In a conversation with Awards Daily, Hollywood star Laura Harrier discusses the types of roles she has sought out throughout her career and why working with Janet Mock, Queen Latifah, and Ryan Murphy was a dream come true.
Actress Laura Harrier is at a point in her career where she wants her work to reinvent the way that audiences interact with history. Whether that be through audiences watching the revisionist take on the entertainment industry in Hollywood and asking why they only grew up with the idea that classic movies and classic beauty more often than note highlighted white figures or by watching BlackKklansman and questioning why most of us were never taught about Black Panthers in school. Harrier is ready for her work to inspire audiences to question what they consume and why.
In Hollywood Harrier plays Camille Washington, a fictional actress in post-World War II Hollywood in a studio system where she is strictly surrounded by white faces and regularly sidelines to maid roles. That is until she and her boyfriend fight for her to portray a revamped version of Peg Entwistle, a role that eventually leads to Camille becoming the first Black woman to win a lead acting Oscar. In doing so, Harrier hopes that fans of Hollywood question why in real life it took 50+ more years until a Black actress won the Oscar and ponder what it would have meant to generations of Black children if they had these images and figures decades earlier.
Speaking with Awards Daily Laura Harrier discusses her experience working on Hollywood and why working with icons like Janet Mock and Queen Latifah were a dream come true for her.
Awards Daily: What initially drew you to the role of Camille Washington?
Laura Harrier: Initially I was just drawn to work with Ryan Murphy. I love Pose, and I am also a big fan of Janet (Mock). I’m a fan of everything from American Horror Story to Gianni Versace, and I really admire him.
The thing is when I signed up for Hollywood I didn’t really know what I was signing up for. It was mysterious and shrouded in mystery. I wasn’t able to read a script until I was offered the role. All I knew was that it was set in old Hollywood in the 40s, and I would be playing an actress. Just that alone was enough to get me excited for the role. It’s an era I have always liked watching but at the same time I never felt connected to it because there weren’t a lot of people that looked like me in those roles with the exceptions of Dorothy Dandridge and Lena Horne. It was a very whitewashed world as we know so the opportunity to play a Black woman in that industry at that time was exciting.
AD: Did you do any research for the roles? You mentioned Dorothy Dandridge and Lena Horne. Did you do a deep dive into their work?
LH: They definitely were, mainly Dorothy Dandridge. She is someone who went through so much adversity and her career sort of tragically upended her life. I wanted to watch a lot of her films. Carmen Jones is a big inspiration for me in general, and the chemistry between her and Harry Belafonte is incredible. I read up on her life and watched as many interviews as I could.
I also found the podcast series You Must Remember This to be really helpful. I’ve listened to most of that entire series, but there are a couple episodes focused on Dorothy Dandridge that I kept returning to those to hear her speak.
I really wanted to pay homage to these women who have never received the shine and recognition that they deserve. We’re always talking about the Marilyn Monroe’s and the Ava Gardner’s who were incredible, but I want to make sure we pay attention to these other women as well.
AD: Between Hollywood and BlackKklansman, you’ve worked on multiple recent projects that take on a revisionist take of history and/or aim to shine a light on parts of history that have been erased. What attracts you to these stories and why do you think these types of stories are having a moment right now?
LH: I love telling stories that show people of color and all marginalized people in a light that we haven’t seen before. So much of the history of Hollywood is told through a white lens. We’ve only seen Black people as side players or the funny best friend or these stereotypical smaller roles, so it is so important to me to show us in our full humanity and show all the facets of the human experience. It is something I am really passionate about, and it has influenced me to work with people like Spike Lee and Ryan Murphy who are on the right side of history in terms of storytelling and who both have always championed a diverse group of people. It has been exciting to be a part of that and to get to show characters we haven’t really seen onscreen before.
Look at BlackKklansman, I didn’t learn about the Black Panthers in school, and I don’t think a lot of people did. Then there’s Hollywood, I didn’t know who Dorothy Dandridge was until high school and saw some of her films. To be able to highlight these people and stories is important and hopefully younger generations will know more of these stories than we did.
AD: I’ve spoken to many of your costars over the last couple weeks and something that they’ve all said is that their time working on Hollywood was one of the most collaborative projects they’ve ever worked on. I’m curious if that was your experience as well?
