Ava DuVernay Rips Trump’s Belief That the Central Park Five “Admitted Their Guilt”: “There’s No Truth to It”

Ava DuVernay isn’t surprised that President Trump maintains the “guilt” of the five teenage boys dubbed the Central Park Five. On Tuesday, the president was asked if he has reconsidered his stance in the wake of DuVernay’s moving series When They See Us, and he refused to acknowledge the boys’ innocence, despite the fact that they were exonerated for the 1989 rape and assault of jogger Trisha Meili. When asked about Trump’s latest comments, DuVernay said that his denial of the facts is “expected.” Added the writer and director, “It’s not our reality. There’s no truth to it.”

On Tuesday afternoon, CNN’s April Ryan asked the president if he plans to “apologize to the Central Park Five” for placing full-page ads in New York newspapers calling for the boys, Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, and Korey Wise, to be sentenced to death. “You have people on both sides of that — they admitted their guilt,” he told reporters outside the White House. “If you look at Linda Fairstein and if you look at some of the prosecutors, they think that the city should have never settled that case. So, we’ll leave it at that.”

According to the Los Angeles Times, DuVernay shrugged off Trump’s comments at a Women in Entertainment and Writers Guild of America panel on Tuesday night. “It’s expected,” she said of Trump’s defense of Linda Fairstein, who led the Manhattan District Attorney’s sex crimes unit from 1976 to 2002. “There’s nothing he says or does in relation to this case or the lives of black people or people of color that has any weight to it,” added DuVernay. “It’s not our reality, there’s no truth to it.”

When They See Us is particularly critical of both Fairstein and Trump, who is featured in news footage from 1989. At the time, Trump spoke out strongly against the five young men, writing in his ads, “I want to hate these muggers and murderers. They should be forced to suffer and, when they kill, they should be executed for their crimes. They must serve as examples so that others will think long and hard before committing a crime or an act of violence.”

While Trump is never depicted in person (whereas Felicity Huffman plays Fairstein), his presence looms large over the series, particularly in Episode 2. After Yusef Salaam’s mother Sharone (Aunjanue Ellis) sees Trump on television and reads his ad in the newspaper, she becomes distraught. “They need to keep that bigot off of TV,” she says. Talk about a moment of unfortunate foreshadowing.

Watch When They See Us on Netflix