Sandra Bullock Returns to Acting as an Ex-Con in Netflix Drama The Unforgivable

Sandra Bullock is back. After a brief acting hiatus following her 2018 Netflix hit, Bird Box, the actress is returning to the streaming service to produce and star in the dramatic redemption story, The Unforgivable.

In a newly-released trailer, Bullock stars as Ruth Slater, a woman who is just getting out of prison after serving two decades for a violent crime. Upon her release, all she wants to do is find her kid sister, but she continues to hit roadblocks along the way.

“My character is someone who has been incarcerated for 20 years for a pretty heinous crime [and] gets out,” Bullock told Entertainment Weekly. “There are several people whose lives she affected by this crime she committed, and there’s a lot of hatred and anger and bitterness and sorrow associated with her release. She wants to find this one person, the only family she had when she went in, and you keep asking yourself, ‘Why can’t you let it go? This family member was traumatized by your actions — let it go! Stop harming these people all over again.’”

Bullock, who is also a producer on the film, explained The Unforgivable has a bit of a “murder mystery” aspect to it as well. "Finding out the background to the story of why she did what she did is sort of the whodunnit of this," she said.

The movie, which also stars Viola Davis, Jon Bernthal, and Vincent D’Onofrio, began filming in February 2020 and was later shut down due to the pandemic. The crew took a break and returned to set months later, in September.

"Of course, when we filmed the second half, shooting was very different,” the movie’s director, Nora Fingscheidt, told EW. “We had to be super, super careful and learn how to work with COVID. For me, the biggest challenge was: How can we make it work so that later on, when you watch the film, you don't think, 'Oh, wait, that was pre-COVID and now that's after COVID?' All of the sudden, all the extras are spread out or, oh, it's summer and [now] it's winter, because we shot in Canada where you have very strong seasons. That was an extra challenge."

The Unforgivable premieres in theaters on November 24th and will be available to stream on Netflix on December 10th.