By Darlene Donloe
The
popular family drama, Queen Sugar,
which debuted on the OWN Network in 2016, has quickly become a fan favorite.
The
Ava Duvernay (Selma) created,
directed and executive produced series about three Bordelon siblings and the
family farm they inherit after their father’s passing, will debut its second
season with a two-night opener at 10 p.m., June 20-21.
Set
in Louisiana, Queen Sugar returns
with the siblings still struggling to move forward. This season Charley
(Dawn-Lyen Gardner, Unforgettable)
relocates to Saint Josephine, LA to help run the family business. As the only
black female sugarcane mill owner, she must fight to regain her independence
while rebuilding her relationships with her estranged siblings. Ralph Angel
(Kofi Siriboe, Girls Trip) struggles
to transform from a formerly incarcerated single father to a landowner in the
eyes of his family as he works to restore his relationship with his son’s
mother. Nova (Rutina Wesley, True Blood),
a journalist and activist finds herself torn between her activism and her
desire to be loved. Together, they must learn to rely on one another as they navigate
their tenuous bonds as family.
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| Oprah Winfrey, Dawn Lyen-Gardner, Kofi Siriboe and Ava DuVernay |
The
support cast includes Tina Lifford (Parenthood)
as the siblings’ free-spirited Aunt Violet; Omar J. Dorsey (Ray Donovan, Selma) as Violet’s much
younger boyfriend Hollywood Desonier; Dondré T. Whitfield (Mistresses) as trusted Bordelon family friend Remy Newell; Timon
Kyle Durrett (Single Ladies) as
Charley’s estranged husband and pro basketball player Davis West; Nicholas L.
Ashe (The Lion King - National Tour)
as Charley and Davis’ teenage son, Micah; Ethan Hutchison (The Path) as Ralph Angel’s son, Blue; and Bianca Lawson (Rogue) as Darla, Blue’s mother who
battles drug addiction. Additionally, guest star Henry G. Sanders (Rocky Balboa) recurs as Prosper Denton,
a farmer and longtime friend of the late Bordelon family patriarch, Ernest (Glynn
Turman).
Queen Sugar is produced for OWN by Warner Horizon
Scripted Television. The executive producers are Ava DuVernay, Oprah Winfrey
and Monica Macer. The series is based on the book by Natalie Baszile.
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| Ava DuVernay |
I
recently caught up with Ava DuVernay at a press conference at the Four Seasons
hotel in Beverly Hills to talk about the upcoming season.
Q:
What did you learn making season one that helped you shape season two?
AD: Well, everything was-- season one we
were fresh out of the womb so really trying to learn each other, the ways in
which we like to work together. And then, exploring these characters, exploring
the world, setting everything up. Season two feels like we have our footing.
We’re a toddler. We’re walking around, you know what I mean, we’re touching
things. We can express ourselves a little more freely, I feel. But it’s been a
real pleasure to kind of be editing these episodes. And the confidence that’s
coming across in the performances and how that’s grown from season one is
really apparent. So yeah, that’s what I’m seeing. How are you feeling about it? For me, I find myself thinking a lot about
Charley and Nova because I feel like Charley. I’m half Charley and half
Nova. You know, little things that
you’ve done like there’s an episode coming up in this season when you’re in a
parking lot and you drop down and just kind of break down. The other day I felt
like I wanted to do that. And I said, let me just go watch Dawn do it and keep
myself together. But just the release
that comes from watching those two women who I feel are different sides of me,
and different sides of a lot of women going through their daily trials and
triumphs. Yeah. The answer to the question is we're finding our way and it’s
feeling good.
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| Ava DuVernay |
Q:
It’s pretty clear about halfway through the season and continuing out to
the rest of the first season that there was a tone of addressing some of the
injustice of the past and addressing some of the hurt and rage that many in the
black community feel. How did you address touching on these very sensitive and
very inflammatory topics in a way that is going to appeal to the audience
without freaking anybody out?
