The scenes that changed everything According to the women who were in them
According to the women who were in (or created!) them.
When Atlanta revealed our rituals “In the pilot, after Earn (Donald Glover) and I make our way out of bed, I head to the bathroom, and as we discuss child care options, I pull off my headwrap and start undoing my knots. For me, taking time to detangle and braid my hair before going to bed is a part of my personal routine. But the moment isn’t only about hair. It’s about choosing to share how people actually live their lives.” – Zazie Beetz, actress
When Master of None used personal experience to shatter a stereotype “A very quiet and important thing happens at the end of the ‘Thanksgiving’ episode: Denise’s mom grabs her hand, pulls her in, and says, ‘I’m happy for you.’ It’s such a pivotal moment for women, particularly women of colour, who may be struggling with what it’s like to have a gay child. The grabbing of the hand, the looking in the eyes and saying, ‘I’m happy with the way you turned out,’ instead of this long speech of ‘It’s OK that you’re gay,’ is a moment of acknowledgment. For a lot of queer people, that’s all we could ever want.” – Lena Waithe, writer and actress
When Orange Is the New Black didn’t shoot “The scene where Taystee held a gun to prison guard Piscatella (Brad William Henke) was really a reaction to, ‘What are we going to do as a people that feel ignored?’ I love that she chose not to shoot, because, to me, that said that we, as a country, don’t have to do the eye-for-an-eye thing. We can be better than our enemy, better than operating out of this hateful place.” – Danielle Brooks, actress When Dis ek, Anna lets characters get real “My character, Johanna, knew all along that her husband was abusing her daughter, Anna (Charlenè Brouwer), but did nothing about it. When Anna confronts Johanna about this, she defends herself by saying, “He was my husband.” Anna responds with: “And now you’re alone.” These lines weren’t in the script. I remember being so surprised at how much her improvised words about being alone cut me. I didn’t have to act. It completely deflated me.
“It dawned on me how absolutely and lamely people can justify their inhumane actions or, in this case, inaction to avoid looking at the parts of themselves that are ugly or broken. Some of us are stuck in convenient lies that in the end rob us of everything. In my character’s case, she was left lonely with nothing but to reflect on a life in which she wasn’t a hero. You have to own up in the end. Hopefully it got viewers to turn the looking glass toward themselves, and if they didn’t like what they saw, have the courage to change.” – Nicola Hanekom, actress
When The Handmaid’s Tale gave us a sympathetic female villain “What’s interesting in The Handmaid’s Tale is that, women are oppressed, but many of the oppressors are other women. [In the ‘Ceremony’ scene, when Serena Joy’s (Yvonne Strahovski) husband has nonconsensual sex with a handmaid], she has a lot of emotions about not being able to give her husband a child. You’re like, ‘How could she be more upset than the woman getting raped in her lap?’ Yet you feel her pain. I loved being able to explore the duality in the characters, even ones who seem like villains.” – Reed Morano, director When Broad City pegged true friendship “There’s a scene where Abbi is hooking up with her neighbour Jeremy (Stephen Schneider), and he asks her to put on a strap-on and ‘peg’ him. She immediately goes into the bathroom to call Ilana.” – Abbi Jacobson, co-creator and actress
“The thing we love is that Abbi’s like, ‘I don’t know if I want to do it,’ and Ilana’s like, ‘You wouldn’t have called me if you didn’t.’ Sometimes we need our friends to be mirrors, not to tell us what to do, but to tell us what we’re thinking.” – Ilana Glazer, co-creator and actress When Game of Thrones redefined the friend zone “I’ve really enjoyed seeing a relationship between a woman, Brienne of Tarth, and a man, Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj CosterWaldau), progress over so many seasons without any particular sexual emphasis. Not only does it help us to view women as people instead of sex objects, but we also see a man form a relationship with a woman that’s not based on her physical attractiveness. I’ve been so surprised by the number of people who say that they take inspiration from Brienne of Tarth; I wasn’t sure the world was ready for her yet.” – Gwendoline Christie, actress
“We can be better than our enemy, better than operating out of this hateful place.” – Danielle Brooks