00:00You know, in this Hollywood collaborative industry we're in, well, some of us are not,
00:06there is that gap that we need to bridge, right?
00:11Where for me as an actor, I often find that, of course, from producing, you need to understand,
00:17okay, A-listers need to play the roles of Nelson Mandela.
00:20For example, I was on Madiba, the BET series, and met Lawrence Fishburne,
00:25who played the lead role of Nelson Mandela.
00:27And oftentimes I face these moments, and we spoke about this,
00:31where as South Africans and as Africans at large, we know Black Panthers out there.
00:37We know that we have Woman King.
00:39We have a lot of African stories being told at a Hollywood global level.
00:44But what I am finding is there's a bit of a bridge that needs to be closed
00:50where we need more collaboration, right?
00:54We need to see more, for me, I would love to see what I love about Yotunde.
00:59So she is Nigerian descent, right?
01:02I got it correct.
01:03I know, girl.
01:04Yotunde gives it away.
01:05But where we have a crew of, a crew, writers, actors, where when we are telling homegrown Black diaspora stories,
01:15that whole entire production team is made up of the diaspora, right?
01:22Where the EPs, sorry to say, are not people who have no understanding of the culture, the story,
01:31the magnitude of what we're speaking about, because when the writers are of the diaspora,
01:36they know what they're writing.
01:38They're writing their grandparents' story.
01:39They're writing what they know, what they breathe, there's purpose behind it.
01:45And for me, my mandate is for us to have more ownership when it comes to our stories.
01:50And for me, my mandate is for us to have more ownership when it comes to our stories.
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