Aldis Hodge, the star of WGN America’s Underground Railroad drama “Underground,” said that an often discounted aspect of slavery was the mental toll it took.
“Mental slavery is the real cage,” Hodge said during a Television Critics Association panel. “It’s amazing the mental strength, the mental capacity one can achieve once you realize this is either life or death … The fact is not everybody believed they were worthy of being free.”
Hodge, who plays a slave named Noah who leads his fellow slaves in an escape from a Southern plantation, also revealed what surprised him the most about slaves who did choose to escape.