Words Paul Tierney Photography Antony Crook

Published in No 16

The filmmaker and documentarian Roger Ross Williams appears remarkably calm for a man with so much going on. Upstate, in Roxbury, NY, deep in the Catskills, the genial director seems positively unfazed by the myriad projects he juggles. “For me, a lot of it comes from nature,” he says of his laidback self. “Up here in the mountains I build drystone walls. To me that’s almost like meditating. Building a wall is like a huge puzzle that you have to put together. You can’t think about anything else. It cleanses the mind.”

Williams’ mind is rarely switched off. Yet in this quiet, Zen space, stand-by is the preferred mode. “I try to be in the moment,” he says, wary of sounding meh. “I do my Zoom meetings from a hammock. That’s my calm, relaxed space. You can look in any direction here and it’s stunningly beautiful. We’re in the high peaks of the Catskills — the watershed of New York. It’s lush and calm, but there’s a lot of Confederate flags here too. It can be a bit scary.”

By contrast, his office is tactile and ordered, a safe space of photos, framed posters and that Oscar lurking in the background, all of which say a lot about him, but in different ways. “It’s here actually,” he says, pointing to his ever-twitching brain. “There’s a compartment for everything I do up here. You don’t want to lose sleep over work.”

Williams has worked hard. Over the last 30 years and with incremental success, he has produced a rich canon of illuminating documentaries and dense, landmark films. The goal is always to shed light on subjects otherwise marginalized or ignored, and it goes without saying that as a black, gay man he is acutely aware of minority discrimination. So, with stealth, grace and characteristic drive, this cheerleading visionary has made sense of senseless things.

He snatched the Best Documentary Short Oscar in 2012, the first black director to do so, for Music By Prudence, a tale of disability and transcendence in Zimbabwe, followed by a swathe of disparate projects, each close to his heart. He explored African prejudice even further in God Loves Uganda, prodigious art, and the genesis of American soul food. Williams’ oeuvre is broad but tight, populist and niche. There is integrity and emotional punch within everything he conceives. And it’s all going supernova.

“I like to be busy, and right now is crazy,” he agrees. “I have several TV series on the go and two films in post-production — a documentary about Donna Summer, and Cassandro, my first scripted narrative movie about gay Mexican wrestler Saúl Armendáriz. It’s been quite a year.” Cassandro is the true story a gay amateur wrestler from El Paso, who rises to stardom after creating the “exotico” character, Cassandro — the “Liberace of Lucha Libre.” It’s a story about transformation, courage, being the round peg in a square hole, tropes Williams handles with his trademark deft assurance. “As an openly gay man, Armendáriz had all kinds of challenges thrown at him by a religious, macho world. Creating the character of Cassandro helped him find his inner voice. He embraced who he was and became a star of Mexican wrestling. I was blown away by his energy, charisma and power. He was who he was, and in the process he owned his femininity.”

For every highbrow conceit, Williams has a balancing antidote up his sleeve. With a tendency towards the poppier end of culture, there’s been a shift of emphasis recently towards less cerebral subjects. Perhaps this is born from his time in mid-80s Manhattan, working in nightclubs like Danceteria and the Palladium, schmoozing with Warhol and Madonna, and generally being fabulous. “I thought that was what I was going to do for the rest of my life,” he roars. “I mean, it was my life. I thought, someday I’m going to buy my own nightclub!”

As a promoter, it was Williams’ job to invite the beautiful people — actors, musicians and, for the first time, the models who characterized that era. The Super Models, his tantalizing documentary series for Apple TV+, goes some way to explaining the phenomenon. Were they really super? Or simply more cash than dash?

“They weren't manufactured,” he says of that crop of girls: Linda, Christy, Naomi and Cindy (the “Supers” dispensing the need for surnames), who ruled the modelling roost back in the day. “They were just these really beautiful young teenagers. It's not like they were trying to change the world, they were just wise fashion icons who lived the dream and pleased everybody in the process. Those girls experienced a different time in fashion. There wasn’t digital touch-ups or Instagram, it was simply photographers and models. Fashion was everything back then. It was real.”

Of all the legendary children, it is the black British powerhouse, Naomi Campbell, he seems most enamoured by. “She’s from an industry that, for so long, was racist and ignored black creatives. Now she can be the person calling the shots.”

Of the others, he is equally praiseworthy. Cindy Crawford is the all-American girl made good (“she basically kick-started the whole red-carpet thing”), Christy Turlington a serene and centered deity of sorts. But it’s the feline Evangelista who looks set to be the most surprising voice in the film. “Linda Evangelista is the conscience of the industry,” he says. “She talks freely about the CoolSculpting lawsuit. She speaks out about her relationship and marriage to the disgraced model agency boss, Gerald Marie. You know, I think it’s going to be really heavy and powerful when people see what Linda has to say about those things.”

