#second ever??.?? the other one was halle berry which was 20 years ago..

[wanghedi]

Whenever asian ppl win oscars u find out the craziest statistics about the oscars like what do u MEAN michelle yeoh is the second Ever non white woman to win best lead actress. What do u mean that michelle yeoh and ke huy quan winning oscars is the first time that two asian actors have won oscars in the same year.

[giraffeseattrees]

You Found Her Then, You’ll Find Her Again - Part 2/5 - Brittana

Read on FF: PART I, PART II

Summary:

“In a series of moments throughout her life, Santana finds Brittany again and again. With the Karmic Universe pulling the strings, will things ever work in her favor? Five part series.“

Chapter 2: Fifteen

You found her when you were fifteen years old.

You're a sophomore in high school now, and if you thought seven was hard times, man, were you mistaken. Back then, the worst part of your day was helping your abuela mop the entire dance studio. Now, it's sitting through an entire Spanish class with a teacher who knows little to no actual Spanish.

You've also stopped dancing. Well, sort of. Once that light inside dimmed, your parents tried you out for gymnastics. Which brought you to where you are now, captain of the cheer team and overall HBIC. Also long gone are the days of insecurities, you've learned to build a protective shell around every fault. Sometimes though, you catch yourself thinking of dance again. How you were so determined to get better, all for her. For Brittany.

You figured it all out, by the way. The pull. You figured it out when you were thirteen and you received a kiss from another cheerleader during a game of spin the bottle. It felt as if a flip switched inside of you. The power turned on and all of the lights came to life. You're attracted to girls. And Brittany, sweet blonde-haired blue-eyed Brittany, was your first real crush.

You're not exactly out, yet. Lima, Ohio isn't really the most welcoming to your kind, so you keep a lot of your personal life private. The whole secretly dating a cheerleader thing ran its course and eventually faded, but there's no hard feelings there. The girl may be at the bottom of the pyramid now, but that wasn't entirely your doing. It's not your fault she lashed out at Coach Sue after she broke down in the middle of a prep rally. Sure, she only broke down because you broke up with her, but still.

You just didn't feel the pull with her anymore. You felt it when she first kissed you, but even then, it wasn't the same. It wasn't as intense. It didn't encircle you in the same way as Brittany's did. It's sad, but even after all this time, you can't help but compare everything to her. She captivated you then. Completely. Eclipsing everything that comes your way and you let her.

And you've tried, tried, to search for her, but your abuela kept horrible records. There were so many books to look through and even then, you could find only parents' names listed. You had no last name to go by. Just Brittany.

Somedays, you actually wonder to yourself if you've made it all up in your mind. If you've somehow only imagined it, those eyes. At this point, you wouldn't put it past yourself to have developed a brain that would do such a thing so cruel to you. Like some sort of karmic payback.

So, you'd given up searching about a year ago. Instead, you leave it up to fate and the universe.

"Santana?" You open your eyes and Mrs. Pillsbury looks at you with a raised brow. "Did you hear any of what I just said?"

"Not really." You say as you shake your head.

"Were you just… sleeping?" She asks you with a sigh.

You shrug as you answer her, "Yeah, probably."

Her mouth opens slightly in disbelief as you yawn and stretch your arms above your head. "How could you have fallen asleep? I was barely talking for five minutes."

You yawn again and slouch further into your seat as you groan loudly. "Lady, you called me in from the hallway and told me you needed me to run an errand for you. You were about to tell me what to do when you saw a spot of god knows what at the edge of your desk. You've been mumble cleaning it for about," you glance at the clock above her, "thirty minutes."

"What!?" She spins around to check at the clock. "Oh my…"

You chuckle, "Yep."

"Why didn't you say anything, Santana?" She turns back to you and shoot her a look as if it's obvious.

"In what lame alternate reality would I ever pass up a free nap session just to sit in Spanish class and listen to your creepy husband ramble on?"

She doesn't seem fazed by the slight insult to Mr. Schue. If anything, you think you see her shrug lightly as if she were to agree with you. She sits back down and begins to straighten out the pile of papers in front of her. You smile at that and sink back further into your seat to find that comfortable position.

"No, No, No." Mrs. Pillsbury stops you and you groan again. "I won't be tricked a second time."

"There's maybe only fifteen more minutes of class," you try to beg, "Don't make me go. For some sick joke Mr. Schue paired me with JBI for our class assignments. Do you know what that's like? It's absolutely horrible. He stares at me the entire time. THE ENTIRE TIME."

"Relax, Santana. I'm not going to make you go back to class. I need you to run over to the auditorium." She says as she thumbs through some papers on her desk.

