VIDEO: Jeff Daniels Says TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD is a Wake-Up Call to Audiences

On Tuesday night's episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, actor Jeff Daniels stopped by to talk about his Broadway play, To Kill a Mockingbird.

During the interview, Daniels says that the racial themes of the play are a stark wake-up call to a certain group of theater goers. He tells Colbert, "It's a mixed audience, but there's a lot of white people. A lot of white liberal America. A lot of white America is sitting out there. And this play is like a right hook to their chin."

Daniels goes on to day, "When Tom Robinson gets sent to jail, he's 100% innocent, and the only reason he's going to jail is because he's black, you see Tom Robinson chained up and walking across the stage on his way to the electric chair. And it's a long cross. You feel that. And america needs to feel that stuff."

Watch the interview below!

Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-Winning American classic To Kill A Mockingbird comes to Broadway in a new adaptation by Aaron Sorkin, Directed by Bartlett Sher.

Set in Alabama in 1934, Harper Lee's enduring story of racial injustice and childhood innocence centers on one of the most venerated characters in American literature, the small-town lawyer Atticus Finch, played by Jeff Daniels. The cast of characters includes Atticus's daughter Scout (Celia Keenan-Bolger), her brother Jem (Will Pullen), their housekeeper and caretaker, Calpurnia (LaTanya Richardson Jackson), their visiting friend Dill (Gideon Glick), and a mysterious neighbor, the reclusive Arthur "Boo" Radley (Danny Wolohan). The other indelible residents of Maycomb, Alabama are brought to life on stage by Frederick Weller (as Bob Ewell), Gbenga Akinnagbe (playing Tom Robinson), Stark Sands (as prosecutor Horace Gilmer), Dakin Matthews (playing Judge Taylor), and Erin Wilhelmi (as Mayella Ewell).