AD: There’s a whole conversation about
the Bordelon legacy and what happened on the land. And the actual fact that for
these characters and their backstory they know exactly which white people in
their community owned their family in these small spaces, which is true in
these smaller towns across the country. And so we explored that. And they had a
real conversation where they took out a map. They were like this is where the
slave shack was. They talked about it in a way that I had never seen done on
television in a contemporary setting. So you’re right, we’re trying to kind of
be really explicit with our intentions about playing with and unpacking race
and culture, but do it in a way that’s wrapped in contemporary romance and
beautiful people and interpersonal relationships while we also have this large
kind of cultural historical context over it. So that’s the daily balance in
what we’re constantly trying to do. I love stuff like you see “Underground”
it’s all historical cultural context. You know, something like “Empire” which
is just very contemporary and there’s culture there as well. We’re trying to do
both in some ways. And so it’s an exploration because we’re kind of-- in not
unchartered territory but it’s definitely something that’s not a well-beaten
path.
Q: You recently retweeted some video from Jessica
Chastain. She was at Cannes Film Festival talking about the lack of women
telling women stories and women being portrayed authentically. And the fact
that you retweeted that and the fact that Queen
Sugar is the example of what that looks like having all female directors,
executive producers. Tell me how you feel about that?
AD:
I mean I was proud of her for speaking out in an international space
where it was obviously an intimidating environment. So I think it’s fantastic.
I was even prouder of the fact that we stand as one of the very rare examples
of the exact opposite of what she’s talking about. Jessica Chastain at the
Cannes Film Festival this year talked about there being a marginalization of
women’s lives told without exploitation, just the regular every day beauty of
our lives through the perspective of a woman filmmaker or woman artist. And I
retweeted her to champion that but also I wanted to say, look over here. Look
at what it can be, how wonderful it can be. So thank you for recognizing that.
Yeah, we’re in our second season, another season of all women directors. I’m
proud that other shows have followed suit. I'm proud of Melissa at Jessica Jones following suit and some
other shows starting to really step into the gap and say we will have balance.
I’m happy that Ryan Murphy is kind of trying to lead the charge into terms of
equity and there being a balanced number of men and women. You know, I’ve tried
to, with Oprah’s blessing and Warner Horizon’s blessing, kind of over index and
go the other direction. I always say if Game
of Thrones can have three seasons of all male directors, why can’t we have
three seasons of all women directors? I mean if they can do it, why can’t we do
it? And you only do that because you can and you want to. Right? You only say
we will not have women’s voices here. We will only center the man’s
perspective, in terms of the creators of the show because we want and we want
to. And so on the other side of things we’re going to center women because we
can and we want to. And we're a network owned by a woman, so it makes it
easier.
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Kofi Siriboe, Rutina Wesley and Dawn-Lyen Gardner
Q: Is there a formula in picking these female directors? What do you look for? What's the criteria? Is there some sort of school of thought that they follow just to be able to direct the series?
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AD:
Yeah, well, I’ll ask the actors to weigh in on how we kind of keep
things uniform. But every television show has different directors that are
coming in. So you as a pilot director,
as a series creator and as producers you have a certain set of-- a certain
world, a certain ambiance, a certain rules of what the characters will or will
not do, certain things that the camera does or doesn’t do that you apply to
each episode. So that's every television show on air. In terms of the women
that I’m looking for I started out looking at women who had at least directed
one film. So a great majority of our women from the first season have at least
on film under their belt. Can you believe that these women had directed a film
that had played at film festivals around the world, many of them had won
festivals around the world that couldn’t get hired in Hollywood for one episode
of television? Like on any network they would not be allowed in the door. So
all of the women in our season one, every single one of the women has gone on
to be heavily booked. I got a call from a really well-known television show
just last week asking, “We had a drop out, we had someone drop out as a
director, can you refer us to one of your season one directors?” I got on the
phone and tried. None of the season one directors are available. Not one of
them. They’re completely booked. I called Victoria Mahoney. I was like this is
a pretty good show. She’s like, “It sounds good. I’m booked until February
2018.” I was like word. This is great.