You sit up straight and begin to look at your nails. "Why? What's in the auditorium?"

She hands you a folder with some papers in it and you look them over. They're student transfer papers and a counselor evaluation form. You look back at her with a quirked eyebrow.

"Coach Sue requested for you to bring those to her." Mrs. Pillsbury tells you. "You should move quickly. You're already late."

"I can't believe she's just using me as a messenger. I'm the captain, not some lackey." You get up from your seat and scoff. "Being late technically isn't my fault so I'm taking the long way and I'm walking as slowly as I possibly can."

"That's fine, Santana." She waves you off once her eyes fixate on another spot on her desk.

You leave her office and make your way down the hall. You stop by the bathroom to grab a few paper napkins, wetting them first before shoving them into Rachel Berry's locker. You've known her locker combination for about two years now and she still doesn't know it's you that's doing it. You're pretty sure she thinks it's Fabray and that's just an added bonus.

You roam the corridors of the entire school, hall pass in hand from Mrs. Pillsbury, ready to fight off questions from any annoying teachers. Eventually though, you get bored, so you head to the auditorium. Since you went the long way around school, you enter from the audience doors, opposite the stage. When you walk in, you notice the lights aren't all on, save for the few pointing towards the stage. You don't see anyone. You think maybe Coach Sue might've left already, but then you hear them.

It's faint, but you can hear their voices just enough to follow the sounds with your eyes. You squint a little and find the backs of two blonde heads sitting in the front row, dead center. You recognize one of them as your coach and you roll your eyes. Great. Now you have to walk all the way to the front to deliver these to her.

You fall into step and slowly make your way down the auditorium. As you near, you begin to hear their conversation more clearly.

"You won't reconsider?" Sue asks, and the other blonde shakes her head.

"I'm sorry." The blonde sighs, "I know I gave you false hope by meeting with you here. But ultimately, it's not really up to me. My parents are kind of… particular."

Sue nods at that and you're actually surprised at how she's acting, it's not like her usual self. She's not being mean or degrading, it feels almost, warm.

"But I have a cannon that you would fit perfectly." Sue jokes, and it makes the girl beside her giggle.

The giggle. Your body reacts to it as soon as it reaches your ears. It ignites something within you and for the third time in your life, your legs stop working because of it. It can't be, can it? You're about 20 feet away and you allow your eyes linger. You can't see much because it's just the back of her head, but you think she could probably fit the right age. The blonde color of her hair might be a match too, but you don't know anymore. You don't trust yourself. It's been so long, and your imagination could have altered things.

You feel the nerves settle in slow and you shuffle your feet, a weak attempt to wake your legs. Your palms become clammy, and you try your best to discreetly wipe them along the sides of your Cheerios skirt. But your hands betray you as the folder slips from them and falls to the floor.

It doesn't take long for the two blondes to hear you stumble and turn around in their seats. You curse at yourself and quickly gather up the scattered papers.

"Sandbags!" Sue yells out and you pinch the bridge of your nose at the nickname. "Where the hell have you been? We've been waiting for you."

You stand then, slowly. When you're upright, your eyes flutter to the girl beside your coach and your breath catches. She's matured, but it's definitely her. Brittany. Your Brittany. Your blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl. Your eyes scan her features and commit them to memory immediately, not allowing even an inch of space to be taken over by imagination.

Because she's here. Twenty feet in front of you and you don't need to imagine anymore.

You step forward and remember who you are. You hold your composure and clear your throat, in an attempt to steel yourself. You need to play it cool. Her expression stays steady, and you wonder briefly if she's forgotten about you. The thought makes you ache, and you look for clues on her face in hopes of reading her, but there's nothing. No lip twitches, no soft eyes.

Her eyes, they follow you as you step closer, enchanting you, bringing you in. They've changed the most after all these years, but not in a bad way. They're deeper, and more… playful. Feisty. Catlike. They're harder to read.

When you finally stand before them, you have to tear your eyes away from Brittany to look at Sue. You hand Sue the folder and she scoffs, throwing it up in the air behind her.

Confused, you watch as the papers fall to the ground behind the two blondes. You're pretty sure you're going to have to pick those up later. "What the hell?"

"I don't need them anymore." Sue shrugs, "Britt isn't going to be transferring here anyways."

Your chest hammers at that thought. The transfer papers, they were for Brittany. The thought of being in the same vicinity as her five days a week makes your heart soar, but if what Sue said is true, that dream is already dead. Then you realize that all this time while you were nodding off in Mrs. Pillsbury's office, or roaming the halls, you could've been here. With Brittany. Your Brittany.

