Fresh off an Oscar win for her work on Black Panther as costume designer, Ruth E. Carter is now getting ready to dress the inhabitants of another fictional African country as she preps for the sequel to Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall Coming To America classic.
While Black Panther certainly highlighted a much more modern civilization underscored by Carter's choices, she most recently assured fans of Coming To America that the spirit of Zamunda, the African setting in the film, would still very much prevail with a few modern touches
"It’s big shoes to step in. That’s an iconic film,” she said at a weekend gala hosted by the Black Design Collective in Los Angeles, Deadline reports. “We’re going to continue Zamunda. We’re not trying to change the look, but we are going to modernize some things to show the new generation.”
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The designer, who has worked on other films that include Malcolm X, Amistad, Do The Right Thing and Selma, was being honored at the Black Design Collective's scholarship gala for becoming the first African-American to win an Academy Award in the Costume Design category.
Gabrielle Union, star of BET's Being Mary Jane (on which Carter also worked), was in attendance to sign of Carter's praises.
“She’s been a huge part of my career from the very beginning,” Union said on the red carpet. “And she continues to allow us to shine and do what we do best and kill it [...] I hope that with Ruth’s win, it really is about change. It really is about pulling up more chairs to the proverbial table, and if they don’t allow us to pull up our chairs, then we say f–k it and build our own house.”