by Ernest Hardy | Photography by Zen Sekizawa
Ava DuVernay is sitting in a closed-off section of the Andaz West Hollywood hotel, waiting for her star Omari Hardwick to show up. DuVernay, who made history at the Sundance Film Festival this year by being the first African-American woman to win the festival’s Best Director Award (for her new film Middle of Nowhere), is starting to joke with her producer about “actor time.” But as the clock ticks, the jokes become strained. Texts and e-mails are sent, and phone calls are made. Finally, an hour and some change after the scheduled start time, Hardwick shows up.
“I was sick,” he says apologetically as he enters the room. “I really was.” And it appears to be true. Hardwick, who radiates old-school masculinity and matinee idol charisma, has looks that are perhaps even more potent in person than in photographs and his films (Kick-Ass, For Colored Girls, Miracle at St. Anna, Sparkle, DuVernay’s feature debut I Will Follow), but today he appears slightly drawn and fatigued.
“I think I got food poisoning yesterday,” he explains, taking a seat beside DuVernay.
“You do look sick,” she says, touching the sides of his face, a note of concern in her voice. “You actually look thinner.”
The two have noticeable chemistry, and a familial vibe that lends itself to good-natured ribbing and a mutual protectiveness. They clasp hands to make a point, and they laugh heartily at each other’s jokes.
“He is the only actor that I’ve worked with twice,” she says of the Savannah, Ga.-born Hardwick, while settling into her chair. “We do have a kind of shorthand that was created on our first film,” she says of the actor, whom she first saw on the defunct TV series Dark Blue. “He had an openness that you don’t see in a lot of black actors, now. They have to be hyper-masculine and you almost never see the vulnerability. In this film, he gave me what I wanted in every single take.”
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“Ava and I both have a relationship with God,” continues Hardwick. “She was anointed for this. When I meet somebody like that, it’s a flattering thing—[it’s amazing] to say that you got to work with someone who you feel was equally anointed to do the work they’re doing.”
And that work is sublime. The foundations of her two narrative feature films (she also directed the hip-hop documentary This Is the Life) are the Compton, Calif., native’s emotionally nuanced, psychologically insightful scripts.
The stories are centered on women grappling with loss (the death of a loved one; a husband in prison) and its myriad, twisting consequences. The curveballs thrown their way as they navigate their way through assorted levels of pain and the wisdom they acquire by the films’ end are also marbled with subtle but powerful observations on gender, sexuality, and class. They’re poetic, lyrical, often drily funny—true to black life in a way that modern American film (even those by black writers and directors) rarely is.
“Working with Ava, you just smile all day. It’s like those best moments with your brothers or your sisters, those moments when you’re not mad at them or critical of who they’ve become or who they are. You’re just like, I like you right now, and I hope I like you for the rest of my life like this. That’s how you feel when you get material that you can sink your teeth into.”
DuVernay admits that her time as a spin doctor informs her directing. “My comfort with actors comes from being a publicist and years of standing next to an actor and knowing that what they do is not who they really are,” she says. “I saw bad behavior, but I knew it was fear. And a lot of times when actors and directors clash, from both sides that’s what it is— fear.” She also relishes being able to hire whomever she wants. “These are just amazing people to be around, and that is the key,” she adds.
“Ava kind of downplays the power of what she is presenting to us. We say yes because we see that this is different, this is gonna be very special. Ava took shots on us, man,” nods Hardwick. “We’re the dark horses. She lays bets on us and then the whole town ends up paying attention.”
DuVernay is motivated by the potential that she sees in this new world we inhabit. “Everything we knew to be, is no more,”she says. “Certainly before 2008, [some] things just were not possible. [Obama’s election] let us know that all things are possible, truly. Coming out of the Bush era, which was very constrained, there was a feeling of a new freedom that was seized.”
