The new Netflix series is a 'celebration of diversity and equality, but also a damnation of the fact that there's not nearly enough being done,' says Murphy.
It’s the 1940s and Camille Washington , a Black woman, just won the Best Actress Oscar for playing the lead inan interracial romance film. Rock Hudson proudly walked the red carpet with his partner, Archie Coleman , the Black screenwriter ofwho opened his Academy Award acceptance speech with a declaration of love for him. Screen legend Anna May Wong was nearly rendered speechless as she held her trophy.
How did you navigate the challenge of reimagining events and characters like Camille, Archie, and Rock without sanitizing the harshness of this era?We heavily researched the lives of every single person in it who is real—including Rock, Hattie, Tallulah Bankhead, and Henry Willson [Hudson’s agent and a notorious Hollywood predator played by Jim Parsons] down to what drink Henry drank . We were very careful about all of the facts of the real people.
You also don’t hide the fact that Avis is initially biased against the project because it has a Black lead and screenwriter. To your earlier point, Ryan, one changed mind or greenlight may have altered the course of events in an otherwise prejudiced Hollywood that remains today.I hope it would have shifted a lot. Hollywood talks a really good game, but it is all about economics. Hollywood usually doesn’t do anything unless they can make money off it.
I remember the day we shot [Camille’s] screen test. [Laura] showed up to do that perfect tear down her eyes in order [for Camille] to secure that role. The whole second half of the series is reliant upon her delivering this one scene. And she had to perform it so many times: for the close-up that’s in, outside to show the making of it , and the medium. [Afterward], I screamed and said “cut.” Then I ran and hugged her. I was like, “We got it, girl.” Everything else was icing on the cake.
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