Tessa Thompson Heads to MLK Biopic, 'Selma'

If you want to see a really happy dude enjoying life, check out the photo of me hanging out with Tessa Thompson at Sundance earlier this year. The actress, who starred in the first season of Veronica Mars but got her big screen break in Tyler Perry's For Colored Girls, was the fiery center of the festival hit, Dear White People (review of that here), which will hit theaters probably later this year. But she's now picked up what will be her next big role in Ava Duvernay's Martin Luther King Jr. biopic, Selma.

Thompson will play Diane Nash, a civil rights leader herself and a key adviser to MLK, played by David Oyelowo. The story is set during the 1965 voting rights marches from Selma to Montgomery, AL. Known as "Bloody Sunday" the first marchers were attacked by hundreds of state and local police, creating some of the most iconic imagery of the civil rights movement.

Oprah Winfrey and Brad Pitt are producing, with Tom Wilkinson, Common, Carmen Ejogo, and Andre Holland also part of the cast. [Deadline]