H B C U
T I M E S
Don’t call yourself ready until you master your craft. There are less than 5% Black writers in Hollywood. That’s it. -Sa’rah L. Jones
the shows she wanted. She broke through the glass ceiling in an industry with less than 5% Black writers.
“Don’t call yourself ready until you master your craft. There are less than 5% Black writers in Hollywood. That’s it. They are reading 10 pages of your script. I’m going to be nice and read five more. If you have misspelled words and it’s not formatted, it’s going in the trash. I want you to be great. I want you to make it,” says Jones about young writers. She says right now she doesn’t have a desire to create her own show. But she does want to help someone run their own show as a co-executive producer. She wants to write movies, to be able to take off half a year, to have the freedom to be bi-coastal – all of which she can do as a writer, rather than as a showrunner.
She’s committed to tell stories with nuanced Black characters.
“I am okay with being a Black woman that writes on Black shows,” says Jones. “Because I am a Black woman and take pride in our culture,epresentation behind the scenes matter because we are able to tell our own stories.”
Jones’s unique perspective as a writer comes in large part from her experience going to an HBCU.
“Having that experience allows me to have a whole different voice than the writers that went to Yale,” she says. “The PWIs are the ones with the film schools, so most of the writers come from white schools. Your voice is different having gone to an HBCU. It’s the voice and authenticity. I don’t write Black. I am a Black girl that writes.”
There’s a love between professors and students at Black schools - sometimes tough love - that she says reflects in her writing.
“I took everything from my HBCU. It reflects in everything.”
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