Each January, the Sundance Film Festival draws hundreds of actors (if not more) to Park City, Utah. Scores of reporters also attend to get the inside scoop on the hottest movies that will soon be debuting in theaters worldwide. While on the Sundance red carpet last week, Jonathan Majors found himself standing up for a Black queer journalist as a rep for the event tried to rush him away.
On Saturday (Jan. 21), Daric L. Cottingham used Twitter to share a video clip of herself interviewing Majors as he promoted his film Magazine Dreams. While the two were speaking, an unidentified white man working for the event intervened. “I’m sorry… There’s no more time,” he said in the footage. Majors’ publicist, Carrie Gordon, stepped in and asked the employee if they could have just “two seconds” to finish their conversation, but had no luck in swaying the insistent man. Although instructed to wrap their interview up, Major refused to budge; instead giving Cottingham the time she deserved to finish her question.
“Also, this happened, and Jonathan Majors is so nice, [and] kind, [and] stood up for me to make sure I got my question answered. The life of a Black journalist,” Cottingham tweeted as she shared the now-viral video. After the clip circulated, the journalist returned to Twitter to clarify a few things. “Hi! Um, came back to see this spread. Some think [I] was in the wrong somehow. I was not. We were already told there was a time crunch [and had] a limit of [two] questions, perfect. Time got tighter, so [one] question, cool. I began asking my question and this happened. I followed what I was told,” she wrote.
Cottingham noted that even with a “master’s in sports [and] entertainment journalism from USC” and credentials from “[The] LA Times, Spotify, [The] Washington Post, BBC Radio [and] NPR,” she’s “Black [and] queer, so these things don’t matter when [she’s] in the field, sadly.” The reporter concluded by acknowledging that Majors, his publicist and others made her feel seen. “But thank you to those who offered kind words. Constant situations like this in your career can be very disheartening when you just want to do your job. So like I said, being advocated for by someone else meant a lot,” Cottingham tweeted.
See more tweets continuing the conversation below.