O. T. Fagbenle Quotes

The lamest excuse that I get incessantly is, 'Oh, we're not going ethnic with that role,' so I can't go in for it, or I can't get the part, which is really stupid, because, in today's world, people look different.

Action roles - or any role - should go to the best guy for the job. People obsess about nationality. Hollywood and America might be the hub for pop culture and cinema for the Western world, but that shouldn't suggest that all the roles should go to young American men.

Those companies that don't see the black and brown communities are missing, out of their closed eye, talent, which leads to money and growth. When baseball, football and basketball couldn't see the field, they missed talent and growth. The same is true in the tech industry.

I'm a gatekeeper, and the gatekeepers all used to be mostly old, white men.

Shows like 'Seinfeld' and 'Friends,' they have, like, one or two damn characters throughout the whole series that are minorities.

We've heard the excuses from those responsible for hiring that they don't want to take a chance on a new director. But the truth is that the industry hires new directors all the time; it's just that most of them are white males.

It takes time for brown people and people of different ethnicities to get into the Hollywood world, which is predominantly Caucasian and African American.

In America, I am brown; I'm 'of colour', so I would be offered Latin roles, and I've fought against that. I don't want to be put in a category, to be just offered the same sort of thing. For me, it's all about different roles, telling the stories of the great writers.

Usually, I'll be auditioning for the third lead, and there will be Latina actresses, Indian actresses, African American actresses because it will be like, 'Let's check off this box. We have our lead white girl, and we need an ethnic slot.'

To ignore race and sex is racist and sexist.

I think it's a little much to expect the organisation to solve the problem of racial parity. We do see a fast-increasing influx of Asians, black folks. I actually see black folks out here, unlike some of our liberal critics.

I am Indian, and my home is Kampala. My world is already diverse. But films are financed by those who want to see themselves on screen, and it is a white male world. Still, it does feel like America is waking up. Let's hope it's the start of an avalanche.

Most of my diversity conversations are had with the majority population, because frankly, those people are the people who have the most influence over everybody's career.

I think it's worth putting energy into affirmative action in terms of having diversity in positions of power because the door was shut for so long.

There's a belonging problem in Hollywood. Who dictates who belongs? The very body who dictates that looks all one way.

It was a given at UCSB that if there was a role that called for a person of color, it was going to be handed to me. There were certain times when maybe I didn't try as hard. Going to Yale was a way more diverse experience.

I wanted to be cast because I'm an actor and not because of how I look or where I'm from. I'm brown. I want to be able to play a Spanish girl some day or a Mexican girl and learn the language. That's what actors do: we act.

I think being collaborative is definitely more natural for people who are minorities in any sense - so people who aren't, like, white male artists - because we don't have the privilege to create art and work alone, usually.

I want to see designers capitalize on a beauty that is not only white. I need them to stop acting like beautiful black and brown women do not exist.

I certainly believe in a type of Rooney Rule - in legislation that doesn't give black and ethnic individuals a job but, at least, puts them in the frame.

You get into these executive offices, and people say, 'Oh, we have this project. Wait a minute, guys, we need diversity - let's choose a black actor for this; let's choose a Hispanic actor for this,' instead of saying, 'That's not diverse, that's just normal. That's what makes up America.'

I was doing a lot of networking in the Valley, and I found that it was not a very diverse environment, and most of the conferences and meetup events I went to, there weren't many women or people of color in those rooms.

When you're the only woman of color, and you walk into a room of people who don't look like you, most of them with blond hair and blue eyes, it's disheartening. The weirdest part is that I walk in and assume they think I'm auditioning to play a different role than them, but I'm going out for their same role.

There were no small brown kids as the centre of the children's fiction I grew up with.

Museums and galleries do recruit art historians, but they are overwhelmingly white and middle class, or else from abroad. They understandably fret about the lack of diversity in their curating departments, but is it any wonder?