It probably doesn’t come as much of a surprise to anyone who’s watched him act or speak, but British actor David Oyelowo is, shall we say, rather enlightened. In a new interview with Entertainment Weekly, he spoke to the virtues of working with female directors, specifically Ava DuVernay on Selma. “There were four male directors before Ava came aboard, and I watched how perspective matters to a story” Oyelowo said on Entertainment Weekly: The Show. “The first two directors that I was aware of on the project were white men, and then the next two were black men, and then Ava.” Oyelowo described DuVernay in glowing terms (as does everyone, everywhere, ever, of course), and described her perspective as instructional, especially in rounding out the stories of civil-rights leaders Coretta Scott King and Annie Lee Cooper. “Who gets to tell the story matters,” he said.
Since working with DuVernay, Oyelowo has enrolled in three other female-directed film projects (including a project with Amma Asante on the newly released probable tear-jerker A United Kingdom), a pattern he doesn’t plan on giving up anytime soon. “Women are 51 percent of the population,” he said. “Why on earth should it be rare that they get to direct movies in a medium as influential as film?” Cue dreamy sigh.
