It took 30 years after the Emmy Awards‘ Outstanding Director for a Drama Series category was launched for the first woman, Karen Arthur, to be nominated in 1985.
And it took almost 40 more years for the first Black woman, Salli Richardson-Whitfield, to land a nomination in the field, something she accomplished last week.
She did it for her work on HBO‘s Winning Time, which she also executive produced. This marks the first Emmy nomination for the veteran actress-turned-director, who last week also earned her second, sharing the Outstanding Drama Series nom for HBO’s The Gilded Age in her role as executive producer.
In an interview with Deadline, Richardson-Whitfield spoke about the key role Ava DuVernay played (twice) in her taking on a new career as a director in her 40s, the challenges she has faced as a woman in a male-dominated drama-directing field, and her relationship with HBO where she has been under a string of overall deals.
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