Laura Harrier + Halle Berry Get Real on Hollywood Racism for V126 Magazine
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Netflix miniseries ‘Hollywood’ breakout star Laura Harrier takes the limelight in V126 Magazine, styled by Alex White in sexy, power-woman looks from Eckhaus Latta, Louis Vuitton, Moschino, Mugler and Chrome Hearts Jewelry. Photographers Inez & Vinoodh are behind the lens, with Thessaly La Force formatting the convo ‘Laura Harrier and Halle Berry Get Real About Racism in Hollywood.’
Laura Harrier and Halle Berry play “What if?”
What if Hollywood wasn’t so white, so racist, so sexist, so homophobic? What if those who were (and still are) marginalized had been centered, and allowed to tell their own stories on the big screen? What if—to put it bluntly—the world was radically just more fair?
Harrier’s ‘Hollywood’ character, a fictionalized, 1940s studio-era actress Camille Washington — loosely based on Dorothy Dandridge — wins an Academy Award for Best Actress, as the first Black woman to do so.
In the real world, it would not be until 2001 that Halle Berry — Harrier’s partner in the V126 black beauties convo — who became the first Black woman to win an Academy Award for Best Actress for her role as Leticia Musgrove in Monster’s Ball.. Berry’s emotional acceptance speech is one of the most powerful dramas about black-woman triumph you will ever witness.
If it doesn’t move you . . . I’m not sure why you read AOC. Berry’s words are moving beyond belief, and she explains to Harrier in their Zoom convo that she really didn’t think she was going to win.
La Force narrates the speech for V126 readers:
Berry accepts the statue in utter shock, tears streaming down her face: “This moment is so much bigger than me,” she says, stunned. “This moment is for Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne, Diahann Carroll. It’s for the women who stand beside me, Jada Pinkett, Angela Bassett, Vivica Fox. And it’s for every nameless face of women of color who now have a chance because this door has been opened.” “I really didn’t think I was going to win,” she told Harrier, in a recent conversation the two had over Zoom—with Harrier self-isolating in her Los Angeles apartment and Berry doing the same in Los Angeles, in between edits for her upcoming film about an MMA fighter, in which she is both starring and directing. “My body went into total shock. I hadn’t written a speech because I [thought] I wouldn’t be there.”
Not all interviews are created equal, and this one between Laura Harrier and Halle Berry goes deep.
Berry asks Harrier where she was when she heard about the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers. After sitting quietly in her driveway, quarantined, Harrier just sat quietly, processing the nightmarish pain of what she just heard on NPR. The rising star flew home of Chicago the next day to be with her parents.
In despair over how little has really changed in America, Harrier also found herself amazed by the big marches in Chicago and how interracial the moment of protest became. Adrenalin pumped through her numbed body and consciousness . . .
And just like the collective consciousness of people wanting to fight the system, and uplift black people. And wanting to change the way that our country was built. Our country was built on genocide and slavery and that’s absolutely still happening today. So that was really powerful...To see the change in people’s thoughts. The thoughts of white people, specifically, whose minds have been changed a lot. But it’s just...sad. It’s so sad. There are so many people whose names we don’t even know.
