Why Zoe Saldaña Is Calling Out Hollywood’s Political Double Standard

Zoe Saldaña isn’t mincing words about women of color in Hollywood and why they’re so often expected to have something profound to say about politics while their white male counterparts get to simply promote their projects. The actress’s frustration highlights a familiar double standard about who gets asked to speak up—and who gets to stay out of it.

Saldaña’s comments came during a Q&A at the Locarno Film Festival, where she expressed frustration over rarely getting to discuss the craft of acting during press junkets. The “Lioness” star shared that constantly dealing with that line of questioning is “limiting” and unfair, given that her white peers are rarely subjected to the same experience.

“One thing that’s incredibly limiting, and frustrating, is when I’m the only person of color or the only woman on stage, and that happens quite a lot for women and for people of color. And I wait for my turn to be asked a question about my craft, and I’m asked the political question,” she explained.

She went on to call out the double standard that only seems to plague folks from “marginalized communities” and countered that the “gatekeepers” ought to be the ones speaking out on these topics.

Related: How Zoe Saldaña Became the Highest-Grossing Actor Ever

“I’m sorry, you don’t ask the only person that comes from the marginalized community. You ask the other 80 of them that are part of the gatekeepers, and you ask them if they know the answer. Because I think that we’re making people of color work double to be in a room,” she explained.

And if we’re honest, we couldn’t agree more. There’s something exhausting about always expecting Black folks and other people of color to explain the very problems that disproportionately impact us. We’re asked to speak up, educate, condemn, and make sense of the harm, while the people and systems creating that harm rarely face the same level of scrutiny.

Furthermore, why are we questioning the people experiencing the damage instead of the people causing it? The burden shouldn’t always fall on the folks living with the consequences to explain why the problem exists in the first place. Maybe it’s time to stop asking the people bearing the brunt of the problem to explain it and start asking the people with the power to change it why they’re letting it continue.

Saldaña stars in the third season of “Lioness,” which is currently streaming on Paramount+.