Nicole Avant, film producer, activist and former U.S. ambassador to the Bahamas, was at Taormina Film Festival on Friday to receive an award for the film “The Triple Six Eight,” which tells the true story of the only Black female regiment in the American army during World War II. Variety sat down with her earlier in the day.
What are you working on at the moment?
I have a few things on my slate. I have something with Tracey Edmonds, my fellow producer, that was greenlit at Netflix called “Movement.” I can’t talk too much about it. And I hope to be working on something with Griffin Dunne, because I read “The Friday Afternoon Club.” I think it’s one of the best books that I read all year. I did a book event with him in Los Angeles, and so I’ve been nudging him to make this into a TV series. Griffin is superb. I’m excited to work with him on any level.
You’ve both had careers of different stages.
My book [“Think You’ll Be Happy: Moving Through Grief with Grit, Grace and Gratitude”] came out six months before his. I had never met anybody who wrote about childhood like this. It mirrored my childhood. The people in our houses just happened to be famous, so we were both curious. Maybe we’ll try this. Creativity isn’t fixed. It’s not linear: it goes wherever it goes. I follow it wherever it takes me. I didn’t think I was going to be a producer. And then I did “The Black Godfather,” [Avant’s documentary about her father, legendary music impresario, Clarence Avant] but I wanted to be a director of documentaries 30 years ago.
What kind of producer are you? Do you set up the package and step away, or are you more hands on?
It depends on the director. I love putting it together. That is my favorite thing, actually, to get the whole package together and sell it. That was the excitement about “The Six Triple Eight.” My friend and fellow producer, Keri Selig, sent me a sizzle reel. And I thought, we have to tell this story. She said: this is just a reel. We have no writer, we have no director, we have no studio. And that’s what got me excited. I just took it and ran with it. It was pretty fast once I got Tyler. Tyler Perry works so fast. He had the script turned around in a couple of weeks. You know, first draft. He’s fast, and he works on various projects at the same time. But this one was very special to him, and I knew that he could write about these Black American women in a way that was soulful and deep and in a way that somebody else just couldn’t get to.
What do you look for in a project?
I love documentaries, and I remember seeing “Eye on the Prize” when I was very young, and I knew that was the movie that spoke to my soul, and said, “I want to do that when I’m older.” I want to tell stories of these heroes that aren’t respected, aren’t known, aren’t being paid attention to, that have literally changed everybody’s life for the better. I like those types of stories. But then I’m also a sucker for romance, and I love a romantic comedy like nobody’s business. And my husband, [Ted Sarandos], he laughs at me all the time, because every time he comes home, and I’m watching the Hallmark Channel. He says, “Really? We have all this on Netflix.”
Sometimes you just need to relax.
How many times do I have to watch “Notting Hill”? But I’ve seen it 100 times. And our song “Ain’t No Sunshine,” by Bill Withers, my dad had signed him. I was working at my father’s publishing company at the time, and when “Ain’t No Sunshine” ended up in “Notting Hill,” it was really the first time I connected that this is a big deal. When you have these songs and they’re like your children, and they’re almost actors.
Lalo Schifrin was one of the first people my father managed, and every time I hear “Mission Impossible,” it’s the theme, I think, my gosh. And my dad said, “I knew Lalo when he was on the train with Dizzy Gillespie. We were just going through Europe, and I asked him what he wanted to do, and that was his dream. He said, “I want to score for film and television.” And he did hundreds.
So if you watch Hallmark, despite your husband, Ted Sarandos, being head of Netflix, I assume you might find a home for a project and say, I’m sorry, it’s not going to Netflix.
Absolutely. “The Black Godfather” wasn’t going to Netflix. I really wanted HBO. [Producer] Reggie Hudlin and I spoke about it, and I thought HBO would be the perfect place for this. Ted looked at the call sheet one day and he said, “Do you really have all these people in this documentary?” I said, “Yes.” He goes, “You have two Presidents.” He started going down the list, and he went, you know what? Let my team look at this.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
variety.com
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