My experience I consider an accident in the Hollywood system. I don't believe it should be a reference for a black film maker, or an example for any young film maker, because it's purely luck.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I'm not going to be labeled a black filmmaker. I am not here to just tell black stories. I'm here to tell all kinds of stories, musicals and dramas.
Sometimes movie-making happens like clockwork; other times, like a car accident.
There's something very important about films about black women and girls being made by black women. It's a reflection as opposed to an interpretation.
What does it mean to be too black for Hollywood? It's self-explanatory. Hollywood has certain kinds of blacks that they like.
I think that if we really want to break it down, that non-black filmmakers have had many, many years and many, many opportunities to tell many, many stories about themselves, and black filmmakers have not had as many years, as many opportunities, as many films to explore the nuances of our reality.
'Black film,' that term allows studios to just marginalize a movie and say, 'We've made our black film. We've made our film with people of color in it,' as opposed to, 'I just feel like people of color should be in every genre.'
Ultimately, with every film I'd done before, there was a reference. They have their own uniqueness, but there was always a precedent.
A lot of people in the movie business don't have a point of reference for me; nobody really knows who I am.
A lot of times black actors get stuck in a box. They're up against a lot of limitations for the kind of films that they get approached about. It's easy to get stuck in a box and just be approached about nothing but urban films.
When you're black in Hollywood, you know, your first role is going to be on a crime drama. That's - everybody knows that.