The immaculate Nia Long is on arguably the best run of her career. Although the 52 year old can probably get any role she wants at the moment, she stopped by The Drew Barrymore Show to discuss a time when it wasn’t that easy. Click inside to hear the important conversation the actresses had.

After her ex-husband’s cheating scandal went public, Nia Long could’ve easily let it break her. Instead, she put her head down, went to work and handled the situation with as much grace as she could. Currently, the beloved Long is starring in the feature film Missing alongside Storm Reid, Netflix’s You People and Peacock’s limited series The Best Man: The Final Chapters. As accomplished and blessed as she is today, the Brooklyn native wasn’t always shown the same favor.

Nia Long visited The Drew Barrymore Show last week (January 27). While there, she discussed getting back into the dating world and her role in You People. These weren’t the most noteworthy conversations though. The most important discussion came when the two women talked about Nia auditioning for the 2000 action comedy film Charlie’s Angels. Long states that the she went to audition and although it went well, she didn’t get the job. She adds that the feedback she got back was that “Her eyebrows were too sophisticated and she looked too old next to Drew.”

She continues to detail how she feels like there were a lot of conversations about diversity but people weren’t really pulling the trigger. Long brought up that in Hollywood at the time, there was an initiative to cast more Black women and have more Black women on set…or at least it was supposed to be. She recalls becoming exhausted from auditioning for so many roles that weren’t written Black. She felt like they were bringing Black women in just to say they did it with no real intention of actually hiring them.

As the conversation went on, Nia showed her appreciation for Drew and producers like her who are aware and sensitive about the topic. Drew explains how her and her partner at Flower Films, Nancy Juvonen pushed for diversity, even when it wasn’t normal to do. The two ladies agreed that the conversation they were having was very important and that in the future, Black and white women must work together to make things better for all of them. We absolutely need more dialogue like this! Calling out the lack of diversity in Hollywood was the key takeaway from this interview…but on another note, can y’all imagine if we would’ve had Nia Long as one of Charlie’s Angels? Let us know how you think it would’ve gone in the comments.