Oprah Winfrey sure knows how to throw a party.
Oprah Daily reported on the epic three-day birthday bash that Winfrey threw for Ava DuVernay, celebrating the Emmy-winning director’s 50th birthday at Winfrey’s home in Maui.
In attendance were Winfrey’s BFF Gayle King, Niecy Nash and Colman Domingo.
As Winfrey recalled, her friendship with DuVernay began a decade ago while she was working on Lee Daniels’ “The Butler” back in 2012, when her co-star David Oyelowo recommended she check out an indie film called “Middle of Nowhere”, which DuVernay had directed.
“I then Googled who directed the movie because I had not heard of Ava DuVernay at the time,” she said. “There was this beautiful photograph of this lovely Black woman who was wearing glasses just like me. I thought, I want to be her friend.”
Winfrey was so impressed by DuVernay’s film that she threw a Mother’s Day brunch at her home, just “so I could invite her.” Then, when the two began working together on the film “Selma”, Winfrey added, she and DuVernay “actually became friends.”
Speaking to all her loved ones, DuVernay said, “I could lose it, so I’m not going to. I’m going to keep it all together and say I ask God, ‘What did I do to deserve this gathering of people coming from all the places that you did to be with me on these days? And what did I do to deserve a friend who’d create this moment for us all?’ So I don’t know what I did, but maybe He’ll tell me. I’m going to be listening, and I’ll be thanking you all throughout the time here, and thanking you forever for this.”
Day 2 of DuVernay’s 50th-birthday extravaganza fell on August 24, her actual birthday, with Winfrey and King showing up to surprise their friend that morning.
“We picked sunflowers and brought them to DuVernay’s cottage as a way to welcome her to her birthday morning and say the day is finally here,” Winfrey shared.
Winfrey gushed in her birthday speech for DuVernay: “We are alike in so many ways and different in so many other ways, but her strengths and weaknesses build my strengths and weaknesses. I build strengths from her strengths. She makes me a better woman.”
DuVernay then shared one of the most impactful life lessons Winfrey taught her is ‘intention’: “Everything matters, so you have to do it with intention. Every conversation you have, every word you speak, let it be righteous, let it be right. Don’t play with your words; don’t play with what you do.”
She added, getting teary-eyed: “Intention is the biggest thing you’ve taught me and it’s a tremendous gift. It changed me. It changed my life. It changed the way I work, the way I think, the way I am, and the way I love.”
