Salli Richardson-Whitfield Makes Emmy History In TV Drama Directing

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.

Richardson-Whitfield also discussed directing her nominated Winning Time episode and addressed the 1980s drama’s cancellation after two seasons. Additionally, she revealed that she will be back directing in Season 3 of The Gilded Age and teased what is to come in the new installment.

Career Counselor Ava

She also previewed the latest HBO series she is directing and executive producing, Task, from Mare of Easttown creator Brad Ingelsby.

Of the many roles Richardson-Whitfield has done during her acting career, playing the lead in Ava DuVernay’s first feature film, the 2010 indie I Will Follow, would prove particularly significant.

“During that experience, at some point Ava said to me — I was probably talking too much as an actor to the director — she said, I think you’re a director, and you don’t know it. It was that kind of aha moment where you look back and you go, yeah, I am I always asking questions, I’m always in video village, I’ve always thought this way.”

At the time, Richardson-Whitfield was starring on the Syfy series Eureka. She shadowed a few directors who had worked on the show and approached the Eureka producers, who gave her a shot at directing a 2011 episode.

“Literally within that first day of shooting, I went, oh my god, I get this, I understand this. And I was hooked,” Richardson-Whitfield said. She went on to direct a second Eureka episode in 2012.

A few years later, after Eureka had ended its run and Richardson-Whitfield’s children had gotten older, allowing her a little extra time, she committed to pursuing directing and signed with an agent.

It was again DuVernay who helped Richardson-Whitfield restart her directing career on Queen Sugar. Richardson-Whitfield’s husband, actor Dondre Whitfield, starred in DuVernay’s series, which employed all-female directors throughout its seven-season run on OWN, giving a number of aspiring helmers their start in television.

“It was another one of those by-chance moments,” Richardson-Whitfield recalled. “I had talked to Ava about directing, but she was like, all the slots had been booked up. Then I went to visit my husband on the set, and the first person I saw when I got out of the car was Ava. She grabbed me and she said, ‘Come talk to me.’ She goes, ‘Are you still directing?’ I go, ‘Yeah, I just shadowed again, I just got an agent, I’ve been really studying again.’ And then she goes, ‘Well, I can’t do my episode. Do who want it?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m ready.’ “

Richardson-Whitfield directed two 2016 episodes of Queen Sugar.

“That really launched me and while I was shooting that, some other producers I had worked with on Eureka who were now on other shows saw that I was directing and said ‘Hey, I see you’re back. Do you want to come over here and direct?’,” she said. “I say that you can’t get here by yourself. You have to have those people who give you an opportunity, and when they gave it to me, I wasn’t going to waste it. I worked really hard, and I really love what I do now.”

There was one unexpected side effect.

“Once I started directing, I had no idea I was giving up acting at the time,” Richardson-Whitfield said. “All of a sudden I started booking job after job and realized I may not be acting for a while.”

The next episodic directing gigs after Queen Sugar that served as important career stepping stones for Richardson-Whitfield were on Freeform’s Shadowhunters and Syfy’s The Magicians.

“Both of these shows were heavy visual effects and action, and I think that they put me on a path to be able to do American Gods and these bigger shows that I’m doing now because they went, ‘Okay, she understands acting; now we now she knows how to do visual effects and action,” Richardson-Whitfield said. “As a woman director, a lot of times you’ll get ‘Yeah, but has she done this?’ or ‘Can she do this?’ So every opportunity I got to do something that was different, I jumped at the chance because I just wanted to have every skill set so no one could say no to me.”

Playing In HBO’s Court

While Richardson-Whitfield admitted she had gotten a few ‘no’s early in her directing career, the turning point, when “things really changed” for her, was when she started working at HBO, championed by the network’s head of drama Francesca Orsi.

HBO had approached Richardson-Whitfield about directing several times but she was always booked until The Gilded Age and Winning Time offers came in close succession and she was able to do both, leading to an overall deal with the network.

“I’ve watched Francesca give people big opportunities and Casey [Bloys],” Richardson-Whitfield said. “There’s something about HBO where they see talent and take a chance. I feel like they took a big chance on me, and I hope that they look at it and feel like it paid off.”

Both The Gilded Age and Winning Time are period pieces, a genre that had been elusive earlier in Richardson-Whitfield’s career.

“I’ve always loved period pieces but it’s a hard nut to crack and it’s a hard genre to get into, in particular being a person of color, because for some reason, they feel like you can’t do that kind of show,” she said, confessing to being a fan of The Gilded Age creator Julian Fellowes’ previous series Downton Abbey.

