Interview: Amma Asante

Amma Asante has been an actress, TV writer-producer, and movie writer-director. Her latest is the period piece drama Belle, written by Misan Sagay and directed by Asante.

Here are links to the six installments of the entire interview.

Part 1: “Everything was alien to me. The TV studio was alien to me. The language of TV shooting and scripts was alien to me.”

Part 2: “Acting really helped me understand how structure is built, and eventually what I had learned began to garner results. I think it made it easier because I entered the industry as a child and all of this information was subconsciously seeping in to my head.”

Part 3: “I was constantly being told how difficult it was to sell movies with black leads. I just tried to forget about it and not really pay any attention.”

Part 4: “You need to have that starting point. She’s going through, apart from a political awakening, she’s also going through that transition, which is from girl to woman.”

Part 5: “As writers, what we want to do, always, is have a two way relationship between the characters.”

Part 6: “ When I’m starting a script, I write two or three thematic words down on little pieces of paper. I fold them up, stick them in a drawer, and try and forget about them. My wish and my hope is that somewhere in my subconscious those words will stay with me and that those words will come back at me through audience reactions and in what people say to me.”

Amma is repped by CAA and United Agents.

Twitter: @AmmaAsante.

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