Fucking karmic universe. You really need to start being nicer to people. If only you'd shown up on time. Maybe you could've done something. You could've helped Sue convince her.

"If it were up to me, I would." Brittany speaks, her eyes are still planted firmly on yours. "You have a great program here. It sucks we'll be competing against each other at Nationals."

Your eyes widen. "You're a cheerleader." You say, not really as a question but more of a statement and she nods. She's a cheerleader and you're a cheerleader. It confuses you though because she's a dancer. At least she was. All these years, your imagined her to be on a dance team or something. "I pegged you as a dancer."

It's a slip and you immediately know it. You're almost horrified at yourself but then you see it. A small twitch. At the very corner of her lips and you know. You know she remembers you. She must. She's careful though because within a millisecond, it's gone, and it was effortless. Her expression for the most part, unfazed. She's good, but you caught it. You're smug, and you don't even try to hide it. You've successfully read her in that moment, and you're proudly wearing your small victory on your face. She can see it in your eyes, you're sure of it.

"I'm captain of both the cheer team and the dance team at my school." Her eyes narrow as she leans back in her chair and crosses one leg over the other, challenging you. At the movement, your eyes follow down her body and wow, her legs. The pull hits you like a truck but this time it's different, good different. She's already smirking when you find her eyes again, like she knows what she's doing to you. "Are you your team's errand girl?" Her head tilts just slightly enough for it to look like feigned innocence.

You blink, completely caught off guard. Sue's mouth opens in shock and even the sight of that throws you further. You stumble on your words because you can't process the change in emotion quickly enough. The way she sat back, with her legs, you felt so… but then she taunted you, and no one taunts you. You aren't quick enough to quip back and Brittany's smiling widely now, her playful eyes in full effect.

It only makes you fluster more because you don't know whether to feel grateful that you get to see that smile again, her full smile, or upset that it was at the expense of an insult, directed to you.

Brittany's phone rings, and the sound of it pulls you back to earth. Reluctantly, her eyes break away and she answers the call. You know it's her mother from the way the she answers. You look at Sue, trying to communicate non-verbally, your eyes screaming, what the hell was that?

Sue just laughs and shrugs because really, that's never happened to you before, and she knows it. No one puts you in your place. No one except Brittany, apparently. Your Brittany.

"My mom is almost here," Brittany stands, and so does Sue. "I'm sorry again. Good luck at Nationals."

"Thank you, Britt. Good luck to you, too." Sue looks between the two of you and nods, "Ladies." She says before making her exit.

You're still standing there, dumbfounded, when Brittany looks at you expectantly. You're not entirely sure what she wants so you wait. For her cue, you guess. After you don't move, her features soften, and she chuckles, shaking her head.

"Still stuck?" She jokes, and she pushes your shoulder a little, making you take a step back. "I'm sorry I was mean to you." She offers, and you manage to smile at that, grateful for the release in tension. Her soft smile is back and now that she's standing, you get the chance to take in all of her.

She's taller than you now. Back then, you were both about the same height, but now she's got a few inches on you. Her hair is still as radiant as it was before but now with bangs slightly sideswiped across her forehead. It's also let down, falling past her shoulders in waves. You've always wondered what she would look like with her hair let down, and now you know. She's absolutely stunning.

After all this time, "Where have you been?"

Brittany blushes and ducks her head, scuffing her foot slightly against the floor, making you realize you said that out loud. It came out as a whisper, but she definitely heard you. You know she did from her reaction and the way she murmurs your name bashfully in response. Santana. You've never noticed till now that all those years ago, you've never heard her say your name and now that she has, you'll never forget what it sounds like.

Her cheeks, they're painted with the faintest of pinks. A special shade that makes you smile because you know that you did that. You secretly wonder if what she feels is similar to yours. If it feels like a pull for her as well? If it vibrates through every cell of her being like it does yours?

Brittany's phone buzzes in her hand, indicating to you that her mother has probably arrived, and she looks at you apologetically. You don't hide your frown and Brittany giggles at you. Her giggle, you commit it to memory too.

You shift out of her way when she starts walking but when she moves past you, you reach for her hand to stop her. She's surprised at first, but then turns to you. You don't let go. You don't actually know what you were trying to do because it happened so fast and you couldn't just… You needed to know.

"Am I going to see you again?" Your eyes are frantically searching hers, and she smiles, squeezes your hand. She lightly rubs her thumb across the back of your hand, soothing you.

"Definitely." She says softly, "Promise me, you'll find me at Nationals."

