Salli Richardson-Whitfield is no stranger to making history. In 2024, the longtime actress-turned-director became the first Black woman nominated for an Emmy for directing in the drama series category, earning recognition for HBO’s Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty. This year, she has done it again, earning two Emmy nominations for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series, one for HBO’s The Gilded Age and another for Task.
For Richardson-Whitfield, the recognition is both surreal and deeply personal. After more than three decades in Hollywood, the nominations represent something larger than awards-season validation: proof that the leap she took from acting to directing was the right one. “I started as an actress, so I always thought I’d be up there getting my Emmy for acting,” Richardson-Whitfield tells me. “I never would have dreamed that I would be up there for directing.”
The nominations arrive during a particularly meaningful chapter in her life. Richardson-Whitfield also recently became a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated, an experience she describes as equally overwhelming and significant.
“It’s quite shocking,” she says of the milestones. “I, of course, hoped [the nominations would happen]. I felt like both shows were of the caliber. These are good shows. These are well-written shows. I’m proud of the work that I did. But nothing in my wildest dreams would say I’m going to get nominated for both shows.” For Richardson-Whitfield, the latest nominations also validate the sacrifices required to build a directing career while raising a family.
“It’s really a validation of the hard work and sacrifice that I’ve made,” she says. “It’s a lot of time away from my family, and they’ve been really supportive. But it’s a validation of, ‘Hey, I know what I’m doing, and I’m doing good work.’ It’s not by chance that the first one happened.”
A New Chapter Behind the Camera
Richardson-Whitfield’s transition from acting to directing was encouraged by women including filmmaker Ava DuVernay, but the move ultimately required her to trust herself and take a risk. When she first moved to Los Angeles, she didn’t have a master plan. “I didn’t arrive in Los Angeles with a master plan. I arrived with belief,” she previously said in an acceptance speech at the American Black Film Festival Honors, where she received the Evolution Award.
That belief has carried her through a career that included Hollywood’s inevitable rejection and uncertainty.
“There were a lot of jobs as an actress that I did not get that I thought I should have gotten,” she says. “I’m better than her. I’m the—you know—all these things you think. But that was not the plan for me.”
In retrospect, Richardson-Whitfield believes some of those disappointments were necessary to put her on the path toward directing.
“If I had gotten those jobs, then I probably would have been a little too successful as an actress to now make this pivot,” she says. “I wouldn’t have been so willing to go a different way, maybe. And I was being protected by whatever people want to call it. I say, God. You can say the universe. I was being protected on the journey I was supposed to take.”
Her advice to creatives navigating rejection is rooted in that same philosophy: listen to the quieter voice of belief rather than the louder voice of fear.
“I’ve been equating this lately to just listening to the little voice in your head instead of all those big voices,” she says. “If you listen to that little voice, that voice will always be saying, ‘You can do this. You’re worthy. You’re good enough. You’re on the right path.’”
The louder voices, she says, are the ones telling you that you’re not capable.
“I’ve always been able, no matter what was going on, to listen to that little voice in my head that gave me the encouragement that I was on the right path,” she says.
But faith, Richardson-Whitfield emphasizes, doesn’t mean waiting passively for an opportunity.
“On that journey, get better. Don’t sit there waiting,” she says. “You have to do everything you’re supposed to do for the moment. You have to work with [God]. You have to co-create with Him.”
Bringing a Modern Eye to The Gilded Age
Richardson-Whitfield’s directing style is shaped by her instinct to move the camera and bring a contemporary visual sensibility to period storytelling.
On The Gilded Age, she deliberately played with that contrast.
“I like the camera moving,” she says. “I’d say my style on Gilded may be a little more aggressive than others.”
For one sequence involving The Gilded Age, character George Russell, played by Morgan Spector, Richardson-Whitfield wanted to establish danger and urgency immediately.
“We have almost an action sequence. George is bleeding out. He could die,” she says. “I’m about to do this like I would do a medical show. We’re going to go handheld. This is going to be gritty. This is going to be like life and death.”
The approach was intentionally jarring. “It’s going to open the show in a way that people are going to be like, ‘What is happening? This is not Gilded style,’” she says. When the story moves into the season’s elaborate galas, Richardson-Whitfield embraces the grandeur and romanticism associated with the series.
“This is like old movies,” she says. “This is telling a Cinderella story. How can I just tell this in the most romantic, old-fashioned way and break people’s hearts?” That attention to visual detail mattered especially when depicting the show’s Black elite.
Richardson-Whitfield wanted the Black characters’ wealth, sophistication and social standing to carry the same visual dignity afforded to their white counterparts. “The Russells are probably billionaires during that time period,” she says. “But that doesn’t mean that we couldn’t have the same dignity and feeling of great wealth for our Black elite.”
