CNN
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Director DeMane Davis has been so busy, some things have yet to fully sink in.
Including the fact that the hit OWN show she has worked on, “Queen Sugar,” is ending with its seventh season.
“I’ve been so in it that I haven’t cried yet because it’s over,” Davis, who directed the last two episodes leading up to the series finale, told CNN in a recent interview. “I haven’t thought about what it means to not have ‘Queen Sugar’ every week as a part of our culture, as a touchstone.”
The series, which revolves around the fictional Bordelon family in Louisiana, has been groundbreaking in many ways.
Not least of all because creator and executive producer Ava DuVernay has enlisted all women directors to work on the show.
Davis was brought on to direct two episodes during the second season and was the producing director for season three.
“What Ava did, no one had ever done before,” Davis said. “It’s funny because when she talks about it now, she’s like, ‘It’s kind of a simple thing to just make a decision, to just decide.’ And it tells you that you have the power, that your choices are everything. And it can change not only your world, but the world of every individual that you include and the world of everyone who’s watching them.”
It has certainly changed life for Davis, who has also directed episodes for other shows, including ABC’s “How to Get Away With Murder” and Netflix’s “You.”
But, she said, “there’s nothing else like ‘Queen Sugar’ on television.”
“It’s hard to believe it’s the longest running drama that is centered around a Black family on television,” Davis said. “And I just feel like we didn’t have that opportunity to see ourselves in this light, literally and figuratively, I’ve never seen Black-skin filmed the way it was filmed, the different hues.”
Davis is keeping busy, however, having just wrapped directing an episode of the forthcoming NBC drama “Found” (she also directed the pilot).
According to Davis, the series is “about a group of people who find the people that no one else wants to find” and was created by Nkechi Carroll, a showrunner/creator of [CW’s] “All American Homecoming.”
”[‘Found’] stars Shanola Hampton of ‘Shameless’ and I cannot wait for you to see this woman running in heels,” Davis said. “We’re going to be on Sundays at 10 o’clock. I can’t even believe it, I’m over the moon.”
The penultimate episode of “Queen Sugar,” directed by Davis, airs Tuesday. The series finale, directed by DuVernay, airs next Tuesday.