You had almost forgot she'd be at Nationals. Sure, she'll be your competition, but you don't care about all that now. Because you found her. Brittany. Your Brittany. You finally found her, and you'll do everything you can to find her again.

"I promise I'll find you." You tell her, and her smile widens. You let go of her hand and you watch her leave the auditorium before moving to sit in one of the seats. You still can't believe it. Your childhood crush, an old flame, reignited.

Four months later and you're cursing at yourself for not getting Brittany's phone number when you had the chance. It was right in front of you, in her other hand, and you failed to exchange digits.

So here you are at Nationals, and you have no idea how you're going to find her. There are literally hundreds of cheerleaders here, there's no way you'll find yours. But then you realize it. Sue. Sue would know what school Brittany attends at least. She had to have known what school she was trying to poach Brittany from. You can't believe you didn't realize it sooner.

"Coach!" You yell as you run past your team and towards the front, falling into step with the older blonde. "Coach, I wanted to ask you something." You tell her, and she eyes you from the side, but continues to walk at a fast pace. "Remember that girl you were trying to get transferred to McKinley?" You have to pause to breathe because now you're basically jogging alongside her.

You're also carrying an extra 25 pounds of weights in your backpack per Sue's orders, the whole team is. You're not sure why Sue has you guys conditioning at all times, like right now on the walk to the registration tables. You glance back at the rest of your lot and they look like their dying.

Sue turns around but continues her walking, now backwards, and raises the megaphone to her mouth, "Let's go ladies! You think winning this is going to be easy? Pick it up!" When she's done she turns back forward, and you continue.

"Her name is Brittany. I was wondering if you happen to remember what school she was from?" You breathe, and Sue suddenly stops, making you stumble slightly forward before you catch your balance. The others behind you fall to the ground and exhale in relief.

Sue lets you catch your breath as she opens her bag and rummages through her various items. She pulls out a letter that looks kind of worn, but still very much intact. "Took you long enough. All you had to do was ask." She says as she hands it to you and continues her brisk walk. You look at your team expectantly but when no movement is made, you yell at them to hurry it along.

When the last of your squad is up and running after Sue, you examine the note carefully. It's small and folded neatly, in a way that you know Sue hasn't made any attempt to open it. On the front, a little scribble of handwriting. Santana.

Your fingers graze over your own name and you already know who it's from. You wonder how long Sue has been carrying this around and why? You shake your head and smile at the piece of paper in your hands. It's funny because you can feel it, still. Not even in Brittany's presence, but it's there as you hold this letter, a letter that she wrote to you. The pull.

You open it carefully and your eyes dart across the page, taking in Brittany's handwritten letter.

Santana,

Do you believe in fate?

You asked me once to be your friend and I disappeared from you. I was never able to apologize to you for that. I also never got to thank you for trying to save me back then. To tell you the truth, because of you and what you did, it taught me to find the courage to start fighting for myself too. You'll be glad to know that I owe a lot of my feisty-ness to you.

Then, there you were in that auditorium, and I wasn't sure if you remembered. But you did, and you were so flustered I just couldn't help myself. I'm sorry for teasing you. I hope you weren't too mad at me afterwards.

Now, I find myself having to apologize for one more thing. I'm sorry but I won't be going to Nationals this year. I know I told you to look for me and here I go disappearing on you yet again, but this was never part the plan, I swear. There are some things that take more courage than I think I have.

I didn't want to make this long but I'm scared that this might be my last chance.

I need you to know that I feel it too. I felt it back then in my ballet flats and again in that auditorium. And I know you feel it too.

But you see, I also believe in fate. And the universe. And everything working out exactly how it's meant to be. And if this isn't meant to be, then at least with this letter, we'll both know that however fleeting this was, it was mutual.

I don't want you to look for me. I don't want you to wait for me. If it's meant to be, let it happen how it's supposed to happen.

Yours, Brittany

[mrmichaelchadler]

How the Image of Black Women Has (and Hasn't) Changed in the Last Two Decades

It could be argued that the image of the African-American women in film has progressed over the decades due to the increasing power of women and people of color behind the scenes. One would believe that a change has finally come to Hollywood arguing enormous strides being made, as record numbers of black women are power players and taking an active role in controlling how our narrative and images are being played out on the screen.

When Halle Berry took home the Oscar in 2001, there was reason to hope the tide had shifted. Even Berry exclaimed in her acceptance speech  “… now the portal has been opened.” That was nearly 20 years ago and Halle Berry is still the ONLY African-American woman to take home the coveted award in that category. 

