How Cierra Glaudé Went From a "Queen Sugar" Assistant to a Director in 5 Years

Her name is Cierra Glaudé, but most people call her Shooter. She got the moniker while she was a student at the University of Alabama. Hired to make movies for Greek life and extracurricular clubs, Glaudé was most often seen on campus with a camera. “I was in the dining hall to get some food. This kid came up to me and said, ‘Hey, you’re the shooter, aren’t you?' And I said, ‘I guess I am,’” Glaudé tells Oprah Daily. Afterward, she went on Instagram and changed her name.

The nickname was prescient: Glaudé, 30, is now the director of a major television show. In 2015, Glaudé was hired to be a production assistant on Queen Sugar, an award-winning OWN drama created by Ava DuVernay and produced by Oprah. The series is known for its rich storytelling—it follows three estranged siblings who inherit their father's land in Louisiana—and for its cadre of women directors, many of whom are first-timers.

Glaudé can now count herself among them, but it was a long journey, punctuated by stints in college sleeping on neighbors' couches and 4 a.m. call times on the set of Queen Sugar. Glaudé describes the production assistant job as a blend of “babysitter, mother, girlfriend, aunt, and homie” to the actors. During those 16-hour days, she became a favorite among the cast and crew. “My math is: ‘Be kind and hustle hard. Be the person that will go the extra mile but that will also be the most kind. That can really shake somebody up,'” she says.

Then came a season working in the Queen Sugar writer’s room—though her Alabama slang had long been incorporated into the characters' dialogue by then. Finally, five years after first being hired, Glaudé was tapped to be a director. DuVernay, Glaudé's longtime mentor, let her know she was set to direct three episodes while they were together during Thanksgiving dinner in 2019. “It was the greatest gift ever. A life gift,” Glaudé says.

Even back when she was fetching juices, DuVernay imagined great things for Glaudé. While shooting Queen Sugar’s second-ever episode, DuVernay turned to her and said, “You need to start directing your own stuff, so you can work your way up to a Queen Sugar episode.”

For Glaudé, who likens the set of Queen Sugar to a family barbecue, directing was a full-circle moment. “The cast was so proud. They wanted to give a little extra for me—I used to make their juices and their breakfasts. It’s so much love it's overwhelming, in the best way possible."

No longer a P.A., her people-focused attitude comes through in her directing, too. "Directing is serving the story, but it’s also serving the people that are serving the story. A director is a servant, and I have a serving spirit," she explains, recalling feedback she received from Queen Sugar's Kofi Siriboe, who plays Ralph Angel: "I love that you make us feel so safe."

Though Glaudé says she is literally living her dream as an up-and-coming director, she didn't always know this would be her path. As a kid in Alabama, Glaudé had no interest in moviemaking. Not that she didn’t care—it simply wasn’t something she considered.

“Growing up as a young gay Black girl in the south, I was always outside, I was playing basketball, riding horses, fishing on the boat, stuff like that,” Glaudé says. “You put a movie on, and I’d be asleep by the time the credits rolled. I was out there playing.”

Her intentions were to go to college and get an MBA. “I thought that’s what equated to money,” she says. But Glaudé always had a camera in her hand, filming car rides or friend hang-outs, and was encouraged by a teacher in high school to pursue movie-making. Film school was too expensive, but with a scholarship from the University of Alabama, she figured she could at least take film classes. Then she met her mentor, director and professor Dr. Rachel Raimist and realized that her passion could earn her a living.

In 2014, while she was in school, Glaudé met another woman who would help make her dreams possible: DuVernay. Ahead of filming Selma, DuVernay, then an up-and-coming director herself, visited the University of Alabama for its weekend-long campus film festival. Raimist and DuVernay had become friends when they previously worked together on a film, back when DuVernay was a publicist.

Glaudé accompanied Raimist in the van to pick DuVernay up from the airport. “I tell my students, ‘Try to set yourself up for greatness,’” Raimist shares with Oprah Daily. She saw Glaudé follow her advice on that car ride, when Glaudé demonstrated knowledge about DuVernay’s production company, then called Affirm. Their first connection came when Glaudé commented on DuVernay’s Affirm bracelet, and DuVernay gave it to her. “They clicked. They’re kindred spirits in the kind of stories they want to tell,” Raimist says.

