Jenji Kohan Quotes

I've heard that Black people and Black faces don't sell magazines, but one day you're going to beg me to be on there.

Why does every black person in the movies have to play a servant? How about a black person walking up the steps of a courthouse carrying a briefcase?

I'm just honest. They [asians] don't want to see black people generally in their movies.

Personally, especially as a young black woman, I didn't think that Los Angeles was a place for me to start. There's a certain type that they go for or don't.

No matter what happens, we couldn't let people say Asian-American actors can't act.

I don't think the mainstream media understands people of color are multidimensional. For some reason, there's an idea that only white people are relatable. I don't think it's necessarily racist. But it's odd, because the people who watch the most television are black women, so we should be represented in more ways.

Why is the world that I see around me mixed, and why is the world I see in movies filled with all white people? Why does it have to be like that?

The way Hollywood and TV is, black people don't have any choice but to see ourselves in white-dominated television shows and stories and movies.

I grew up in musicals, and if you looked like me and sounded like me, you were the character; you were never at the center of the story.

Of course I worry about whitewashing, and I feel very strongly that whitewashing was, is, and continues to be a problem in entertainment.

Until recently, Hollywood offered only a handful of roles to actors of color. The majority of my opportunities have fallen into two categories: Scary Black and Funny Black.

The people who can be helping to make movies that have blacks and Latinos and women and all that - that movie doesn't come to you. Because the idea is that there's no place for black movies.

When you look at "American Crime" and you have the character Terri LaCroix is a pharmaceutical executive - why does that character always have to be white?

In the world of animation, you can be anything you wanna be. If you're a fat woman, you can play a skinny princess. If you're short wimpy guy, you can play a tall gladiator. If you're a white man, you can play an Arabian prince. And if you're a black man, you can play a donkey or a zebra.

I find it weird when [model] agents say, 'You're the only black girl booked for the show. Isn't it great?' Why is it great?

I have a no-die clause in every movie. The black people can't be dying all the time.

Growing up, I was always the only black kid on my team and (sometimes) I'd get questions from my friends when I'd say, 'I want to be in the NHL' and they'd say, 'Well, there are no black people or not very many in the NHL' and as a kid, you'd wonder why. But overall, I didn't really face any racial difficulties. Nothing too bad or too lasting.

I think if you look at Hollywood as a whole and the type of content that they put out over the years, it's pretty homogeneous, right? They haven't done a really deep dive into a lot of stories of people of color. I don't want to say that there haven't been attempts, and there has been some great product that has come out over the years, but I think in 2016, we're in a world of struggle. It's not just about race, it's also about the LGBT community too and others.

No matter how cutting-edge Hollywood may seem, it is still delayed in how it views people: If producers do not perceive me as an Iranian girl, then I cannot play an Iranian girl. If you aren't perceived as a full black girl, then it makes it more difficult to play a black girl on TV.

My hope as an actress is knowing that I'm someone who is more privileged - I'm biracial and lighter-skinned - and I hope it can open up the door for more women of color, especially darker-skinned black women. I hope everyone hops on the bandwagon and decides to start putting women of color in movies that aren't just about race.

Now that's hard for many people to believe, given that the media image of a drug dealer is a black kid standing on the street corner with his pants sagging down.

I can actually get involved in getting stories off the ground that no one would ask me to be in because I'm the wrong age, the wrong sex, the wrong nationality, or whatever. I've found it quite exhilarating to have that freedom to tell the stories that aren't just about middle-aged white English guys.

Imagine a film such as Inception with an entire cast of black people - do you think it would be successful? Would people watch it? But no one questions the fact that everyone's white. That's what we have to change.

You have a valid complaint, and I do recognize it ... but you are reading into things a little bit. Just the same, I will do my best to make horrible things happen to a bunch of white people before something else so graphic hits a minority character.

I have been given a lot of roles that are downtrodden, mammy-ish.