Barry Jenkins Still Doesn’t Feel He’s ‘Worth Shit’

Mel Brooks may have famously said, “It’s good to be the king,” but those words don’t necessarily ring true for Academy Award-winning filmmaker Barry Jenkins. Speaking in a recent interview on NPR’s “Wild Card with Rachel Martin,” the “Mufasa: The Lion King” director shared his struggles in regards to accepting his worth and how, even after winning the Best Picture Oscar for “Moonlight” and helming a massive Disney film, he still feels he has more to work towards.

“I made this film, ‘If Beale Street Could Talk,’ which is an adaptation of James Baldwin. And there is great quote that we put into the movie – it’s taken directly from the book: ‘The children had been told that they weren’t worth shit and everything around them proved it.’ On one hand, a very lovely, beautiful book, but also a very angry, justifiably angry book,” Jenkins said. “And something of that line just stays in the back of my head. And for some reason, I feel like I’ll always be working in the opposite direction to disprove it, you know — that I’m not worth shit.”

In explaining why he can’t help but hold this view of himself at times, Jenkins attributed it earlier in the interview to the off-kilter juxtaposition of his difficult upbringing and the luxurious life he gets to live as a sought-after artist and filmmaker.

“Because of where I came from and what I do, there’s just always this version of me that feels like I’m not enough, you know? That I constantly have to prove, to reaffirm my ability, my value, my merits,” Jenkins told Rachel Martin. “And so any time I walk onto a set, I walk into a conversation like this — and it sucks because it’s the antithesis to us actually communicating and connecting — is me bringing this voice in the back of my head that feels like I am just simply not enough. I’m not good enough.”

Jenkins continued, “The flipside is, you know, it keeps me very driven. I am trying to put my full self. I am trying to just be unimpeachably affirmative, of value, of merit — just of merit. And I think it’s something that will always be with me, unfortunately, because I don’t think it’s something that adds value.”

“Mufasa: The Lion King” is currently in theaters from Disney.

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