving the other day was if we had any questions, she would fill in the blanks. In less than two hours, we expand 18 or 19 years of time. As an actor it’s a great challenge, because I go from 19 to 39 years old. How does your character change emotionally from year to year? We were not filming in sequential order either. Then, of course, the wardrobe, all of that goes into making something believable. But that’s what’s fun about making a movie, the collaboration.
Q: What about the prison stuff?
HS: One of the things that Betty Anne did in those prison scenes, which were a lot of the challenging parts of the movie, was the idea of Kenny not playing the victim and what do you play in those scenes? Betty Anne said, “I was doing this for my brother, and Kenny was there for me. We were there for each other.” So that was a great objective. What a gift to be able to have that told to you during these really emotional kind of scenes.
Q: What impact do you hope Conviction will have on audiences?
HS: Hopefully, for sure this film will shine a light upon the system. Since DNA is coming into effect and with the help of the Innocence Project, 259 people who were wrongfully accused have been exonerated from prison. That’s all through DNA evidence. There are a lot more, but they don’t happen to have DNA to help them. People would say to Betty Anne, “You’ve given your life up for this,” and she would say, “It became a part of my life.” She would say, “I did what anyone would do.” And that also speaks volumes, because she believed everyone would do this. You look at her and think, “No not everyone would do this.” I’ll carry Betty Anne and her brother Kenny forever in my heart.
