a16z Podcast | Mastering the Game (with David Oyelowo)

hi everyone welcome to the a 6nz podcast today's episode is based on a conversation between actor David Oyelowo and Ben Horowitz that took place last month at the a 16 Z special screening of the new Disney movie now out queen of cat way the movies directed by Mira Nair and based on a book by Tim Carruthers about Ugandan chess master Fiona Moe Tessie David plays one of the main characters in the movie Robert Curtin day the mentor who taught chess to kids in the slums of Kampala Uganda that's nice very nice congratulations first of all I know I'm making just a beautiful film and thank you thank you thank you I really really really appreciate that reaction it was a it was a labor of love for us as you can probably tell from watching the film these are images we don't tend to get to see of people we don't tend to get to see in this way and as a child of Nigerian parents myself having ah I feel so much more comfortable now but anyway it's just amazing to be able to share these kind of images with you guys and pretty to be so well received so thank you crazy and you one of the thinks you were saying to me earlier was that there's a lot of movies about Africa filmed in Africa but they don't show a part of Africa that you really wanted to show and can you tell us about that yeah I mean look it's no secret that the narrative thus far cinematically when it comes to Africa has been largely through white eyes I love all you white people in here but you know and not only through white eyes in terms of who's making the movie but in terms of the protagonists as well you know this phrase white Savior has become something that is more well known now that's largely how we have seen Africa as an African myself I know for a fact that we are people who are very self possessed who have more than enough ability to progress individually and autonomously and you don't tend to see that in film and you know diversity and inclusion have become buzzwords in Hollywood thankfully but this is it in action a wonderful executive at Disney by the name of tender and the gander who is here where are you take a bow I went out tender because this is diversity and inclusion in action he is of Ugandan parrot äj-- there is no way I think that this film will be getting made if he didn't make it his passion and he didn't walk it down the halls to get it made and I think you know built into this from a diversity and inclusion point of view it's made by meer Ania a woman who yes give it up for Meera you know a wonderful female director who was called Uganda her home for over 27 years I think that a female director directing this is why you have an 11 year old girl as the center of the story that's why we need female directors that's why we need different voices telling these stories it's because of tender niganda being at the center of getting this made that my character isn't a white missionary which is what it would which is what it has been up until you know when I say a white serviço that's how this film would have got made 10 years ago and what it got made today if different people had made it several studios that would have won it Ryan Gosling whose fabulous and probably very compelling as a chess teacher you know another thing that really struck me about the movie was there was poverty but that wasn't the story it wasn't all about sadness it wasn't all about struggle there were a lot of other aspects to it and in our conversation earlier that seems like that's much more realistic view of how it really is to live even in katway yeah one doesn't want to deny the inherent problems that exist anywhere in in a bid to redress the balance of what has gone on before you just want to tell the truth and you know I was in Uganda over ten years ago and I did a film there called the Last King of Scotland and we had a great experience doing it and one of the my lasting memories from that film is our makeup artist who is a lady from London very affluent lady we were in Uganda and we all just couldn't get over how people who had and have so little can be so joyful a lot of them existing on a banana or two a day yeah and she came home from our time in Uganda opened her fridge her full fridge and had a full-on breakdown and the reason she had this breakdown she told me in an explicit time she said I looked at my fridge full of food and I knew that in my life I don't have an iota of the joy I saw in the faces and in the lives of people who have nothing and it made me completely reassess my life and what I deemed to be of value and that to me is why a film like this is of value because to be able to see joy genius ingenuity family love grace in the midst of that is universally beautiful I think anyone anywhere can appreciate the value of that that's why you don't shy away from it you just tell the truth of it yeah that's amazing truth you kind of are at a point in your career which I think most actors would die for which is you've gotten to a point where you're important enough you played Martin Luther King you've been in great movies that you can choose a bit what you're gonna do you don't have to take the work that's offered which is very few people achieve that level and you chose to make this movie which is you know the entire budget for the film was only 15 million dollars so certainly you could have done

