Zoe Saldaña at Locarno: "Ask the Gatekeepers, Not Just Me"
Zoe Saldaña used a career-retrospective conversation at the 2026 Locarno Film Festival to call out what she described as a pattern in press and festival Q&As: political questions landing disproportionately on actors of colour and women rather than on their white male colleagues.
Saldaña, in Locarno to receive a Special Honorary Pardo from festival director Giona Nazzaro, said she turns up to Q&As eager to discuss the craft of acting but keeps fielding political questions instead. "It's frustrating," she said, according to Variety. She described the experience as "limiting" when she is the only person of colour or the only woman on stage, waiting to be asked about her work but handed the political question instead (Variety).
Her proposed fix was pointed. Journalists, she said, should direct questions about inclusivity to "the gatekeepers" — the other roughly 80 people in the room, the executives and decision-makers — rather than the single person from a marginalised community on the panel (Variety).
She did not cite specific press tours where the imbalance played out. But the context is not hard to find. In March 2025, just minutes after Saldaña won the best supporting actress Oscar for Emilia Pérez, a journalist in the Academy press room asked her about the film offending Mexicans. Saldaña apologised that "many Mexicans felt offended," said that was never the intention, and said the heart of the film was not Mexico but friendship and four women. She added that the characters could have been from anywhere and were universal women struggling against systemic oppression (Variety).
The Locarno appearance itself carried its own weight. Saldaña received the Special Pardo — the festival's highest honour — alongside Olivia Wilde, in a ceremony programmed by Nazzaro (The Hollywood Reporter). The broader Variety interview covering her Locarno visit also touched on early influences, including seeing Terminator at age seven and the impact of James Cameron and Steven Spielberg on her career path (Variety).
Locarno's 2026 edition has not been without political charge of its own. A protest remembering the 60,000 killed in Gaza took place at the festival, making Locarno the latest in a string of film festivals — Cannes, Berlin, and Venice among them — to see demonstrations over the continuing situation in Gaza (Variety).
Saldaña currently stars in the third season of Lioness, streaming on Paramount+ (Variety).
What gives her remarks their bite is the simple arithmetic she laid out: one person of colour on a panel of eighty, carrying a question meant for the whole room. Her argument is not that actors should never face political questions. It is that the same questions, asked of the same people every time, let everyone else off the hook.
