Zoe Saldana Talks Being a "Difficult Bitch"

Zoe Saldana recently sat down for an interview with Allure, where she recounted some of her past run-ins with asshole producers. The magazine quotes her as follows:

On returning to work after having twins:

"The tone changed in the negotiations. I was starting to feel that I was...difficult. [Babysitting was] considered a perk, or 'Give this to me; I'm having a diva fit'? No. This is a necessity that you must cover for me in order for me to go and perform my job. The fact that there are women working in these studios—and they're the ones [enforcing] these man-made rules. When are we going to learn to stick together?"

On female solidarity:

"That love and support from the network of women around you, it made me really... I get emotional because if we continue to do that, we will be unstoppable. As opposed to nitpicking at each other for arbitrary things such as weight and hair color and purses. It's such fucking minutiae when there are bigger issues that we have to be talking about, like equal pay and equal rights."

On male chauvinism:

[A producer told me] 'I hired you to look good in your underwear holding a gun.' I was told walking into this project that they really wanted me for the part, and that any input or ideas I had to please share them. That's what I was doing, and this producer was so bothered by the fact that he had to disrupt his vacation to call me and tell me to stop being a difficult bitch. I thought, Wow, it's real. It really happens."

On the controversy surrounding her casting as Nina Simone:

"There's no one way to be black. I'm black the way I know how to be. You have no idea who I am. I am black. I'm raising black men. Don't you ever think you can look at me and address me with such disdain...I never saw her as unattractive. Nina looks like half my family! But if you think the [prosthetic] nose I wore was unattractive, then maybe you need to ask yourself, What do you consider beautiful? Do you consider a thinner nose beautiful, so the wider you get, the more insulted you become?"