Zoe Kravitz has heard enough talk and she’s ready for some change.
She might have an enviable perch in the entertainment ecosystem with
recent film credits as diverse as “Dope,” ”Mad Max: Fury Road” and “The
Divergent Series,” not to mention her famous lineage, but she’s also
seen her share of darkness in Hollywood, too, from discrimination to
stereotyping.
“People have tried to do that to me over and over again and I’ve been
fighting it and fighting it,” Kravitz said on a recent afternoon
interview. “I would get auditions and it would be like ‘they want you to
play the best friend.’ And it’s like ‘why can’t I audition for the
lead?’ Then it’ll be like ‘OK now you’re the quirky black girl,’ or ‘now
you’re a hippie.’
“I can play all kinds of people. I don’t have to play myself.”
She’s made up her mind to take a stand, not only in the kinds of
roles she chooses, but also in how she’s going to create change for
herself.
Take “Allegiant,” the latest entry in “The Divergent Series,” out
Friday, in which Kravitz reprises her role as the loyal, fierce
Christina. Sure, she’s the best friend to Shailene Woodley’s Tris, but
she’s one of many significant female characters in the film, which also
boasts admirable racial diversity.
In the Oscar-nominated “Mad Max: Fury Road,” too, Kravitz plays one
of the wives of Immortan Joe who is escaping her captivity in the
high-octane race across the wasteland.
“(Director George Miller) absolutely could have thrown four cute
girls in the back of the car and been like ‘be scared.’ But he didn’t do
that,” Kravitz said. “He said we were slaves — basically sex slaves. He
wanted to feel that in our energy. He took the time to have us go a
month early and (do) workshops with (feminist playwright Eve Ensler) to
really understand what we were running from.”
And in last year’s “Dope,” a vibrant Sundance breakout from director
Rick Famuyiwa, which Kravitz saw as an instant classic in the vein of
“Friday” and “Boyz n the Hood,” she plays a suffers-no-fools dream girl
with an edge.
Kravitz has faith in the industry, thanks in part to a poignant early
experience in one of her first films — the 2007 Jodie Foster and
Terrence Howard film “The Brave One.”
“(My role) was written for a blonde white Russian girl. I was like
‘I’ll audition for it anyway,'” she said. “It changed (director Neil
Jordan’s) mind about how he saw that role.”
But in order to move things forward, Kravitz, who is the daughter of
musician Lenny Kravitz and actress Lisa Bonet, knows she’s just going to
have to do it herself — write, direct and produce.
“I love the fact that there’s such an open dialogue right now about
women in Hollywood and black women and black men in Hollywood and
everything in between. Now it’s about us bringing the change,” Kravitz
said. “We started the dialogue but I don’t expect any man to write a
script that speaks for me. I don’t expect any man to write a script for
me. I think we need to do that. If we want to be represented properly in
Hollywood, let’s represent ourselves properly in Hollywood.”
Kravitz has also started a collective of filmmaker friends, including
cinematographers, directors, actors and writers, to put her words into
action. The goal is to write a script together and they meet weekly to
work.
She’s also planning to do her part by simply not taking roles she views as stereotypical.
“It’s our responsibility to say ‘I’m not going to take the same role
over and over again.’ I mean, of course actors gotta eat, but if it’s
something you believe in, we have the power to break the stereotypes by
(a) writing our own things and (b) saying ‘no’ to the same thing over
and over again,” Kravitz said.
“This industry is not colorblind, but I think actors can be.”
0 comments:
Post a Comment