Preferring to speak of “inclusion,” filmmaker Ava DuVernay cringes at the buzzword “diversity,” even though it’s a term that her friend and frequent producer, Oprah Winfrey, has used in the past when talking about the changing role of African-Americans within the entertainment industry. But has that controversial word driven a wedge in their professional or personal relationship? Not really. “We aren’t sitting around talking about diversity,” DuVernay explains, “just like we aren’t sitting around talking about being black or being women. We’re just being that.” This candid statement comes from a new interview with DuVernay and Winfrey conducted by Michael O’Connell of The Hollywood Reporter.
The two are currently working on a television adaptation of Natalie Baszile’s novel Queen Sugar for Winfrey’s OWN cable network. Their most famous collaboration, however, is 2014’s Selma, the acclaimed Martin Luther King Jr. biopic directed by DuVernay and produced in part by Winfrey. Though set a half-century in the past, Selma was deemed newly relevant in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, stemming from a series of disturbing encounters between police officers and African-American civilians across the country. Among other topics, Winfrey and DuVernay discuss their feelings toward that galvanizing movement and the general state of Hollywood in 2016.