One of the differences between The Gilded Age and Downton Abbey is the the U.S. series has prominent Black characters, members of New York’s upper class during the 1880s.

“That was obviously part of the allure of going there, I knew that they were going to tell the story of Black elite that no one really knew about,” Richardson-Whitfield said. “Luckily, we have a Black historian there and a Black writer who’s come on. But there are some nuances to telling our stories sometime that — I won’t say that a white director can’t direct but they’re just not going to know certain things. I can look in the house and go, they would absolutely not have those pictures there, this is how this housekeeper would speak to them in this home, and protect those characters. I felt it was really important to me to bring some integrity and respect to this beautiful family that Julian has written so lovely for.”

After having to skip directing The Gilded Age in Season 2 while working on Winning Time, Richardson-Whitfield will be back behind the camera in Season 3. “I’m doing the last two episodes to put a little bow on the end of end of the season,” said the director-producer, who is starting on The Gilded Age in about three weeks.

As for what we can expect from Season 3, “What I can tell you is that we are definitely going to be embracing the Black elite storyline a lot more,” Richardson-Whitfield said. “I was telling HBO what a fan favorite that storyline is; I get stopped on the street all the time by groups of Black women who say, ‘We love this show so much.’ So they’re expanding on that storyline more and, and Bertha, played by the fantastic Carrie Coon, continues to get in a lot of trouble.”

Richardson-Whitfield, who played basketball through high school, grew up a Bulls fan in Chicago but admits that “after 35 years in L.A., I would say I’m a Lakers fan.”

That influenced her decision to take on Winning Time, about the Los Angeles Lakers’ dynasty of the 1980s, but it was mostly the opportunity to do something different.

“It was definitely another genre. I was like, ‘I’m going to crack this and I’m going to do the best basketball anyone has ever seen,’ ” she said.

The Winning Time episode “BEAT L.A.,” for which Richardson-Whitfield received a directing Emmy nomination, features extensive basketball sequences.

“On paper, there was literally one line that’ll say, and the Celtics race towards the finals as the Lakers race towards the Celtics, something like that,” Richardson-Whitfield said. “And my DP, Todd Banhazl, and I would take a line like that and go, okay, this is 1/8 of a page but it’s really going to take us about three days to shoot what you guys are saying.

“So when I see that basketball in the show, I know that it is completely from my head. It’s not something that somebody told me to do or that was written down to do. And in that show, you do the basketball, which is fun and exciting, but we were also able to tell the story within the game in a way that is different than if you’re just watching games. It’s something that I’m very proud of.”

Winning Time and The Gilded Age both found themselves on the bubble in Season 2. While The Gilded Age grew its audience, earning a third-season renewal, Winning Time was canceled after two seasons,

Richardson-Whitfield said she was disappointed by Winning Time‘s demise.

“It didn’t start out well because of all of the complaints from ex-players who didn’t have anything to do with it. I completely understand that if someone was telling my story and I had nothing to do with it, it probably wouldn’t make me happy either,” she admitted. “We had a rocky start because of that bad press but [EP/Episode 1 director] Adam McKay set up a genius show. The way it’s shot, there’s footage in there that people would bet a million dollars was old footage, and we shot that; it was written so well, and the casting is so fantastic. I think that when people look back at it, they’re going to go, that was something that only happens once in a lifetime.”

Richardson-Whitfield spoke with Deadline from Philadelphia, where she is in production as executive producer and director on the latest series under her HBO overall deal, Task, Brad Ingelsby’s follow-up to his hit limited series Mare of Easttown.

“I thought that Winning Time was the hardest job I had ever done, and Task has now taken its place as the most physically demanding show that I’ve ever directed — it has a lot of action,” Richardson-Whitfield said. “I think Brad has outdone himself. It’s sort of in the same world because it’s Philadelphia, and it’s a police task force but it’s definitely a more visually stimulating show and, I don’t want to say violent, but it’s definitely a much grittier crime show than Mare was.”

What’s Next

Having faced challenges herself, would Richardson-Whitfield recommend that aspiring Black female directors pursue that as a career?

“Oh, absolutely I would recommend it,” she said. “What I try to do when I walk on every set — and I feel like I have to, unfortunately — is that I have to work 200% harder than anyone else who comes in there because I know that any other Black woman who comes after me may be judged on how well I do. So I never rest. I’m always working, my poor family. Because I really do feel like it is a responsibility to do the best job I can so that many others can come after me.”

After mastering most TV genres as a director, Richardson-Whitfield has set her next goals.

“I have been dreaming of doing a huge, epic sci-fi TV show or movie,” she said. “That’s really my next step, jumping in there and doing features.”