00:00Hi, I'm Cori Murray, Entertainment Director at Essence Magazine, and I'm here at the October
00:082014 cover shoot in our subjects, Alfre Woodard, Danai Guria, Laverne Cox, and Nicole Bahari.
00:18Along with your roles, when the TV season starts in the fall, we're going to have Viola Davis in
00:24the lead, Tracee Ellis Ross, Octavia Spencer Redbine Society, CCH Pounder, Regina Taylor,
00:34Kerry Washington's coming back, like this is a Halle Berry, and there's one more person
00:40I'm totally missing.
00:41Tyler Perry has cast like three black leads in his new drama, Bea and Mary Jane, like this
00:46is a moment, and the record number of black women or more black folks that got nominated
00:50for Emmys yesterday, including Woodburn.
00:55What does it mean to be a part, like you guys are part of this groundbreaking moment in television,
00:59what does that all mean to you?
01:01Well, for me, being on a show like Orange is the New Black, that not only has a really diverse
01:09group of women characters, but also is really interested in telling human stories about these
01:18women feels revolutionary.
01:21I was just talking to one of my lead agents, he was like, this is a time period where the
01:26stories, like the people, like ourselves, who want to tell.
01:29And you write, too.
01:30Right, so he was talking about dealing with my writing in television, and he was like, you
01:34know, this is an age where this wouldn't work, we wouldn't have been able to put it forward
01:39in a sense, or had interest in it five years ago.
01:41But right now, there's something about the moment that actually will, is ready for it.
01:49The people that have traditionally made the decisions, make the decisions in a tower on
01:54the coast, they don't even go across town in L.A.
01:58So they have no idea what America wants to see, because they have no idea who America is.
02:03And America is all of us that show up, like you tilt up the world, and it all rolls down
02:09into Hollywood to try to be in the movies.
02:12But then they want everybody to change their ethnicity, the look they have, to get to this
02:20sort of homogenous look that nobody is born that way, to tell a story.
02:28But Nicole, I want to hear you talk, and then I want to say something, again, I don't want
02:33to be the downer.
02:34About what?
02:35About this revolution.
02:38I mean, I'm on a network show, and I feel like it's groundbreaking, you know, it is groundbreaking.
02:45Kerry Washington's on a show, you know, like network shows.
02:50And the big point was what you said about the demographic idea.
02:55I recently went to Comic-Con in London, I was invited, without the white male counterpart
03:02in my cast.
03:03Excellent.
03:04And it was packed.
03:05Excellent.
03:06And they knew it was just going to be me.
03:07So that shook me.
03:08Like, I went back to the green room, and I was like, I've always been told, and I believed,
03:13that this doesn't work without him.
03:15Yeah.
03:16And there's also that notion that we don't work overseas.
03:20Like, that's why our movies and stuff don't work overseas.
03:22And it was advertised just to be me.
03:24And it was like, they show up.
03:26I've been traveling the country and Canada, and been filling houses, filling auditoriums,
03:32with just me, a black trans student woman from Mobile, Alabama.
03:37So it's deep.
03:39We are enough.
03:41We are enough.
03:42This is enough.
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