They’re doing American Crime, Underground
and Greenleaf. Victoria Mahoney is directing a pilot right now. In the TV
director world the pilots are the biggest things you could do. Did you know
this? If you direct the pilot-- that’s why it’s so crucial that women get in
but women when you direct the pilot, you decide the world. Your casting, you’re
saying, he’s going to wear this. You’re saying, the door of the house is going
to look like this. You make all of the decisions. You’re the world creator. And
when you direct the pilot, the thing I love about it is, you direct the pilot,
if it’s season seven of that show and it’s re-airing in China 10 years from now
you get a check, even if you didn’t direct the pilot. That’s why it’s so
crucial that women start to get into this space. You created the world. So
wherever that show goes, no matter if somebody directs it ten years from not
and it’s playing in syndication in another country it’s a part of the world you
created and you get a piece of it because you made it. So anyway, a number of
those women are directing pilots. They’re doing great things. I don’t remember the question but it’s
fantastic.
Q: So there’s obviously a great deal of
trust between you and Oprah and I think that’s been on display since you guys
worked on Selma. You’ve spoken in
interviews about how meaningful it was that she respected your choices as a
director. Monica Macer has come on as show-runner for this season. Can you talk
about what it was about Monica that made you feel safe saying okay, great I can
hand the reins to her? What was it that allowed you to sort of have that faith
in her?
AD: Well, we have producers that run the
room, run the writer’s room. So we also had a really wonderful woman in season
one named Melissa Carter who is now on a show called-- Famous in Love. And she’s
now running the room at Famous in Love.
Monica who had just gotten off of Nashville
runs our room in season two. Kat Candler who is our producing director runs the
set in New Orleans. So we have our writer’s room in L.A. Our set in New
Orleans. Both of those have a producer over them, Paul Garnes my longtime
producer who produced Selma with me
and Middle of Nowhere. So it’s a
structure. And with all of the people it’s just important to find folks who
share the vision. We have a wonderful woman Christie Hooks who runs all of post
production, a black woman, one of the few black women post production
supervisors who is one of our producers who handles everything, color. She
oversees all of the Meshell Ndegeocello music, the source, anything that’s the
finishing after the footage comes back to L.A. So it’s a really intricate
process. And it’s picking people who just have-- who are like-minded who share
the vision. And so it’s a team, a family of producers, but Monica is joining us
this season. She’s lovely and she’s joined by a couple of writers who got
promoted to producer last year - Anthony Sparks and Jason Wilborn, two brothers
who-- not real brothers, but black men who are writers. So it’s an intricate
web and family of producers. And it’s hard to hand your baby off but it’s
easier when it’s family. You know, sometimes you’ve got to hand your baby off
to family and say take care of it and so that’s what we’ve done. This time for
me-- last year I was very involved in all of the writing, very much on the set,
directing shows and editing and doing all of the post per shows. Now, because
I’m also directing A Wrinkle in Time
I’m approving the scripts and approving all of the casting but I really get my
hands into the edit. So Oprah allows me to have the final cut on the episodes.
So the final thing that you see on air is a collaboration of our vision for it.
Q: Ava you spoke earlier about when you
direct a pilot, you have the opportunity to create the world. What decisions
were you considering when creating the Queen
Sugar world?
AD: Well, the cool thing is yes,
there’s-- the great thing about director is you get to have people who-- this
is horrible to say but paid friends. Right?
So friends. Just I like to sit around and talk about nerd things. Right?
So I can sit down and a costume designer actually has to sit down with me and
just-- I say, let’s just talk about clothes. And then we just talk about
clothes like friends and we come up with ideas. It’s the same thing when
you’re-- not that you’re a paid friend. You’re my real friend too. You’re my
real friend too. But when we first sit down we just geeked out over the
characters to decide what are the things that we cared about, the little
things. Dawn is great at the details, the little things that she thought about
for Charley. For Ralph Angel we were creating a character we hadn’t even seen
before. I’ve never even seen him on television before. And so to try to figure
out who he was and how he walked and what he cared about and how was he going
to rob the store? When you say the
goodbye to the boy on the bench, in the first episode are you going to give him
a pound? Are you going to be like grow up, I’ll be back? Are you going to treat him like a kid? Are
you going to treat him like a man? Like all of these little things that you
find. And so I just think it’s the most beautiful collaboration. And I get to
have friends. And I get to make sure that we can all be creative together. But
what are some of the little things in the first couple of creations of the
things that you can think of?
