Oprah Winfrey And Ava DuVernay Talk Diversity, Queen Sugar And More On The Hollywood Reporter

"If you treat being black as a plight, it affects your creativity."

Queen Sugar is the new film by Oprah Winfrey and Ava DuVernay, which will be debuted on Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) from September 6 & 7. The film is based on the novel written by Natalie Baszile. It chronicles the lives and loves of the estranged Bordelon siblings in Saint Josephine, Louisiana: Charley, the savvy wife and manager of an NBA star; Nova, a worldly-wise journalist and activist; and Ralph Angel, a formerly incarcerated young father in search of redemption. After a family tragedy, the Bordelons must navigate the triumphs and struggles of their complicated lives in order to run an ailing sugarcane farm in the Deep South.

The two friends Oprah and Ava spoke to The Hollywood Reporter (THR) on diversity, their new film, Queen Sugar and how this affects their work within the black community. Read excerpts after the cut.

Ava, you've expressed strong distaste for the term "diversity," but Oprah has made use of it. How do you both characterize the concept now in terms of the overall conversation in the industry?

DuVernay: We aren't sitting around talking about diversity, just like we aren't sitting around talking about being black or being women. We're just being that.

Winfrey: I will say that I stand corrected. I used to use the word "diversity" all the time. "We want more diverse stories, more diverse characters …" Now I really eliminated it from my vocabulary because I've learned from her that the word that most articulates what we're looking for is what we want to be: included. It's to have a seat at the table where the decisions are being made.

DuVernay: That was your take on it.

Winfrey: When Sidney Poitier came to my school [in South Africa], he gave a gift of 550 movies to the girls. He thought if you watch these 550 movies, they'll be your education for life. He wrote to the girls that his dream for them was to be able to sit at the table of the future where the world's decisions would be made. I realize now that what he was saying is to be included, to be valued as a person who has something to contribute.

As black artists, what responsibility do you feel to include the challenges facing the black community in your storytelling?

DuVernay: You see integration of Black Lives Matter from the beginning of [Queen Sugar] because it is literally black lives having meaning and mattering in the everyday. With the Black Lives Matter movement, a lot of the focus is on the protest and dissent. I'm hoping to dismantle the public notion — for folks outside of the community — of what Black Lives Matter means. It's really about saying that black lives matter, that humanity is the same when you go inside people's homes.

Can black stories accurately be told by people who aren't black?

DuVernay: Artists should be free to create what we want. I believe there's a special value in work that is a reflection of oneself as opposed to interpretation. When I see a film or a TV show about black people not written by someone who's black, it's an interpretation of that life.

Winfrey: I think it depends upon your level of experience.

For more of this interview it can be read here