In a refreshing turn, Williams is also unafraid to voice his own opinion. Of the fashion industry in general he is particularly scathing. "It’s superficial and frivolous sometimes, although rarely boring. I went to my friend Edward Enniniful’s book launch party, thrown by Donatella Versace. So there I am, in Gianni’s Milan apartment, and I’m sitting there with Bella and Gigi and all the models, and Paris Hilton was DJing, and I thought, is this is my world? I’m an observer, so it's an honour and it's interesting to sit alone in the corner and watch everything. But then I get bored. And then I'm out of there!”

Lighthearted snipes aside, he speaks highly of Enninful, whose pursuit of diversity at British Vogue is something he greatly admires. “Edward is an amazing person. I think he's genius and brilliant. I’m in awe of what he's doing. And as a gay, black man I identify with his journey. Being black and gay is the reason why I am so successful. I had to fight and struggle and adapt. I took all of the challenges and used them to my advantage. I embraced the difficulties. Instead of running away in fear of the church, for example, I went to Uganda to the most extreme and dangerously religious place in the world and made a film about it. That's how I confront fear. The challenge is to go running into the fire. I've had to struggle so much as a black, gay man but it’s given me this incredible strength and insight into the world and the way the world works. I use that in my art.”

Talk moves to Love to Love You, Baby, the much-anticipated Donna Summer documentary that’s hard to believe doesn’t already exist. “In 1979, she was one of the most famous women in the world, the Beyonce of her time. But she’s also one of the most underrated artists. I just wanted to make a music documentary,” he says with a shrug. “I needed to get away from all the danger and anxiety I had experienced filming in Africa. Call it light relief, if you like, although Donna’s story is anything but.”

Summer, we learn, had a troubled upbringing, which draws certain parallels with Williams’ own life story. “Donna grew up in a strict, religious community, in Boston, where she wasn't even allowed to wear nail polish. It was all about religion. Sadly, she was molested by the minister of her family's church and escaped by running away to New York. Then she saw Janis Joplin, joined a rock band, and decamped to Europe. It’s the classic tale of escaping the confines imposed on you and turning it on its head.”

What of Summer’s legacy? Those badly judged (or misquoted) words about AIDS being God’s punishment to gay people? “That was the thing that destroyed Donna. She never recovered from that. I learned from her husband Bruce that even on her death bed she strenuously denied saying those things. She sued the magazine and won, but it was difficult for her to move on. I think that’s what resonates with me. For every bad relationship she had, for every beating and put down, her life was always about negotiating the next hurdle.”

Williams never stops talking. He’s good at it. And it’s this innate skill, the ability to be a natural born storyteller that has served him well. “I want to tell all these stories because they are my story too. They’re about overcoming every obstacle that could be thrown in front of you, about dodging those feelings of alienation, of being an outsider. That is me. And I want to be there to more of them. I want to tell stories about underdogs and champion their causes. Whether it’s about the gays of Uganda or South London schoolgirl Naomi Campbell, they all have their struggles. In terms of story, I like an arc. Rags to riches. Oppression to salvation.”

His own arc has that similar trajectory. An illegitimate child with few prospects, here is a man who has genuinely conquered adversity. Are these the kind of things he talks to his peers about? Especially interesting when those peers are Oprah Winfrey.

“The conversations I have with people are really always about, how do we open the door for others? It really is. We all can't believe we're here. It’s like, you know? We did it! Now we have to kick down the door for other people, and that's an incredible amount of responsibility. Oprah, Edward, Naomi, and any person who's struggled to get to the top of their game takes it seriously. I don't think you get there and you're like, Okay, well, I made it. Screw the rest of you. You get there and you're humbled by it. But you try and do something with it.”

Williams has beefs, but rightly so. Looking at the Academy perched high on a filling cabinet, he is riled into expressing his most clear thoughts of the day. “You know, after that Oscar, the phone didn't ring. No one offered me jobs. I had nothing. I was in an industry of mostly rich white people who shoved me aside as a black, gay man. Now I’m on the Board of Governors. I walk into that boardroom and there’s Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, the most powerful people in Hollywood. And there I am sitting at the table, still feeling like an outsider, but now I’m thinking, I’m gonna kick the door down. I'm gonna really change things up around here.”

The Super Models launches September 20th on Apple TV+. Cassandro is set to stream on Amazon Prime this Fall.

Learn more at rogerrosswilliams.com and roxburybarnandestate.com

Paul Tierney is an arts, culture and travel journalist, writing for W Magazine, The Guardian, El Pais and The Independent. @paultierneysees & paultierneywrites.com. / Antony Crook, a photographer and director, isrepped by rsafilms.com; @antonycrook.