LH: Definitely. This was my first time working in television, so I didn’t know what to fully expect. It takes a lot of trust to work in TV because you don’t know how things are going to end up. We didn’t get to read the second episode until we were almost done shooting the first. We’re watching this story unfold in a similar way to the audience. We were all fans of Ryan and Janet, and we trusted that there was this great, bigger picture to get behind.
For me, collaborating with Janet was one of the highlights of my career. We were able to connect with Camille’s story on a deeper level because both of us were Black women. It was important that there was someone that looked like me in the writer’s room. Because of that it was able to feel a lot more authentic. All of our directors were amazing, but I think Janet and I had this natural shorthand given our shared life experiences. We were able to connect what Camille was going through to what has happened in our own lives and that was special.
AD: One of my favorite aspects of Camille’s journey was her relationship with Hattie McDaniel, played by Queen Latifah, and I am so glad that the show took the time to show her career post-Oscars because history has conveniently forgotten what she went through after that night. What was it like working with Queen Latifah and forming that partnership?
LH: It was amazing. I grew up watching Queen Latifah and vividly remember running home from school to watch Living Single. She has been an icon and role model my entire life. She is incredibly talented, smart, and she has always spoken her mind. I loved that dynamic because Camille would have also grown up watching Hattie McDaniel and admiring her work and wanting to learn from her. At the time she would have also been the only person in the industry Camille could have turned to and learned from. It was to play Camille as she sits there and learns from Hattie because that is exactly how I look at Queen Latifah. Art imitated life in a really cool way.
Shooting in that restaurant is definitely one of my favorite memories from this experience. I was so excited to meet her and I was such a fan girl. I remember Jeremy (Pope) came to set because he was just as excited. I don’t even think he was working that day, but the three of us had such a fun time together.
AD: What was it like filming that Oscar sequence in the finale? I know you’ve been to the Oscars before as part of the ensemble for BlacKKKlansman. Did you draw from that experience at all?
LH: I think the experience of walking into that room is something that stands out. There is that shot of Camille walking into the room in slow motion while she’s in shock. Just to be in the room is the most important thing. I definitely felt that just as an attendee accompanying a Best Picture nominated film. It was an exciting, surreal experience, and I felt out of my body in a way that I think Camille did.
There are also major differences. I don’t have an Oscar! So for the acceptance speech I instead drew from watching Halle Berry and knowing the weight of history and what it would have meant if a Black woman won back in 1948. I watch that speech all of the time and cry.
As a cast we all genuinely really liked each other and became friends, so it was fun to be together in these big scenes. It took like a week to shoot all of those scenes and the whole cast was there. We had such a good time, and it felt like this big last hurrah of us celebrating our achievements.
AD: Hollywood may have been set nearly 80 years ago, but you can’t help but watch and see the correlation to what many actors of color are going through today, especially when it comes down to what roles are available to marginalized actors. In recent years the industry has gone through major efforts to change that in the entertainment industry. Have you noticed a significant change at all?
LH: It is definitely still happening today, and it continues to be an ongoing conversation. Things are obviously a lot better than they have been, but we are still far from a full representational level. Stereotyping is still rampant, and there is a huge lack of diversity not just in front of the camera but also behind it.
I do think there have been changes made. Personally, when I started in this business, the types of roles I was sent were always the best friend or the side kick as well as negative stereotypes. Over time I have seen that shift, and that may have to do with my career progressing but at the same time there is a much greater awareness of the importance of representation. There are also a lot more Black people getting the opportunity to produce, write, and direct – and that obviously changes the landscape out there.
AD: At this point in your career is there anything particular you look for when taking on a new script or role?
LH: I definitely look for characters that feel three dimensional and fully rounded human beings. I’ve talked about not wanting to play a stereotype and not wanting to play these flat side characters to support white people. I want to continue playing people like Camille and Patrice from BlackKklansman who are fighting for something. They were fighting for not just for themselves but for their community as a whole which is something I really admired about Camille. Of course it’s incredible for her to win an Oscar, but the real weight of it was that she recognized what it would mean for all the little Black girls looking up at her and being able to see themselves as someone intelligent and beautiful and celebrated. I want to continue to be able to play people along those lines and I have been so fortunate to be able to do that.
Hollywood is available to stream exclusively on Netflix.
