I want [space for] people to do stories that I can’t imagine telling.
Clearly, Waithe is into community. That’s likely why she insisted her EBONY interview be conducted by her longtime mentor, famed director Gina Prince-Bythewood (Love & Basketball, The Old Guard). It’s another way to make space, share and remind. Their relationship has invoices. And Waithe, who served as Bythewood’s assistant on The Secret Life of Bees, has stayed close, spending much of the last decade sharing occasional holidays and frequent texts with her advisor and friend.The pair has banter, filled with pet names and inside jokes, that instantly reads equal parts deference and appreciation (Waithe), pride and awe (Bythewood)— and a little, “I’m grown now” (Waithe). But they’re not alone in their space. Looking, and weighing, on both shoulders is the question, the value and the respect of “the work”. Bythewood—who the Emmy-winner dubs as from “the school of the Talented Tenth”—glides through a mix of celebratory and challenging questions with the millennial phenom who used to answer phones. There is love. There is honesty. There is pushback. EBONY shares an intimate conversation between two of Hollywood’s most legendary content creators.
