Salli Richardson-Whitfield On Making Emmy History And Opening Doors For Black Women
Salli Richardson-Whitfield never planned on becoming a director. Now, she is making history as one—again.
For much of her career, audiences knew Richardson-Whitfield from in front of the camera. Her résumé stretches back to the early 1990s, with roles in A Low Down Dirty Shame, Eureka and I Am Legend. Directing wasn’t part of some master plan, but the possibility only entered her mind after Ava DuVernay recognized something Richardson-Whitfield had yet to recognize in herself while they were making I Will Follow.
“I think you’re a director and you don’t know it,” DuVernay told her. What followed was a second career whose success has surpassed even her own expectations. In 2024, her work on HBO’s Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty made her the first Black woman nominated for the Emmy for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series. Now, she has entered the record books again. Her nominations for Task and The Gilded Age make Richardson-Whitfield the first woman to receive two directing nominations in the category in the same year. She is also nominated as an executive producer on The Gilded Age, which is up for Outstanding Drama Series.
Her path also says something about who gets to imagine themselves behind the camera in the first place. Richardson-Whitfield spent decades working primarily under male directors. Seeing DuVernay directing her own feature gave her a reference point she hadn’t previously had. Now, Richardson-Whitfield has become one herself.
At 58, she understands her success differently than she did when she first stepped behind the camera. Awards are important to an extent, but so does what her presence can make possible for another Black woman trying to get access to the same rooms. Richardson-Whitfield now sees her own career as evidence of what can happen when someone is given the opportunity to prove what they can do. “The work that I do will help the next girl come along and it won’t be so hard for her to get that job because they know how good work we can do as women, and as women of color,” she says.
Source: https://www.essence.com/entertainment/salli-richardson-whitfield-on-making-emmy-history/
