BEVERLY HILLS – Ava DuVernay’s “Queen Sugar” returns to OWN on June 20 and the Oscar nominated filmmaker participated with her stars in a Q&A Tuesday night moderated by none other than the OWN in OWN herself, Oprah Winfrey.
The event was meant to celebrate “Queen Sugar’s” second season, but also remind Emmy voters of its inaugural run last September. During the end of the Q&A portion of the event DuVernay was asked about what equity means in Hollywood today. Her answer was, as you’d expect, spot on.
“Equity means half of the projects being directed by women. Casts that reflect the real world. Not just black people and white people, but brown people and native people and Muslim people and people of all ages, and sizes and and body types,” DuVernay said. “Things that we try to do with ‘Queen Sugar’ and that what I try to do with my films just so we make our stories reflect the real world. Where folks feel that they can enter in whatever you’ve made and see themselves or people that they know.”
She then used a recent blockbuster as an example of how equity can play out in big budgeted studio films.
“I watched ‘Wonder Woman’ this weekend and I cried when Patty Jenkins came up,” DuVernay said. “I saw her last night and I told her I broke into tears when your name came up. But a few of the things she did. The posse, the guys. Every hero had to have a crew, a squad. His squad had a Native American in it. When they are walking through the train station into battle I saw Sikhs. Sikh soldiers dressed in the British military regalia, but they were also sikhs with the appropriate headdress. It was just this attention to detail that was wrapped up in this big, huge superhero thing.”
READ MORE: Wonder Woman Lassos Heroic Opening Weekend [Box Office]
She continues, “Even in the scene on the boat where [Steve Trevor] says ‘I can’t sleep next to you’ and she goes, ‘It’s up to you’ if you want to or not. You’re not gonna do nothing so you might as well go to sleep right here because you can’t do anything because I’m not gonna let you, right?’ When you unpack issues of sexuality and gender politics there is a way to do that with a real intention that is coming from a place of equity that colored the whole thing. It didn’t feel wrong and if you weren’t looking for it you wouldn’t have even felt it and if you were looking for it you saw something and you saw yourself and that was a beautiful example of what Hollywood can be and that’s what happen when you let women take care of it.”
Ain’t that the truth.
“Queen Sugar” returns to OWN in a two-part premiere on June 20 and 21.
[Photo Credit: Ava Duvernay with Gina Price-Bythewood (director of the upcoming “Spider-Man” spin-off “Silver and Black,” Patty Jenkins (“Wonder Woman”), and Lisa Choledenko (“The Kids Are All Right”)]