As a matter of fact, in the 91-year-old history of the Academy Awards, only 14 women have been nominated and or won as Best Actress or Best Supporting Actress. Brilliant, beautiful actresses Halle Berry, Dorothy Dandridge, Diana Ross, Diahann Carroll, Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, Taraji P. Henson, Oprah Winfrey, Whoopi Goldberg, Lupita Nyong'o, Mo’nique, Jennifer Hudson, Gabourey Sidibe and the first recipient ever…Hattie McDaniel. To date, Irene Cara is the only woman of color to win in Best Song category, for 1993’s “Flashdance … What a Feeling.” 

Thank goodness for filmmakers/producers like Spike Lee, Tyler Perry, John Singleton, Ava DuVernay, Ryan Coogler and Barry Jenkins. For it is through their projects and lens, we’re able to visualize, with some sense of familiarity, women who are reminiscent of real people from our community. 

Not to mention the recent wins in the categories of Costume and Production Design for Ruth E. Carter and Hannah Beachler for Marvel’s "Black Panther," which illustrates brand new progress in completely different lanes for women of color behind the scenes. These women can control our images through wardrobe and environment sharing culture that doesn’t fit the stereotypical norm.

Ava DuVernay’s historic Golden Globe nomination for the Civil Rights drama “Selma” (produced alongside Oprah Winfrey) and her two other firsts of winning the Sundance Film Festival's Best Directing Award and directing her first Disney project ("A Wrinkle in Time") for $100 million was enormously encouraging.  For the first time in history, women of color were allowed to shatter a different type of glass ceiling in order to change the trajectory of our images on-screen. Through her films, DuVernay has illustrated women of color as strong, resilient, beautiful and resourceful. She shows that we come in all colors, shapes, sizes and personas. We are shown as members of the human race and not second-class citizens or characters who simply show up for comic relief.

Even Halle Berry, since her historical win, has taken a step behind the camera, producing the 2005 "Lackawanna Blues" for HBO (resulting in an Emmy Best Actress win for S. Epatha Merkeson) and the 2010 indie film "Frankie and Alice," a true story highlighting mental illness in the African-American community from the vantage point of a woman.

Breaking the Oscar curse, Academy Award-winner Octavia Spencer has not been one to fade into the background after her win. Playing everything from a maid to a scientific mathematician, Spencer is flexing her muscles behind the camera. In order to create more opportunities for women of color to be cast and work as directors, Octavia recently committed to producing "Coffee Will Make You Black" starring Gabrielle Union and directed by Deborah Riley Draper, the suspenseful thriller "MA" and "On Her Ground," based on the life of hair titan Madame C.J. Walker.

However, with every progressive moment there is always a moment in time or a decision that goes down which threatens to undermine the very progress, equality and respect we are fighting for in Hollywood on and off the screen.  

When Zoe Saldana was attached to star and produce a film loosely based on a relationship with Nina Simone and her personal assistant Clifton Henderson, many in the community were outraged. Why? Mostly due to the fact that Saldana donned dark makeup to portray the icon. How is this problematic to the image of black women? The problem is Nina Simone was one of the most famous faces of the Civil Rights Movement and took much pride in being a woman of color.   

Nina Simone, in the '60s and '70s was the poster child for the quintessential image of the Black women in America. As much as I believe Saldana simply just wanted to share a “love story,” this decision again solidified the cluelessness of power players failing to understand how disrespectful and damaging this all felt was disappointing and unbelievable on many levels. This could have easily set a precedent regarding how our image is conceived and maintained being portrayed on and off the screen.  

The bottom line is until we reach a time in America when the art reflects life as we see it on the regular, there will always be a battle to fight. Thank goodness the sistas of this generation are making a point not to let us retreat to a time where black women were not valued and treated as second class citizens. A time where the only roles we were allowed to be seen on screen as were maids, vixens, criminals and comic relief with no real sense of self-worth or self-respect. Nowadays, women of color can be seen onscreen as scientists, lawyers, medical professionals, entrepreneurs and so much more than a caricature of an imagination not created by or for US. It’s been quite refreshing to watch us being reflected like the women Oscar winner Regina King, Aunjanue Ellis and Kiki Layne portrayed in “If Beale Street Could Talk.”  I’m here for all of it and looking forward to a time where the color of our skin doesn’t dictate how the image is crafted for the actresses or by the actresses. Time's Up, Hollywood … recognize!

  from All Content https://ift.tt/2EJzzsI

[mastcomm]

Sooner or Later, Zoë Kravitz Was Going to Be a Star

One afternoon in January, Zoë Kravitz was sitting in a sushi restaurant on the second floor of a Los Angeles strip mall, but her thoughts were 3,000 miles and 10 or so years away.