Q: How do you see Violet coming alive for
season two?
AD: Omar texted me this weekend, Omar who
plays Hollywood, Vi’s man. Who said right?
Oh, you did. And he had just done ADR, additional dialog recordings,
when they have to sometimes resay a line into the mike because we didn't get it
during production. And he saw a scene and he just texted me in the middle of
ADR and says, “Ooh, Vi is sexy in this scene.”
It’s like-- I texted him back and I said, are you on set? And he’s like,
“No, I’m in the recording booth.” He’s just feeling it. They just really have
this great chemistry. So that relationship, I just love that relationship. That
was a relationship that wasn’t in the book. That was something that we talked
about a lot. I wanted to show a woman those like OW’s age who looks like that
and who is vibrant and sexy and all of the things that-- and alive because
every time you see-- not every time but often when you see a black woman over a
certain age she got to be the mama and the thing and that that. Yeah, just that vitality is what we wanted to
show. Yeah. And Hollywood, the actor who plays Hollywood one of the things for
him, Omar Dorsey, who was in Selma I
just thought was such a beautiful, beautiful actor, beautiful man, great
spirit. And I said to him, ‘You need to be somebody’s leading man!’ And he said
to me, “I don’t look the way Hollywood thinks a leading man should look.” He said
that to me, two, three years ago during Selma.
And I was like yeah, you do. He and Kofi walking down the street together is a
calamity. The two of them. It’s just a wrap. It’s chocolate city. It’s so much
happening. That’s it.
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| Kofi Siriboe, Rutina Wesley and Dawn-Lyen Gardner |
Q: When it comes to female equality and
specifically equity, how would you define success? I know you said Queen Sugar is really leading the charge
with all female directors. Is it more shows like that? Is it equal wages for
actors and producers and writers? How do you envision that final goal?
AD: Equity means-- I mean half of the
projects being directed by women. Casts that reflect the real world, not just
black people and white people but brown people and native people and Muslim
people and people of all ages and sizes and body types. The things that we try
to do with Queen Sugar, that I try to
do in my films, just to make our stories reflect the real world. Where folks
feel like they can enter into whatever you’ve made and see themselves or people
who they know. You know what I mean? I watched Wonder Woman this weekend. I cried when Patty Jenkins came up. I
saw her last night. I said, I broke into tears when your name came up. A few of
the things that she did, “the posse” the three guys, every hero has to have
like a crew, a squad. His squad had a Native American man in it. Right? As
they’re walking through the train station to go to wherever they were going to
battle I saw Sikhs. I saw Sikh soldiers, right, dressed in the British regalia,
soldier regalia, military regalia but they were actually also Sikhs with the
appropriate head dress. The Amazons accurately reflected when you look at that
history and that myth, accurately reflects that they were woman soldiers and
warriors that would come in from all across what the world was at that point.
So it’s just an attention to detail that was wrapped in a big huge super hero
thing. Even the scene on the boat. Even when I saw the scene on the boat, where
he says, “I can’t sleep next to you.” And she’s like, “It’s up to you, if you
want to or not. You’re not going to do nothing. So you might as well just sleep
right here because you can’t do anything because I’m not going to let you.”
Right? Like some of these when you
unpack issues of sexuality and gender politics, it was a way to do that with a
real intention that was like I’m coming from a place of equity that colored the
whole thing. It didn’t feel wrong. And if you weren’t looking for it you
wouldn’t have even felt it. But if you were looking for it you saw something
and you saw yourself. And that was a beautiful example of what Hollywood can
be. And that’s what happens when you have women behind the camera.
