Black Actresses Discuss Why Broadway Needs More Diversity Than ‘Hamilton’

By Kenrya Rankin Jun 09, 2016

While 35 percent of this year’s Tony Award nominees are people of color, a new video from Vanity Fair makes it clear that Broadway still has a long way to go when it comes to telling the stories of people who aren’t White and male. In fact, a Forbes report found that historically, just 4.7 of Tony nominees have been people of color—a figure that’s pretty close to the Academy Awards’ 3.6 percent.

In the new video, which was released yesterday (June 8), Black actresses Danai Gurira (“Eclipsed,” “The Walking Dead”), Danielle Brooks (“The Color Purple,” “Orange is The New Black”) and Renée Elise Goldsberry (“Hamilton,” “The Good Wife”) break down the importance of telling diverse stories on the stage, the barriers that stand in the way of that representation and why having plays like theirs is a good start, but not enough.

“Once we see five plays out there in the course of half a year that have women creative teams, some of these things take care of themselves,” Gurira says. “But if these women aren’t being allowed, or people of color aren’t being allowed to create or aren’t getting the green light in Hollywood, how does the problem get solved? It just continues. It just replicates itself.”

Watch the full conversation above.