Specifically she was thinking about her weed guy.

He’d come around with product concealed in a guitar case. “He would only talk in code,” Kravitz remembered. “Like, ‘Do you want a guitar lesson today?’ But then sometimes he would screw it up, and be like, ‘Do you want guitar?’ I’m like, This isn’t code anymore.”

She was in her early 20s then, working only on and off, just another smart, young Brooklynite with time on her hands and a propensity for overthinking. She couldn’t have known it, but she was also doing research for her first headlining role, in the Hulu series “High Fidelity,” based on the 1995 lad-lit novel by Nick Hornby. Kravitz plays a Brooklyn record store owner whose life — and love life — is going nowhere particular, a part for which all those guitar lessons were inadvertent research.

“I did a lot of dumb stuff,” she said, but used a more pungent noun than “stuff.”

“Fun stuff,” she said, “but dumb stuff. And was probably a really difficult person to be in a relationship with. But I think maybe any 21, 22, 23-year-old is.”

Back in Los Angeles, the lunch crowd had mostly cleared out while Kravitz talked about living in New York, young and unfettered.

She wrapped her hands around a mug of green tea. She has the names of her younger siblings, LOLA and WOLF, inked across her middle fingers. Certain creepily comprehensive Internet sites suggest that she has at least 55 tattoos in total, many as small as punctuation. She wore a white cardigan. Her hair was cut short and pressed to her scalp in dark waves. Her characters often tend to say less than they know, forever side-eyeing the world around them, but in person she’s sharp, emphatic, easily moved to passionate outbursts by a piece of omakase (“Like butter. Like butter!”) or the two-decade-old “Seinfeld” where George builds a bed under his desk. (“It’s just so funny. Oh, man.”)

It feels like Kravitz, 31, has always been famous — an indelible screen presence and iconic parents will do that — but for years she’s been on the fringes of the action, playing haunted supporting characters in epics like “Mad Max: Fury Road” and the “Divergent” series. But that’s about to change. In a day or two she was leaving for London to start shooting her biggest movie role to date, playing Selina Kyle — better known as Catwoman — in the director Matt Reeves’s “The Batman.” Robert Pattinson plays the Caped Crusader, Colin Farrell is the Penguin, and in true star-of-a-comic-book-adaptation fashion, Kravitz said she couldn’t say much else, except that she never imagined finding herself central to a movie like this one.

“I really thought I was going to do theater and indie films,” she said. “That was what I liked growing up. And also, that was what I thought I was suited for. I didn’t see a lot of people who looked like me in big movies.”

Just a few years ago, Kravitz — whose parents, the actress Lisa Bonet and the rocker/scarf influencer Lenny Kravitz, are both African-American and Jewish — had been discouraged from auditioning for a part in one of Christopher Nolan’s Batman films. Not by Nolan personally, she said. It wasn’t a Catwoman-size part.

“It wasn’t like we were talking to the top of the top in terms of who was casting the thing,” she said, “But they said they weren’t ‘going urban.’ I thought that was really funny.”

A lot has changed since — for Kravitz personally, and in the business as a whole. From Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie in Marvel’s cinematic universe to Halle Bailey’s Ariel in the forthcoming live-action “Little Mermaid” reboot, it’s become less unusual for actors of color to book roles not originally conceived with an actor of color in mind, particularly in comic-book and fantasy material, where parallel universes collide and anything is possible. (It’s worth noting that women of color have played Catwoman twice before, including Halle Berry in a somewhat infamous 2004 film.)

Sometimes, though, inclusive casting highlights just how much work Hollywood — newly woke but still groggy — has left to do, when it comes to actually telling diverse stories. For two seasons, on HBO’s “Big Little Lies,” Kravitz has played Bonnie Carlson, the yoga-instructor wife of Reese Witherspoon’s character’s hunky ex. Amid a stacked cast of A-listers going for broke — trashing one another verbally, sometimes trashing rooms literally — she’s been an island of wary reserve, her eyes suggesting painful depths.

But in the first season Bonnie seemed to float at the periphery of a story that prioritized the tribulations of its well-to-do white characters instead. In the second season, Bonnie got a real story line — which required her to sit by her comatose mother in a hospital room few of the other characters ever visited. Critics and viewers noticed; the show was roundly criticized for its apparent lack of interest in Bonnie’s inner life.

