“I’ve been a storyteller for longer than I can remember”, says Oprah Winfrey, one of the country’s most influential forces in television and film in a moment of particular vitality for African American TV and filmmakers. Oprah sees her current role as producer and the creator of the OWN network as a natural evolution from 25 years of telling stories on the Oprah Winfrey show. “It's a way of using this platform to share other people’s stories – a way of seeing life through someone else’s lens”. To Oprah that is nothing short of a life’s mission. The same reason for which she agreed to be on the board of the recently inaugurated National African-American Museum: “because I believe that the only way that we rise from this moment of racism and bigotry from these dangerous times, is that for one side to know the other.” OWN recently debuted two new series: Greenleaf, about the family dynasty running a Southern Black church (in which Winfrey also has an acting role) and Queen Sugar about three siblings who must find a way to run the sugar plantation they inherit from their father. The HFPA’s Margaret Gardiner spoke to her about those shows, the network, Ava DuVernay, Maya Angelou and more…