CHICAGO (WLS) — Joi McMillon, the first Black woman nominated for an Oscar in film editing, once again teamed up with director Barry Jenkins on the new Disney movie “Mufasa: The Lion King.”
McMillon first worked with Jenkins on “Moonlight,” which earned her the Academy Award nomination, and which won Best Picture after an infamous envelope error.
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Jenkins so admired her talent when they worked on “Moonlight” that he enlisted her to join him in making “Mufasa: The Lion King.”
McMillon’s movie dreams started when she was a little girl in Florida.
“Me and my sisters, we used to play movie theater,” she recalled. “There was a family of six kids, and taking six kids to the theater is a lot. So we didn’t get to go as often as we wanted to. We would take chairs from our dining room, from our kitchen table, and we’d set them up in rows in our living room. And never in a million years did I think that I would be part of the magic that I love to revisit in that living room by helping great films.”
Thus far in her career, McMillon has mostly worked on small, intimate projects. “Mufasa: The Lion King” is an entirely different scale.
“Even though the scale is bigger, our approach is still the same,” McMillon said. “Wanting to tell an authentic story that has layers of creativity, but also still inspiring. One of the things that’s really cool about this movie is that we go through very not the usual landscapes you see of Africa depicted in films. So everything that you see in the film is based on actual locations in Africa.”
“The one thing I love about editing is how present you have to be,” she added. “And one of the things that I always talk about is being a storyteller first. And, you know, people always like what the creative aspect of editing is.”
McMillon is now one of a small group of Black women who have reached the top echelon of the film industry.
“I still feel like that 10-year-old kid sometimes, you know, where I walk on a big stage at Warner Brothers. And I can’t believe that I’m about to sit down and give, you know, notes and thoughts about a film I helped create. And so, and also being a Black female, I know there’s not that many of us represented in the feature film space. And so for me, I am, I’m honored, and I feel like there’s a responsibility to keep on holding that door open for others like me to come through,” she said.
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