After getting to know DuVernay during the festival, Glaudé took a bold leap—a life-changing one. “At the end of the weekend. I told her, ‘Yo, I’m the one you need, and I’m finna work on your movie, so what do I have to do?’ Verbatim,” Glaudé says. Afterward, DuVernay offered her, in addition to a few of Raimist’s other students, a two-week job on Selma as a production assistant. After Selma, DuVernay told Glaudé to volunteer at the Sundance Film Festival and find her there.

As instructed, Glaudé went to Sundance, and later, she spent time as an assistant at DuVernay's Affirm office in Los Angeles. DuVernay was surprised to see her stuffing envelopes. “Ava saw me there. I said, ‘Ma’am, I told you I was about that life. I said I’m here to help,'" she says.

When DuVernay offered her a job as a production assistant for a CBS pilot, For Justice, in the middle of her senior year of college, Glaudé’s next step felt obvious. She dropped out, and she didn’t regret it for an instant. After getting the call from DuVernay’s production company, Glaudé visited Raimist, who promptly picked up the phone, dialed the registrar, and un-enrolled her from her last semester’s courses.

When DuVernay asked Glaudé about her plan to balance her studies and a TV shoot, Glaudé cheerfully announced she had quit school so she could travel to New York immediately. DuVernay, she says, was "mortified" to hear she had dropped out."But I said, ‘Ma’am, I got drafted to the league. Nobody worries about this when it happens to the football players,’” Glaudé shares.

Though DuVernay's pilot didn't get picked up, the two continued to work together as Glaudé chased her filmmaking dreams independently. She directed a short, Last Looks, starring Queen Sugar's Rutina Wesley. She also worked as a P.A. on Girls Trip; DuVernay's Wrinkle in Time; and Lena Waithe's BET series Twenties.

The opportunity for Glaudé’s first feature came when Waithe, another influential and Emmy award-winning director, selected her for the 2019 AT&T Hello Labs Filmmaker Mentorship Program. Like DuVernay, Waithe sees herself in Glaudé: “She’s a mini version of myself,” Waithe said during an appearance on The Breakfast Club.

“When you see people of their caliber saying, ‘You're just like me,’ it’s really surreal and humbling. It’s lovely when people see these things in you and they know you have that spark, and then they help jumpstart that spark,” Glaudé says. For what it’s worth, Oprah called her an “inspiration to [her] generation” on Twitter.

“I feel like when [DuVernay] looked at me she saw herself. Someone who was a hustler, someone that was kind, someone who was about that life—by any means necessary. 'Pass me the ball, coach.' I always tell her that. 'I will score,'” she says.

So far, she’s done nothing but that.

This much is clear: Glaudé is just getting started. “What’s crazy and scary at the same time is that Ava is always telling me this is just the beginning. I’m just buckling in my seatbelt I’m like, ready to go.”

Though she hopes Queen Sugar runs for 30 seasons (her words), she eventually wants to helm her own TV project and feature film—but she’s in no rush. “Your first feature is sacred,” she says. “When it’s the time for me to tell my story, you'll get it in its essence.” She hopes to explore her upbringing in Alabama in her work, especially Mon Louis Island, where her family owns property and gathers nearly every weekend to ride horses and dirt bikes, swim, and hang out.

She’ll never forget where she came from. It’s where she learned those Southern recipes that she uses in her catering company (because yes, she has time for that, too). It’s where she learned to place kindness first. And it’s where she got the bravery that led her to talk to DuVernay.

Glaudé cites the moment that changed her trajectory, and it wasn't DuVernay offering her a job. When Glaudé was in high school, her older brother, Kriston, was killed in a motorcycle crash in Mobile. The accident shifted her entire worldview.

"I had a drinking problem in high school after my brother died. I was literally drowning in grief. Once I was able to get past the heavy grief stage, I was like, I'm not just living for me. I have enough spirit for two people," she says.

Glaudé says that surviving that trauma helped cure her of ever being starstruck. “People wonder how are you around all of these great people and don't freak out? It’s like, until somebody can raise my brother from the dead there’s nothing they can do for me. I look at these people as human beings,” Glaudé says. “Ava once spoke about the coat of desperation. When I heard that, I took that coat off. We were able to see each other eye to eye from there. While I admire and adore these people, I don't put them on a pedestal that endangers them from falling off.”

It’s in looking backwards that she finds the fuel to move forward on a supercharged path. “I owe it to myself, to my brother, to everyone who came before and after me, to go after this life. Quite frankly, white folks do it, why can’t I?” she asks. “I aspire to live my best life, because I feel like I deserve that as a gay Black woman. I deserve all the things—and I will get them.”

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