The actress is making an impact with her new digital news platform.
Zoe Saldana is trying to change the conversation.
Last year, the actress focused her attention on creating a new digital news platform, BESE, which aims to represent communities which have been historically and continuously left out of the conversation and the history books.
"BESE is a platform that I believe is better representative of its American people," Saldana explained to ET's Ash Crossan at the Los Angeles press day for her new movie, Missing Link. "Forty-nine percent of America today is multicultural, whereas in the 1960s, that was 15 percent."
"The content that [America is] making for millennials and Gen Zs and YAs and so on and so forth is not really balanced, and it's not well representative of its people," she continued. "When you open up history books at school, you're not really told all stories of all American figures that impacted the American fabric of our nation. And I think it's time for us to broaden that narrative."
BESE focuses on developing authentic original content that showcases how the Latinx community and others are integrated into American culture. Saldana told ET that she's not trying to overthrow the current media landscape, she's just trying to broaden and expand it with stories a more diverse group of people can relate to and be inspired by.
"I have no desire to change it, I just want to broaden it. So that's our mission at BESE, is to broaden and reshape the existing narrative so it can better represent what America looks like today," she shared.
The Guardians of the Galaxy star, who has embraced her Hispanic roots throughout her decades in Hollywood, also took a moment to praise her Marvel and Disney family for making inclusion and representation a priority with Captain Marvel and Black Panther.
"I'm so proud of [Brie Larson], I'm so proud of Marvel Studios," she expressed. "I'm also so happy that the public received it and they really supported it, because that was the main part of this whole equation. We need to go and support these movies with female leads in order for our corporations to understand that there is a business in investing in female narratives."
"It's better representative of what America is today," Saldana continued, noting that Black Panther was a real example of diversity paying off at the box office. "It's no longer that shift of, 'Oh, can you allow this to happen?' It's more like you have to do it because if you don't, you're neglecting 49 percent of your audience."
It's also important for Saldana, a mother of three young boys, to be a part of creating content that her sons can learn from.
"[My character in Missing Link is] an immigrant, she buried her husband and now she finds herself questioning, 'What do I do? Who am I? Where do I go?' So she's in dire need of an adventure. She embarks on this adventure with them and discovers herself, but discovers that being selfless is part of self-discovery as well -- being there for others," she described.
Missing Link hits theaters on April 12. See more on Saldana in the video below.
RELATED CONTENT:
