Lena Waithe Covers Vanity Fair April 2018, Expanding White Culture's Exposure To Black Brilliance

Emmy Award-winner Lena Waithe takes the cover of  American Vanity Fair‘s April 2018 edition captured by fashion and celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz, with styling from Jessica Diehl. Waithe is the first black woman to win a Primetime Emmy award for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series for 'Master of None'.

After garnering accolades for her work on 'The Chi' as well, and appearing in Steven Spielberg's new film 'Ready Player One', Lena Waithe talks to Jacqueline Woodson about her influences from the Harlem Renaissance to 'Time's Up'. Talking in the world of current 'Black Panther' and 'A Wrinkle In Time's' success, Lena Waithe is anchored in the world of Black Brilliance. Not only has this moment arrived in Hollywood, writes Woodson, it "has not come to play."

Meeting her at the Four Seasons restaurant in Beverly Hills, Woodson begins to see Lena "as a woman coming at the world from many different places, quick-moving and fast-talking yet soft-spoken and thoughtful, cursing a mile a minute while bringing a new vibrancy to language. . . . On the butch side of queer but with delicate edges. Star power with kindness. "

“Here’s the irony of it all," she says after the conversation gets going." I don’t need an Emmy to tell me to go to work. I’ve been working. I’ve been writing, I’ve been developing, I’ve been putting pieces together and I’m bullets, you know what I’m saying?

How has the Emmy changed me? It got me all these meetings that I go in and say I’m too busy to work with you—you should have hollered at me. You can take my call when I call you about this black queer writer over here who’s got a dope pilot, or this person over here who’s got really cool ideas, or this actress who’s really amazing but nobody’s seen her.” 

Lena Waithe and Alana Mayo. Photo: Nicholas Hunt/VF18/WireImage

Days after her noteworthy Vanity Fair cover, Lena Waithe shared news that besides promoting her new movie, 'Ready Player One', she is planning a wedding with girlfriend, film production executive Alana Mayo. via The Cut