Kravitz said she’d been drawn to the role of Bonnie — who’s white in the Liane Moriarty novel that inspired the series — because it was a chance to work with the director, Jean-Marc Valleé, and with “this dream cast” of Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Laura Dern and Shailene Woodley, who she’d made three “Divergent” movies with and who she’d practically grown up alongside. When she first read the script, Kravitz said, “it felt really fresh and necessary, and like it was filling some kind of creative void I didn’t know I’d really had.”

It didn’t bother her, she said, that the show never acknowledged that Bonnie was the only prominent person of color in the series’ otherwise monochromatic Northern California milieu.

“In the first season, there was something really refreshing about not making that a story line,” she said. “It’s frustrating when people of color can only play a character that’s written as a minority,” she added. “So it’s refreshing when it’s not about that. But it’s complicated, because you don’t want to ignore that fact. Part of our responsibility as storytellers is to tell the truth.”

She said she’d brought up ideas for Bonnie, ways to explore her position in the world of the show that felt truthful. “I pitched things, and it didn’t resonate with everybody and that’s OK,” she said, “It’s not like I didn’t have anything to do. Bonnie has a lot going on besides the fact that she’s a minority, you know? But that detail and that depth would have been delightful.”

Kravitz was born in 1988, when her mother was best known as the Hillman College undergrad Denise Huxtable on the “Cosby Show” spinoff “A Different World” and her father was a struggling musician who still went by Romeo Blue. They split in 1993, when Kravitz was 4; the following year, Bonet and her daughter settled in relative seclusion, on five acres in Topanga Canyon.

Bonet rocketed to fame as Cliff and Clair Huxtable’s second daughter, and then lost that job — she had creative differences with Bill Cosby, beginning when he refused to write Bonet’s pregnancy with Zoë into the series. In an interview, Bonet said the move to the mountains was, at least in part, “a retreat from a world that I was probably unprepared for, at the age I was out there playing in it.”

She also wanted to give her daughter a connection with nature and nurture her imagination. She was a limited-screen-time parent before “screen time” became a topic of widespread parental concern. They had a VCR and a collection of tapes — mostly stuff from Bonet’s childhood. “The Little Rascals.” The original “Freaky Friday,” with Jodie Foster. “Bugsy Malone,” a Prohibition-era gangster musical starring a cast of children. (“That was a big one for me,” Kravitz said.)

Kravitz was always a performer, Bonet said. She remembered the night of her mother’s funeral, when Kravitz favored family members gathered at the Topanga house with a song — “The Boy Is Mine,” by Brandy and Monica.

“Zoë put a suit on — I think she had a mustache and glasses — and came out and brought so much joy to the whole room,” Bonet said. “No one told her what to do — it was just pure, from her imagination, with the intention to lift the spirits in the room.”

Kravitz would have been around 9 when this happened. At 11, she relocated to Miami to live with her father, who’d long since shed the Romeo Blue moniker and become one of the biggest rock stars of the age. There are different stories about how Zoë Kravitz’s move to Miami happened, depending on whom you ask.

“There was a whole seduction,” Bonet said, “to a life outside of living in the mountains, with just a monitor and a VCR, compared to screens in every room and private chefs and a big house. There was no real conversation, not between her father and I. But it was necessary. She needed to find out who her father was, and that was the way.”

Lenny Kravitz recalled the situation somewhat differently.

“She wanted to live with me,” he said, “and I wanted to have her. It was time. And as a family, we made the decision together.”

“It really helped me to focus my life,” he said. “I was running around the world touring, man … I had to make some lifestyle changes.”

Still, life with Lenny Kravitz came with no shortage of rock-star perks. He shared a label with the Spice Girls at the time; one year Zoë sat with them at the Grammy Awards. “I don’t remember if it was Scary or Victoria,” Lenny said, “but she was sitting on one of their laps, and she was in heaven.”

But according to Zoë Kravitz, there were more prosaic reasons that life with her father appealed. Lenny Kravitz’s house had Pop-Tarts. Lenny Kravitz had cable. “I just wanted to feel normal,” she said, “and the way my mother was raising me felt very abnormal, even though looking back, it was the coolest.”

Some time after moving to Miami, Zoë Kravitz told her father that she wanted to act. “My mom wanted me to wait until I was an adult to start working,” she said, but her dad felt differently.

“I’m a person who left home at 15,” Lenny Kravitz said. “I would do nothing but support my child in what she wanted to do, absolutely. And it was her decision.”

What everyone seems to be able to agree on is that this would have happened no matter what — that sooner or later Zoë Kravitz would be doing what she’s doing right now.

