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Beverly Hills' Sofitel. Late afternoon. Beautiful spring day.  Outdoor cabana.
Nzingha Stewart. Calm, but focused. Jeans and white t-shirt. Heels. The attire of a creative entrepreneur.

Day of meetings. Just left: Reginald Hudlin and his partner. There's interest in one of her scripts. She's working it.

The credentials. Award-winning video director. Worked with the likes of Common, Missy Elliott, and Jay-Z. Branched out to documentary film with Michael Jackson: "Our Icon" which aired on BET. Writing and directing an upcoming Lifetime movie produced by Gabrielle Union called "The Vow." Executive producing the upcoming adaptation of playwright Ntozake Shange's "For colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf" which will be released through Tyler Perry's empire.

Stewart creates opportunity.  She shares her path with the Atlanta Post.

Transitions
I didn't always want to go into film. I felt stifled or thought that I would be stifled by movies.  I didn't think I could do a video like Bilal's "Soul Sista" in black and white with African models in the film industry. But that's not necessarily true. And well, now, I could never get away with doing a video like that. The artist wouldn't get the budget.

Becoming a Writer
I didn't think of myself as a writer. I had an idea and from that idea, I kept thinking of scenes and thought that maybe I could write the script. My manager at the time told me that I wasn't a writer. He said that I was a director and that I shouldn't fiddle beyond that. Another friend, a black woman, read the script and told me not to listen to him. I left him and signed with her. She sent my script, which was called "Puss," to Overbrook and they got in contact with me very quickly. I thought it was going to be totally easy. It was not that easy. Nothing happened with it. I gave up on it and thought nothing would come of it. But after that, I got a deal with NBC to write a pilot. Then I got another deal to write a teen genre script.

Expectations
I arrived in LA about five years ago. I thought I had a strategy but it didn't go the way I wanted it to. Yet, it worked out better than I thought. I thought "Puss" was going to get made and that I'd just be in LA taking meetings. Luckily, some of the scripts that I was working on started receiving attention and somehow I started writing professionally. If I would have just came out here to direct, I would have stopped writing. I've been so successful with writing that it should have been part of the original plan.

Read the entire piece at The Atlanta Post.