Well, that’s what is demanded of us in society. Tell us. Tell us. Give us the evidence.I think that with my films what I’m able to do is to allow men and women of all colours to walk in the shoes of the protagonist, a protagonist that has not traditionally been black, or black and female. If you experience life from this point of view – because that’s what you do with your lead actor, you force the audience into their point of view – would you come up with any other conclusion?Do you feel that it is right that a woman [as in Belle] should be raised in a privileged household where she’s treated with privilege in the most part, but not sit at the table with her family, and is told that it’s because she’s black but also it’s the rules of society at the time? They love her, but just because you love someone doesn’t mean you can’t be racist.Or have a black child, have a biracial child. When you walk with the point of view of your partner of colour, I think it changes the way you see the world. Similarly, if you have a person you love and treat as a sister who is white, as in Belle, or if you are the person of colour in the relationship, you also see what life looks like from the privileged point of view. I see how the world responds differently to my [white] husband than to me… If I walk through security at an airport and I am stopped, and then he walks back and says ‘are you OK honey?’ and suddenly I’m free to go, it’s very different to being a black female who travels alone.I wasn’t involved until David Oyelowo gave me the call. David had found it several years before, but David hadn’t made Selma. Rosamund [Pike] hadn’t made Gone Girl, and I hadn’t made Belle. It was those three things coming together at the same time, and all of us having individual success with three separate films. All being British, but all having a level of success in America. I had to prove that I could make a film that was very different from A Way of Life, and that was Belle, and I did that. The team was what catapulted it into getting the green light.Within the context of any industry, you’ll always have the progressive folk... I think that there are more of those than there ever have been. We as filmmakers, actors, are desperately seeking them out and not wasting time banging our heads against brick walls, trying to persuade the powers that be who just don’t get it. I think that that’s helping us to walk around this huge corner that we’ve come to. The issue of diversity is that we as a society – black, white, female, male, varying levels of ability– have always understood that there is a particular default story that has a default protagonist. Anything that veers way from that is not a good film, or is not done properly… or doesn’t come together. Any level of diversity challenges that.If you’re gonna ask us to come to the table you must understand that we’re the same but we’re different. We have the same universal values and qualities and hurts and loves and joys and sorrows and flaws as everybody else, but we’re different in that we see it from a different gaze. What you can’t do is when we show it to you from that gaze is say that’s wrong, it’s not a good film, it doesn’t work. If I make Rosamund’s character Ruth the other in Africa, that might be something you’re not used to seeing. But allow us to tell that story, because you’ll see that the experience of the other is something that can happen to anybody.