00:00I'm Moana Lu, I'm the Chief Content Creative Officer for Essence.
00:23This is my first September cover, so it's quite a big deal.
00:27So right away we were thinking, okay, we need Serena.
00:30But we need more than just Serena, we want to tell a story.
00:34And we did fall in love with the work of Len Lu.
00:37And I was like, okay, we're going to combine Len Lu and Serena and tell a story.
00:45Working with Serena Williams was really amazing.
00:47She's inspired a lot of us, you know, in Nigeria and Africa.
00:50Looking at her like, yeah, you can also do great things.
00:52Looking at her story and what she'll be able to achieve,
00:55the fact that she's living with young black people coming after her.
01:02So what you saw on the paint, I call it sacred out of the ori.
01:05Ori meaning your essence.
01:07This Nigerian print that we put on our face, on our body, in the background,
01:11it's tribal, but it's modern.
01:15Yeah, it was an amazing opportunity.
01:17First, I'm so, so, so super excited.
01:22We want to feel the global community that we have.
01:24And this is the story around this amazing cover shoot.
01:30Serena is a joy to work with.
01:32She's really free, really simple.
01:34The experience that we had today on this set was remarkable
01:36because the intricateness of the braid, the softness.
01:39She loves color.
01:40And pinks and purples are her favorite color.
01:42So she has everything she wants on this cover.
01:49Black women are a piece of art.
01:51And that's the way that we're treating this cover.
01:53So it's a piece of art.
01:55And I really hope that people will understand.
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