Ava DuVernay: Demanding Inclusion in Entertainment

Ava DuVernay’s background as a film publicist arms her with an unique awareness about the power structures of Hollywood and how to harness them. She has capitalized on the current push to create a more inclusive entertainment industry, securing groundbreaking jobs for herself and many other women and people of color.

“It’s not yet a movement,” DuVernay says of the inclusion drive. “It’s a trend. And time will tell if it will mature into an era of true systematic change.”

As savvy as she is about image-making, social media and what makes Hollywood tick, she’s also uniquely aware of the people who work quietly behind the scenes to better her career. At one point, she steps out of an interview to be sure the publicist waiting outside her office has a chair.

“I think some filmmakers, you’re walking down the red carpets and lights are flashing and you’re feeling yourself,” DuVernay says. “I used to roll that red carpet down there on my hands and knees. I see the machinery of it, and that has allowed me to never take any of this too personally.”

Duvernay’s four-part Netflix series When They See Us, about the

five Harlem teenage boys wrongfully convicted of rape in the 1989 Central Park jogger case, premiered May 31 and grapples with ideas the director has been marinating on for decades — ideas about race, criminal justice and who gets to write history.

DuVernay, 46, was a high school junior in Compton applying to journalism schools when the crime became national news.

“I remember for the first time realizing that the news might not be true, that the news is something that you have to really think about and question.”