The ESSENCE Black Women in Hollywood red carpet is always a ball! Check out our favorite celebrity quotes
Ava DuVernay on this being a banner year for Black films: “Black artists have always made beautiful things. I think periodically others will take notice, but that doesn’t negate all the things that have been made.”
DuVernay on Scandal’s hiatus: We’re tapped out! We need a Fitz fix!
Lupita Nyong’o on Oprah: “Oprah is an ordinary, but extremely extraordinary, person.”
Nyong’o on Black hair: “I think our hair is like clay, you can mold it in to whatever you want it to be.”
Kerry Washington on happiness: “I’m happy with my life, but not because of money and stardom. I think happiness has more to do with peace, spiritual fulfillment, and love.
Yvette Nicole Brown on the increase of Black women on television: “We’re not add-ons. We’re part of the sauce now, in it from the beginning.”
Tracee Ellis Ross on personal style: “I don’t always dress for what it looks like on the red carpet, I dress for what it feels like.”
Danai Gurira on ESSENCE’s Black Women in Hollywood luncheon: “This is where Black girls get their gasoline!”
Tatyana Ali on confidence: “It’s so much harder to not be yourself than to just be yourself—I’m doing me.”
Iylana Vanzant on fame: “If I don’t have cookies, my grandchildren could care less if I have a TV show.”
David Oyelowo on working with Honoree Ava DuVernay: “I saw a soulfulness, a truth that is very rare.”
Brandy on walking in Louboutins: “I don’t walk in them ever, unless I have to. You have to concentrate really hard.”
Michael Ealy on cooking: “I make the meanest egg white frittata you ever had—It’s about the cumin.”
Tika Sumpter on her red carpet look: “I didn’t wake up like this!”