Queen Latifah on Playing Trailblazers Like Hattie McDaniel While Mentoring the Next Generation of Filmmakers
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Queen Latifah has long been a trailblazer for women in the industry, transitioning from rapper to actor to producer to entrepreneur, while emphasizing the importance of having a seat at the table when it comes to business.
And with her latest venture, the Queen Collective â a mentorship initiative designed to give multicultural women directors a platform (and the financial resources) to get their projects made â the multi-hyphenate star is focused on providing young filmmakers a meaningful way to move up in Hollywood and change the nature of the industry as a whole.
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âWeâre talking about layers and layers and layers of systemic racism and classism thatâs sort of like worked its way into every fabric of our society,â Latifah told Variety over the phone Thursday. âItâs not something thatâs going to get dismantled overnight, but each person who has an opportunity to be their own boss and tell their story their way, gives you an opportunity to just see something through a different lens.â
Itâs a powerful position that Latifah knows well, after co-founding her production company Flavor Unit Entertainment in 1995 and executive producing films since 2003.
âWhen you look at the stats of what happens behind the camera, how these women hire is also indicative of how we can solve the problem,â Latifah added. âBecause they hire much more diversely, which gives opportunity and experience to various people of diverse backgrounds, so it continues to build the pool of people with experience that directors and producers will want to go to as they continue to work in our business.â
In another parallel, the Grammy-winner and Oscar-nominee embodied another trailblazer earlier this year, playing Hattie McDaniel (the first Black person to win an Oscar, for her performance in âGone with the Windâ in 1939) in the Netflix limited series âHollywood,â which imagined a more-inclusive vision for Tinseltownâs Golden Era. McDanielâs name has been back in the headlines this week as HBO Max decided to temporarily pull âGone with the Windâ from its lineup, a move that Latifah agrees is the right call. âWeâre gonna have a lot of places where people have hiccups,â she explained. âItâs not just about the knee jerk reaction and get rid of you. No, itâs about âOkay great, letâs fix this and hopefully make it move forward.â
âHer story is an important story and unfortunately her story is not a unique story. There are so many actors of color that were treated so disrespectfully in her time and faced so many challenges,â Latifah explained. âHattie McDaniel was gifted, but she was relegated to certain types of roles and when you have to decide between putting food on a table or playing a certain role, it is very difficult to make those decisions. And thatâs the position a lot of Black actors were put in at that time ⊠and thatâs still been happening. Itâs been happening up through the â80s and â90s for sure âyou know, play a rapist in this role, play the mugger in this role, play the murderer in this role, or nothing at all.â
âIt could happen again if we donât say vigilant and make sure that our stories are told properly,â Latifah added. âLook at me, I am the example of breaking down walls. If you would ask any agent back at my agency back in the day â which literally my partner/manager Shakim [Compare] did â âDo you think Latifah can be an A-list actor?â They said âNo.â And it was strictly based upon the fact that Iâm Black, that Iâm not skinny, that Iâm not white, Iâm not thin, I donât have blue eyes. So, everything from that moment on was like, âOkay, we have to create this ourselves if itâs going to happen.â And thatâs what we did.â
Latifah explained that every creative move sheâs made sense was about allying with forward-thinking partners who understand that there is a demand for stories by and about people who, like her, arenât the âantiquated vision of what a Hollywood actress is supposed to look like.â
One such alliance was Latifahâs âQueen Collectionâ make-up line with Procter & Gambleâs CoverGirl, which ultimately led to the Queen Collective partnership between P&G, Latifah and Tribeca Enterprises. To celebrate the launch of the second year of the program, Paula Weinstein, Chief Content Officer of Tribeca Enterprises, and Marc Pritchard, Chief Brand Officer of Procter & Gamble, joined Latifah for a virtual discussion to explain how difficult it is to select just two films to produce out of the pool of 50-60 applicants.
âWhat that shows is how deep this community of creative voices are, who havenât had a chance to make their films,â Weinstein said. âWe canât wait to get started again because thereâs so much to say and so many extremely talented women to be saying it.â
Weinstein also got emotional while reflecting on what the program represents in what she called an âextraordinaryâ moment, as many in Hollywood openly commit to supporting the Black Lives Matter movement and address the industryâs own institutional racism.
âItâs just very moving,â she said, holding back tears. âAbout Queen â I have admired her for such a long time as an activist and as a woman who constantly has used her power to reach back and bring others along with her and that is the only way change happens.â
This yearâs featured filmmakers are Samantha Knowles (whose film âTangled Rootsâ centers on the fight against hair discrimination), Nadine Natour and Ugonna Okpalaoka (who co-directed âGloves Offâ â a story of a young African American police officer who is also a champion boxer). The two short films will exclusively premiere Saturday, June 13 at 9 p.m. ET on BET, followed by first two projects produced by the Queen Collective â âBallet After Darkâ (directed by B. MonĂ©t) and âIf There Is Lightâ (directed by Haley Elizabeth Anderson).
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