The Emmy award-winning screenwriter, producer, and actress Lena Waithe is calling out her fellow honchos in Black Hollywood for not helping to finance films made by Black filmmakers.
“The Chi” creator got real during an interview with the NY Times and pretty much slammed successful Black entertainers who don’t use some of their money to fund Black films.
“Don’t get me started on black financiers!” she said. “How many of those do we have? I’m not [going to name] names because I know better, but there are some very big black movie stars out there, and they could pay for two or three or even five small independent movies to get made by black directors and black writers.”
The “Master of None” writer/producer noted that the Oscar award-winning films “Moonlight” and “12 Years a Slave,” are “very important to the black community” but were both produced by Brad Pitt’s Plan B production company.
“[It] wasn’t Denzel. Wasn’t Will Smith,” Waithe said. “You won’t catch me making $20 million a movie and not paying for at least four or five independent movies a year. I do give credit to Ava [DuVernay] for trying to build something that hasn’t been built before, but that’s a lot on Ava’s back.”
“I’m over here trying to build a community, and I don’t see other people doing it. I really do feel like there’s a way for us to change the movie business from the inside out, but we’re all in our own silos doing our own thing. We’re definitely in the middle of a renaissance, make no mistake. In 20 years, people are going to be writing about what you’re writing about. But for me, I want more.”
Well, Lena sure didn’t bite her tongue! Wonder how Denzel and Will feel about her words…..
Read her full interview here.
