If there was one thing writer-director-showrunner John Ridley made clear at the Diversity Speaks discussion with Elvis Mitchell at the Los Angeles Film Festival, it was his belief that self-determination is a right—and a key to success.

Ridley cited All Is By My Side as the kind of story a studio would shy away from because it wasn’t the iconic rock star who had the drive to succeed, but rather, someone few people have ever heard of. Because Ridley took the independent road to get it made, he was able to tell the story his way. “To make a movie like that and have the impact emotionally that I want to have“ led Ridley to the opportunity to direct American Crime. “Those moments may not seem initially like success or happen the way you may want it to happen, but every accomplishment that you have, every thing that you do, builds a structure that people cannot tear down…. Every piece that you put into physicalizing the things that you want, at some point, it becomes undeniable. I would just encourage you to do that, to build those things. You don’t need other people’s permission to do the things that you want to do.”

A young writer in the audience asked, “When nobody knew your name, what did you do?” Three years ago nobody knew who I was. The thing that I did, which I encourage all people to do,… I just wrote. 12 Years a Slave was a spec script. I worked on it for about four years —for nothin’. All Is By My Side worked on that—for nuthin’. Books I’ve written—for nothin’. Because felt the stories had value and I really believed that if I told them the correct way, somebody would see that value. Maybe it would be 10 people, maybe it’s 10 million people.”

Of course, the world learned his name in 2013 when 12 Years won Ridley the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar and now, with the success of American Crime, the spotlight isn’t likely to dim anytime soon.

The initial inspiration for the first seasons’ American Crime storyline in the anthology series, was the notorious “Central Park Five” case, in which five young men of color were convicted of brutally beating and raping a white female jogger in the park. “It’s incorrect to say they were wrongly accused or falsely accused, they were so not even close to being involved in what happened. It wasn’t that the police made a slight error, they railroaded these young men.” The only reason the five men were exonerated—after years in prison (one for 13 years, the others for seven)—was that the real attacker happened to see one of them in prison and felt so bad for the innocent man and what what happened to his life, he confessed.

As American Crime was being made, more and more instances of the tragic consequences of racial tensions kept arising. “In the space it was pitched it was Trayvon,” said Ridley. There was an episode with public uprising in it, and as they were getting ready to shoot, Ferguson happened. Months later, while he was doing press in NYC to promote the show, Ridley said, “they were showing clips of [the uprising in] our episode, right next to clips from Baltimore. Talk about absurd. You never want to never feel exploitative. When asked if he wanted to incorporate what has happening in Baltimore into the series, Ridley replied, “We didn’t want any of this. We wanted to comment on these things. But yet, the cycle accelerates. You want to be current, but you don’t want to be too current.”

Ridley talked about the importance of a multiplicity of perspectives to show’s success—and the ripple effect that sets off: “63 of our behind the camera staff are of color and the majority of them are women. Our editors, two of three are female. All three are of color. “We’re identifying people who very truly have abilities. This is not charity work. The fact that this show can be this good—and I’m not talking about my work, I’m talking about the work that everybody puts into it—that speaks to that many perspectives if you don’t have that many perspectives of people who are that talented.”

“Black, white, Hispanic younger older…all of those categories. It’s challenging enough in Hollywood under any circumstances. Once you put an ‘other’ on it, it’s exponentially more difficult. And when you get into a space where people are hungry to tell their stories, they know that it’s an opportunity, not just for themselves, but when you prove it works… Everything we do in the first season of American Crime, was an experiment. Everything that we do in the second season is now a reality. I say these things hopefully not aggrandizing myself, because you cannot do a show like this without hundreds of people everywhere, in every department who show up every morning and bring everything they have in service of a story. Within that, there are folks all over Hollywood who look at this show and go, ‘This works. It’s interesting. What can we do that’s like American Crime?’ In any regard… if that means in terms of people they’re hiring, if that means in terms of people we have. There were people we couldn’t get back because they’d gone on to other shows. So it goes from the notion of hiring this kind of person or that kind of person, to being competitive about it.”

Ridley credited ABC for its commitment to a show that “was never about the ratings, never about the numbers. We were going to survive on a level of quality. For the network to say we can afford to have show like this on our network. That was huge.”

“No disrespect to what’s going on today,” he said, “I don’t like to use the word ‘diversity.’ That what we were trying to achieve in the ‘70s. This is about reality. This is about being reflective.”

“There’s no danger that you’re going to hire people just to hire people. There are too many folks who want to show up and prove themselves, because they want to go off and do the next thing. We have some of everybody. We have older white guys who are talented, but it’s still challenging for older white guys to get jobs. Again, as soon as you put an ‘other’ on something, it becomes difficult. I don’t want to get to the space where it’s such a corrective that we’re denying folks. But in the early stages, when people are sending scripts in, saying, ‘Can we get people of color?’ When you’re looking at directors, looking at the top of the list, saying ‘these are all really terrific people but lets make sure as those names come in, interviewing some women, interviewing some other kinds of individuals. It’s not that hard. It’s not that hard to create a space where the only thing that one should be worrying about is talent.”

When Mitchell asked about the upcoming season of American Crime, Ridley said it was “so tough.” The idea, he said, was to explore “what are those third rails in society? All of us want to change, we want to do better, we want systems to work, but that’s one we really want to talk about… That’s what we’re doing in the second season. It’s challenging. It really, really is.

“After this,” he joked, “I’m doing Hangover 4 or something.”

Pamela Miller / Website & Grants Manager