“Diversity isn’t just ‘Let’s have people of color supporting this white person’s story,’” Wu says, adding it’s a distinction she finds herself explaining repeatedly in Hollywood. 

…“What he was saying was such bullshit. If you want to talk about whether or not an Asian person, or a person of color, or a trans person can open a studio movie, you can’t argue, ‘That’s not going to sell!’ because you’ve never done it before!” [Wu] takes a breath, then continues. “I think he thought because I’m a female actor and he’s super high-powered that I would try to make nice. But I don’t give a fuck.”

…“People say women are inherently bitchy and competitive. But anybody will be competitive if there’s only one seat at the table.” 

…“I didn’t have any dreams or designs that a studio would want to make my work, that any awards body or critical community would embrace my work.” DuVernay chose to use this bias as an asset: “In many ways, that lack of attention put me in a really good place. No one’s going to watch it anyway, so I may as well make what I want.”

…“I’ve had people tell me, ‘You need to be a little more quiet with all this woman talk,’” Chastain admits, laughing, adding she has no interest in perpetuating damaging sexist tropes about what women should be and do, on- or off-screen. Her dedication to leveling the field extends to crew and head-of-department hires, adjustments that have real-world implications and puncture the oft-repeated lie that filling those jobs with women is “too hard.”

“I agree there are not as many women as men that have the same experience, but that’s because, in the past, women have been actively discriminated against. Male directors who had their first film in Sundance, their next offer is a huge action movie. Women haven’t been given those opportunities, and we need to ask why.”

…When asked how she freed herself from the approval matrix, Chastain pauses a beat.

“That’s a hard question because I don’t know that it was even something that I was aware of until I stopped doing it. All of a sudden, I realized, I feel really happy. Why is that? And it was because I was caring less about what others think of me.”

…“I learned it’s impossible to make everybody happy. At the end of the day, just do stuff that you’re proud of and don’t be an asshole.”

Constance Wu, Ava DuVernay and Jessica Chastain Talk Time’s Up Entertainment and Equal Pay

hmmmm