When the Emmy nominations were announced, “Winning Time” helmer and executive producer Salli Richardson-Whitfield made history as the primary Black woman to be recognized within the drama directing category. Such an incredible achievement could be tempered by the September 2023 cancellation of the show (on the identical day of its Season 2 finale, which she also directed).
But over the ten months since then, Richardson-Whitfield says she’s been too busy with other opportunities to pause and consider which accolades she can have deserved for her work on the HBO series — much less the proven fact that they might make history.
“This wasn’t even on my radar,” she tells Variety. “Our show had been canceled, so after I got the decision, I used to be on the set of ‘Task,’ my show that I’m shooting now.”
As an actress, Richardson-Whitfield worked for 20 years on film and in TV before stepping behind the camera. Since 2011, she’s steadily built a resume tackling comedy, drama, motion, fantasy and more. The series’ fact-based, metatextual dramatization of the rise of the Los Angeles Lakers not only leveraged just about all points of that ever-expanding skill set, but in addition established her as that most beneficial collaborator on whatever project during which she works: within the parlance of “Winning Time,” a utility player.
“Early on in my profession, I believed I had to search out that one lane, and I said, no, I’m not doing that,” Richardson-Whitfield says.
Salli Richardson-Whitfield, right, with “Winning Time” star Quincy Isaiah, center, and DP Todd Banhazl
HBO
As much as the variability stimulated her creatively, she says that cycling through the whole lot from “Chicago Med” to “The Punisher” to “The Gilded Age” helped insulate her from opposition she expected to face — as much due to color of her skin because the credits she did or didn’t have. “As a Black female director, I desired to be sure that that, as I used to be attempting to get these greater shows, they might never say,
‘…but has she?’”
The proven fact that she had is what helped make “Winning Time” — and, specifically, her nominated episode “Beat L.A.” — such a posh and intimate portrait of the Lakers’ mythic history. “[Cinematographer] Todd Banhazl, who’s been nominated too for the episode, and I spent every weekend really going, ‘How are we going to actually find the voice of the basketball in order that it’s not only a re-creation of game footage?’” she remembers. “Now we have these great sports characters, but we also could really push it emotionally.”
That impulse built to essentially the most mesmerizing sequence within the series — a seamless montage that literally follows passes of the basketball between Lakers and Boston Celtics players (in separate games, no less) as each teams advance to their historic showdown within the 1984 NBA Finals. “How will we undergo the entire playoffs quickly and excitingly and not only shoot a bunch of basketball?” she remembers asking. “That sequence began with a Sixteenth-of-a-page line that said, ‘And the Lakers and the Celtics head towards one another within the playoffs.’ I feel I said to Todd, ‘It’s almost like this circle and we’ll connect each team.’ It became this one revolving game, intercut with Kareem [Abdul-Jabbar]’s speech to his teammates.”
Though she insists “my next playground is movies,” Richardson-Whitfield recognizes that making history with the work she’s done — much less her Emmy-nominated “Winning Time” episode — will not be simply about creating greater or higher opportunities for herself, but it surely’s also about making the trail easier for those following in her footsteps.
“If I don’t do higher than anyone, they’re going to guage the following woman after me,” she observes. “So, after I got the decision, there was this relief that I’ve been doing an excellent job and I’m doing what I’m imagined to on this world.
“I do know for myself, or no less than I imagine that I’m absolutely one of the best person for the job. And I feel that now people understand it.”
