A formerly incarcerated man has taken a low point in his life and transformed it into a star-studded project.

Despite his recent hiatus from the public eye, Will Smith is still doing work in the background that continues to cement him as one of the best actors ever to do it. According to Variety, the 53-year-old actor is preparing to cash in on his latest project, “Emancipation.” The AppleTV+ movie is an escaped-slave thriller that Smith agreed to after years of avoiding making films centered around the subject. “This was one that was about love and the power of Black love,” Smith explained in a previous interview. “And that was something I could rock with. We were going to make a story about how Black love makes us invincible.”

Supporting Black stories in Hollywood goes beyond just sharing these creations amongst our community, it requires real action behind our words as well. For TV director and “Black Lightning” creator Salim Akil, his mission in the entertainment industry involves championing both Black creators and creators of color who work behind the scenes to put these stories together. The social reckoning that occurred back in June took a good look at Hollywood’s infrastructure and made a mass call for restoration to make the industry more diverse and inclusive. Although that social moment in the summer lit a fire under Hollywood’s playmakers to begin making those necessary changes, creators like Akil have been telling Black and diverse stories far before then and the pandemic. “The events of the summer gave some people who may have been a little reluctant to delve into those stories permission and/or the courage to go ahead and tell them,” he said. In regards to producing said stories, Akil...