something that was worth more money and and watching the film the character that you play kind of made a very similar choice with his life where he could have you know been an engineering supervisor he was clearly a very talented guy when you researched him did you identify with this character more than other characters that you've played yeah absolutely I mean Robert K tenday who is a saint I mean you know one of the challenges in playing him was how to make him feel like a human being but great so incredible I mean as a human being and I hugely admire him and what he is done and is doing but for me I am I'm very very blessed to do what I do but I also really appreciate how impactful cinema is culturally and having been in films that I have seen impact culture you know educate people enlighten people bring people joy help them reevaluate or evaluate their lives I have basically set myself the remit that for me I have to use this tool to contextualize what it is to be black on planet earth and that is very complex you know in setting myself that remit what i mean by that is film culturally has I think marginalized what it is to be a person of color it has marginalized the female voice as well behind the camera in front of the camera so few female directors getting to operate on our honor scale of this which has to change and so few people of color and able to be the protagonists and so being afforded the opportunities that you quite rightly say I have been afforded I try to take every opportunity where I'm blessed with the opportunity to do a film to move the ball down the field as it pertains to what I deemed to be the African experience the african-american experience the black I want to champion the female experience in all of its complexities so so yes when this project came along it ticked all of my boxes in terms of what I want to contribute what I want my footprint to be as an artist in terms of the work I do being from Nigeria and then London you've played what many people consider the most important african-american and maybe ever but certainly in the last century how did you learn about African Americans well I had this incredible journey I did a series of films that really went into the American experience but more specifically the African American experience I did the film called Red Tails above in Tuskegee Airmen I did a film called the butler

which which also looked at the African American experience also very unusual but that but either of those movies get made and it was a fight it was a real fight we didn't have a tender and again to there I'll tell you that you know I did a film called the help as well and a film called Lincoln all of which really you know cover the last hundred and fifty years of what it is to be black in America yes I did [Music] there so so but you know I couldn't have predicted that would happen to to to my career but I can absolutely track it with the presidency of Barack Obama you know I think those films got made because this country as it still is reeling from the fact that we've had an african-american president for eight years we're finding out quite a good one yes exactly and I think that these films got made to give us context as to how we got to this moment and so through doing those those movies I got this unexpected education unexpected love actually for african-american history african-americans because I'm British I'm Nigerian I wouldn't have identified as african-american but I now have of my four children two of them are Americans they were born here I just became a citizen three weeks gradually so in my house we call ourselves African Americans just to lump everything together nicely so yeah you know that journey I've been on is really helped me drill down and get a sense of what I want to do which is something that you you don't really get to know as an artist all the time in terms of the kind of films I want to make so one of the things in the movie that there were so many nice nuances and in terms of the clothing and that you know Sehwa hideous let's be honest as much as I love robucket nd what's with the shirt those were his authentic shirts yeah there was a very bright their shirts loved him yes yeah that was really amazing was the snap no that actually from the team oh yeah yeah that's that's a very real thing everywhere you go you know and that's what's so great about getting to see different places different people to you know I guarantee that's gonna creep into schools that's gonna become something that you know amount of times I've spent teaching people how to do that but yeah it's a it's a it's a fantastic thing that they do I learned so much you know they're definitely made you feel like you were there yeah like part of the team it's really amazing so one of your co-stars Lapita you know they they say there are

