Oprah Winfrey first learned about Ava DuVernay from David Oyelowo. Winfrey then invited DuVernay to brunch — and the rest was history. From then on, the pair have worked together on Selma, AWrinkleinTime, WhenTheySeeUs and QueenSugar.
Oprah Winfrey has spent most of her career talking, so it’s a little surprising that the only sound you hear from the porch of her second home in Maui is absolute silence. Forget about the ocean waves or rustling palm trees. OK, if you’re lucky enough to hang with Oprah for an entire afternoon, this zen will be interrupted by the periodic squawking of wild roosters. In such a tranquil retreat, you can think clearly, cradled in the beauty of all that Hawaii has to offer.
“In the beginning, I read every script and sent notes,” Winfrey says. “By maybe the third or fourth season, I thought, ‘I’m just going to watch with the audience.’” “I didn’t want it for myself,” Winfrey explains. “I wanted that entire team to receive the recognition that they deserve. This is the time I miss ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show,’ because I would’ve had them on every week. Everybody would’ve known about ‘Queen Sugar.’”And yet the show’s avid following and strong reviews haven’t been enough to break through. Earlier, on the porch, I playfully ask the pair which show would win an Emmy if they ruled the world.
“Queen Sugar” signs off following the finales of other groundbreaking shows that center the Black experience, like ABC’s “Black-ish” and HBO’s “Insecure.” However, both of those are comedies, which has been the primary venue for Black stories and storytellers. “The fact that this is the longest-running dramatic television series that centers a Black family really says something about the state of American television over the history of the medium,” DuVernay says.
It took DuVernay three tries before she nailed her adaptation of Baszile’s novel. Her first script was a little too on the nose for Winfrey’s taste, and the second a bit more out there. DuVernay cracked the code when Winfrey suggested she use the book “as a seed, but then let it blossom.” But the experience was also reminiscent of the powerful scene from the pilot where Ralph Angel and his young son, Blue , sit at the bedside of dying patriarch Ernest Bordelon . It’s this sequence that made the greatest impression on Winfrey, especially now that she’s lived it. “The way Ava framed the shot — those three dark-skinned Black men in the hospital room offering their love to each other — is a thing I had never seen before or felt before, nor had anyone else,” Winfrey recalls.
When some in the entertainment industry learned of Winfrey and DuVernay’s pledge, they reacted with skepticism. “These were all real things that we heard: ‘It won’t last.’ ‘There aren’t enough women directors to do it.’ ‘This is just a fluke,’” DuVernay recalls. “But seven seasons later, this has become a real movement in episodic directing that will reverberate through our industry for many years to come.
Regardless of the ever-growing résumés of these “Queen Sugar” alums, statistics are still abysmal for women directors. In 2021,
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