Quoted: Idris Elba on Creating Media Opportunities

“It matters to Elba that while this diversity of work is available in TV drama, the same is not yet true of film. ‘Imagine a film such as Inception with an entire cast of black people – do you think it would be successful?’ Elba asks. ‘Would people watch it? But no one questions the fact that everyone’s white. That’s what we have to change.

“His solution – apart from continuing to play roles that require a good actor rather than one who is necessarily black – is to take matters into his own hands. Elba sees himself increasingly as an entrepreneur, with his own record label, TV and film-producing projects, and says he intends to set about producing the kind of films he thinks are missing. ‘I’ll direct myself and I’ll be colour blind and gender blind,’ Elba proclaims. ‘I’ll show that it can be done.”

–Excerpted from “The god in Idris Elba.”

Photo credit: BeeGadget