there are actresses and then there are movie stars and she's clearly jumps right off the screen and it's a movie star and what does it like to act or have to be in a scene with such a presence that's that big it does that make it more difficult does that make it easier oh it's a complete joy especially when there's such an incredible human being I mean she really is one of the loveliest people I have met and she's just she's so talented she's so gracious but what blew me away about Lupita in this movie is that as you will see in some of those scenes with her is that we now have a woman on planet earth who can completely pass for a Ugandan corn seller in the slums of cartway she can pass for it you can you can have the camera go buying and real corn sell a real corn sell a movie stuff real cool teller real coins and buy it yeah is just incredible because I don't know that we've had the combination of that talent that beauty that amazing hue of her skin combined in a world renowned movie star and that is just amazing and she is one of the reason the movie gets made because when you don't have someone like that that gives a company like Disney the confidence to make the film because that you know at the end of the day you want people in these movies that draw a crowd and if you just if you haven't had the opportunity to nurture that talent to the point whereby she is as you say a movie star the truth of the matter is these films don't get made and so her existence to me is both a miracle and just a consist source of warm inner fuzzy loveliness I said and she is just I mean that I don't know if you said I remember one day or when we were shooting and I saw her practicing her waddle and I did you see because you know because that's not how Lupita walked quite impressive yes so if you were her agent you know and and she can make a movie like this that's so important but she's so important as you pointed out in not just showing these kinds of films but really in diversifying all of Hollywood how many films like this would you have her make and then would you also want her to be in blockbusters just to show that greatness can come in that package or like how would you think about that if you are now you know running CA or William Morris or wherever it's it's a really good question because up until

now what has tended to happen when a black woman in particular is afforded this kind of notoriety this kind of success winning an Oscar being in a hit film is it's really difficult Hollywood finds it very difficult to know what to do with them but but even beyond that it's just okay so what do we do with them now do we pair them with Brad Pitt do we have him with George Clooney do we you know the Jennifer Lawrence route right is not what is going to happen unfortunately because of this confusion as to okay she's got this amazing dark skin and the truth of the matter is again to talk about diversity and inclusion if tender niganda doesn't exist if he isn't walking this project down the halls beyond 12 years a slave this is the first time we're seeing Lupita in the flesh since then and that bears out it's actually shocking it is and that would not be the case with Jennifer Lawrence winning the Oscar it's about four or five giant no exactly it's not gonna be the case for brie Larson who's just won the Oscar it's not gonna be the case for Amy Adams so you know what what I would say is that she's doing it absolutely right she went on to Broadway and got nominated for a Tony that's how you keep the narrative going because you have to the best weapon in my view against prejudice is excellence how my entrepreneurs hear that if you can constantly remain on the undeniable path of excellence you literally shame people into giving you your opportunities into making the opportunities that you create yourself and so I think that we are more and more waking up to that I know that she is woken up to that it's certainly something I try to do but it doesn't mean it's easy you know she is well on her way to continuing to be a game changer I think yeah no doubt and that was amazing yeah we just saw her in so we spoke about Disney a bunch so you know here's a the most successful company in the world in making films but known for having that great profitable success by making franchises that can merchandise mm-hmm and clearly hit this once that one that there's an easy sequel for have no idea what you're talking about I the doll is on its way do you have interchangeable robotic attendee shirts we've got this so now yes but so how how does Disney you know end up embracing a

film like this and what does that mean do you think going forward look this hasn't happened before is the truth of the matter is it hasn't happened before and you know even when we sit there thinking of how to market who's gonna come and see the film you know what we tend to do in Hollywood is we think about comps what is the film like we just don't have comps so that's amazing I mean in in a world of sequels and reimagined IP and all this kind of stuff to have something that you're literally going know that a film like this exists and it be made by the biggest media company in the world is truly incredible so you know how this happened I think even Disney is going thankfully they're very happy with it but honestly I'm sorry I just go back to tender niganda I mean you know he had great success with Cinderella that he was a big part of getting that film made saving mr. banks which he got me so again excellence excellence bred success which bred opportunity and that meant that we got to go and make this movie miron I add that the work that she's been doing positioned her in order to when this came along she was right there Lupita and 12 years a slave eroded their excuses to not make this film they were they were talking about this from just as I had done Salma so thankfully you know me as an addition to it we just literally through excellence and the pursuit of excellence it got to here so I only don't have a real answers for you as to how this happened all I can hope is that this becomes a model for what because I know we need it but you know I just pray that it attains the level of success that means that we continue there to a road not just Disney's but Warner Brothers Universal Sony paramount all of their excuses to not make movies like this thank you again and everybody maybe we can turn on the lights just so David can see everybody's smiling say it would be nice because we can't see you at all thank you thank you again for just a wonderful film and changing Hollywood and making all of us better thank you thank you guys bless you thank you very much thank you thank you [Applause]