“I mean, look, she’s a mad artist,” Shailene Woodley said in a phone interview. “Zoë’s constantly looking at the world around her, thinking, ‘How can I leave this place better than it was when I got here? How can I continue to use my talents and gifts as a singer, as a writer, as an actor in a way that’s meaningful and impactful for future generations and have fun doing it?’”

Woodley was calling from London, while preparing for a dinner party. Even as the sound of arriving guests became audible over the phone, she kept on singing her friend’s praises.

“I think — not ‘I think�� — I know one of Zoë’s major superpowers is that she’s funny as hell,” Woodley said, using a different four-letter word. “People don’t realize how funny Zoë Kravitz is. They see her and they see this super-hip, cool girl. But her superpower is humor and comedy and understanding the complexities of life and somehow morphing them in a way that polarizes drama and humor. As a creator I think that’s what gets her ticking.”

Zoë Kravitz is an executive producer of “High Fidelity” as well as its star, and the show — funny and poignant and surprisingly personal — feels like a product of the sensibility that Woodley described. Kravitz, who attended high school in New York and has fond memories of loitering after school in grubby record shops like Kim’s Video and Music, the bygone East Village institution, said she’d long been a fan of the book and particularly of Stephen Frears’ film version from 2000, which starred John Cusack as Rob and Lisa Bonet as a singer with whom he rebounds.

“For some reason,” she said, “‘High Fidelity’ was one of the few pieces of art that my parents had been a part of that I was really able to separate from them. It’s a weird thing, because it can be really uncomfortable and strange watching your mom kiss John Cusack or whatever, but it became a film that I loved and watched and could quote.”

Sarah Kucserka, who developed the Hulu series with Veronica West, said when they brainstormed leads, “the top of the list — pie in the sky, it’s never going to happen — was Zoë.” Kucserka noted, “She has a lot of depth, and that was what this character needed. You couldn’t come at it with someone who only brought one thing to the party.”

Hornby was only dimly aware that a TV version of “High Fidelity” was in the works. But last year, Kravitz asked if they could meet. “She seemed to have a lot invested in it,” Hornby said, “and was restless in her urge to get it as close to what she wanted as she could.” She asked for, and received, his blessing.

“One of the things I’m most proud of about the book,” Hornby said, “is that — I’ve realized this more and more over the years — it’s not just about me. It’s not just about people like me. It’s about way more people than I thought.”

In the initial script, the main character lived in Los Angeles and would have worked at a radio station. Kravitz proposed moving it to New York, and into a dusty basement record shop. Those choices, she said, helped determine other aspects of the show, like setting the story in Crown Heights, a part of Brooklyn where a dusty basement record shop and its owner could realistically survive. (Kravitz, who married the actor Karl Glusman last June, has lived in Williamsburg for more than 10 years, long enough to watch gentrification transform it; her favorite bagel shop is now an Apple Store.)

The staff of the record store now consists of two women of color (Kravitz’s Rob and Da’Vine Joy Randolph of “Dolemite Is My Name”) and a shy, gay man (David Holmes). When Rob runs down her top five heartbreaks in flashback, the list includes women as well as men.

None of this, Kravitz said, was about clearing some imaginary bar for wokeness. They just wanted a cast that looked real.

“I was trying to recreate a world that I know,” Kravitz said, “and that’s what it looks like. It doesn’t look like a bunch of white girls, like the show ‘Girls,’” whose portrayal of New York-area hipsterdom struck many viewers — Kravitz included — as demographically specious.

“If that show was in Iowa or something, fine, but you’re living in Brooklyn,” she said. “There’s people of color everywhere. It’s unavoidable. Same thing with Woody Allen — like, how do you not have black people in your movies? It’s impossible. They’re everywhere. We’re everywhere. I’m sorry, but we’re everywhere.”

Kravitz acknowledged that there might be reflexive resistance to the idea of a gender-flipped “High Fidelity,” as there is to gender-flipped anything, among a certain class of consumers. “I think a lot of white men who identified with the book think it’s theirs,” Kravitz said, “and are ready for us to screw it up, and are going to have trouble seeing it in a different light. But I think if they get past that thing, they’ll see that we actually really did honor the property, I think.”

This kind of conversation is good practice — Kravitz is about to fly to London and shoot a movie in which she plays an iconic comic-book character, and she’s aware that any attachment “High Fidelity” fans may have to an idea of Rob Gordon pales in comparison to the proprietary feelings contemporary nerddom harbors regarding Batman.

“As long as I don’t allow it to get in the way of what I need to do to find this character and make her my own, so that it can be as authentic as possible, I welcome all the fans and their opinions and their love for this world,” she said, with a diplomatic smile.

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