How Oprah Winfrey and Ava DuVernay Led a ‘Radical Reimagining’ of TV With OWN’s ‘Queen Sugar’

variety.com:

Oprah Winfrey and Ava DuVernay are two of the creative leaders honored for Variety’s 2022 Power of Women presented by Lifetime.

For more, click here. Oprah Winfrey has spent most of her career talking, so it’s a little surprising that the only sound you hear from the porch of her second home in Maui is absolute silence.

Forget about the ocean waves or rustling palm trees. OK, if you’re lucky enough to hang with Oprah for an entire afternoon, this zen will be interrupted by the periodic squawking of wild roosters.

In such a tranquil retreat, you can think clearly, cradled in the beauty of all that Hawaii has to offer. It’s this very place of refuge, in fact, where Winfrey set a trap for filmmaker Ava DuVernay that would launch one of their greatest collaborations: OWN’s “Queen Sugar.” As the story goes, the TV icon placed copies of Natalie Baszile’s novel “Queen Sugar” around her home — on both bedside tables, in the kitchen and on the porch — hoping DuVernay would pick it up to read it while on vacation in 2015.