That representation, she says, is rooted in historical reality. “Black people did have money back then, and they were doing the same balls with the same orchestras,” she says. “I really want to represent for my community.” For Richardson-Whitfield, The Gilded Age also offers an opportunity to educate audiences about an often-overlooked history.
“That’s the one thing Gilded does well. We are teaching you about what real history is,” she says. “And that was real.”
Creating Space for Actors to Take Risks
Her years in front of the camera have also directly influenced how Richardson-Whitfield works with actors.
After working with hundreds of directors throughout her acting career, she says she identified the qualities that helped her perform at her best—and the approaches that didn’t. “I was able to sort of handpick the attributes that I liked, and I didn’t like, and what I wish that I had gotten,” she says.
One of the most important lessons she now passes on to her actors is simple: make mistakes. “You cannot be great and brilliant if it’s all very measured and you’re only doing what you’ve rehearsed in the mirror,” she says. “You have to be willing to look foolish and take big chances, and for it to be wrong.”
Richardson-Whitfield wants actors to trust that experimentation is part of the process.
“I’m not going to use it if it’s wrong,” she says. “I’m not going to be mad at you. I’m going to come in and go, ‘Let’s try a different choice. Let’s do this.’ But you have to play.” Her experience as an actor has also taught her that every performer requires a different kind of communication.
“Every actor is different,” she says. “Some people are just like, ‘I can just say, hey, you need to talk fast. You need to pull this together. You need to hit that beat.’ And that works for them.”
For another actor, the same note could be counterproductive. “I have to come to them talking about the emotional urgency of the scene and what we’re feeling,” she explains. “It’s really about reading your actors.”
Paying the Opportunity Forward
As Richardson-Whitfield’s profile as a director has grown, so has her ability to create opportunities for others.
She frequently works with young women who are aspiring filmmakers, including assistants she brings onto productions to give them firsthand experience in environments where women and people of color have historically been underrepresented.
“I try to help as many people as possible,” she says. “I always have young women who are my assistants, who are filmmakers, and try to elevate them in these positions in a space that we’re not normally in.”
She also makes a point of hiring other women directors and directors of color.
“I’m very proud of that and giving people the opportunity that I was given,” she says.
Richardson-Whitfield credits HBO executives Francesca Orsi and Casey Bloys with recognizing her potential early in her directing career. “HBO brought me in at a time where I had done some big shows, but not necessarily to the scope of what I’m doing now,” she says. “Francesca Orsi and Casey Bloys in particular really saw something in me that wasn’t quite there on paper. I will forever be indebted for this opportunity.”
What an Emmy Win Would Mean
Richardson-Whitfield has spent seven months in New York working on The Gilded Age, followed by another three months on Task. Being away from her family has been one of the hardest parts of the work.
So what would it mean if her name were called on Emmy night? Even contemplating the possibility makes her emotional. “It’s hard to hope that that could happen,” she says. “You look, and you go to my family, ‘Hey, I’m sorry I’ve been gone so much. It’s worth the sacrifice.’”
She thinks back to the young actress who drove to Los Angeles in a $700 car without knowing whether the gamble would work. “There was absolutely no reason that this should work out,” she says. “Thank God I didn’t know that.”
Now, she hopes her journey can reassure the next generation of filmmakers. “When I speak to other young women and people who have a dream in Hollywood, you just have to know that it’s quite a journey,” she says. That journey has included rejection, uncertainty and plenty of moments when the outcome was unclear. But Richardson-Whitfield believes those detours can ultimately lead you toward the career you were meant to have.
“I was being protected on the journey I was supposed to take,” she says. “And here I am.”
Building What Comes Next
Richardson-Whitfield isn’t slowing down. She is currently developing shows at HBO from the ground up, projects that represent the next evolution of her career.
“I think that’s really my next big step,” she says. “Really being there at the beginning, and it being mine, and continuing to build my career, build my legacy.”
After nearly five years working within HBO’s ecosystem, she says she has developed a strong understanding of the network’s storytelling sensibility and is ready to apply that knowledge to projects of her own. “I know what they like. I know what kind of storytelling, and I know how to produce those kinds of shows,” she says. A feature film remains an ambition, too, but Richardson-Whitfield is selective about what would pull her away from television.
“There are many that come at me,” she says. “But finding the right one, what would make me leave TV for TV right now? What would that project be?”
The answer, she says, is simple: “It has to be something special enough to take me away from my HBO world right now.” For Richardson-Whitfield, the goal is no longer simply to make history. It is to build a body of work and create opportunities for others that last long after the history-making moment is over.