Experience of a young aspiring actress challeges the pattern of roles given to Black woman in the entertainment industry
by: Goya Silva
In an industry that fails to showcase black women in versatile ways, Fiona Mutabazi found herself being forced to recite excerpts from scenes of slave movies as her only way into one of her dream acting agencies. She sighs, “You don’t realize until you are older that passion can only take you so far in an industry that doesn’t hope to see you succeed.”
At the age of 9, Mutabzi temporarily moved to Uganda with her family, where entertaining others allowed her to be welcomed by other kids as an African-American girl. She found that performing skits made the people around her happy. After witnessing some of the less fortunate people struggle in this country, her talent grew into a passion for making people’s day brighter because she could see the sadness. Mutabazi says, “While wealth is subjective, laughter is universal”.
After moving back to Las Vegas, Nevada, and reflecting on her experience, she went on to audition for acting agencies to pursue her passion in entertainment and reach a wider audience. As a teenager, she had been working so hard on her, yet was faced with rejection time and time again. Her father, Isaac Mutabazi, expressed, “I was coming up with just enough money to get her the equipment she needed to produce quality content for her resume, but she kept falling short, it felt unfair… it felt like racism.”
Mutabazi’s acting coach convinced her that to succeed in her audition for one of the biggest agencies, she needed to impersonate a slave character. Black women often don’t play any other role than the “mammy” and usually receive scripts that include aspects of slavery and racism, feeling like they are playing black characters for white viewers rather than roles that are authentic to them. Mutabazi decided that day that she would decline her offer from her dream agency because she refused to be showcased as one of these characters. This pivotal decision opened her eyes to another world of opportunity. She is now dreaming of creating her own acting agency that provides opportunities for black women and men, to pursue their passions in a more authentic way, changing the power dynamic and altering the meaning of entertainment for her community.