Ava DuVernay stunned on Oscars red carpet with longtime beau she ‘kept hidden for a long time’
TheGrio...
The acclaimed filmmaker made a hard launch with her beau, whose name she did not reveal ahead of Sunday’s Academy Awards ceremony.
Ava DuVernay chose Oscar Sunday as a moment of reflection and revelation.
The Oscar-nominated director revealed that the ceremony arrived on the 10th anniversary of the death of her father and in a carousel post on Instagram, DuVernay reflected on the moment, while also sharing clips of her dress from Louis Vuitton and the red carpet debut of her and her boyfriend.
During a conversation with Essence on the red carpet, DuVernay was asked what she was most proud of going into the night. “Right now, I am proud of myself for coming to the Oscars with my honey, who I’ve kept hidden for a long time.”
“But now he’s here,” she added.
DuVernay did not reveal the gentleman’s name but the striking individual matched her flowing blue dress with his own impeccable style, thanks to Ozwald Boateng. On the same night she celebrated love out loud, DuVernay held resolve when looking back at her childhood and how much her father meant to her.
“This Oscar day landed on the tenth anniversary of my father’s passing. That day in 2016 was the worst day of my life,” she wrote on Instagram. “On the same day a decade later, I had one of the best days of my life. I’ve been to many Oscars. They are cool events. But on this day, I took my honey with me and it was… different. Felt like opening a new window in the house. A fresh breeze drifted through. I had so much fun because I know my Pop is smiling on me. He worried about me. That I worked too much. That I wouldn’t make time for other parts of life.”
She continued, “Time. It is a lot of things. But most profoundly for me, it is a healer. My father’s journey onward was once an open wound. Now, it is a scar. Ever present. But it debilitates me less often. It now serves as a reminder of love. In all its forms.”
In 2025, DuVernay opened up on her decision not to get married or have children. In a sit-down with Kenya Barris and Malcolm Gladwell for their “The Unusual Suspects with Kenya Barris and Malcolm Gladwell” podcast, DuVernay cited her childhood as the oldest at five as one of the main reasons.
“I’ve have had a lot of small children in my life for a long time, so I never felt like I wanted to have kids,” DuVernay said at the time. “My family, my mom, would always say, for a little while before she realized I was serious, ‘You’ll change your mind.’ I don’t feel like I would be a good mother for a child. I don’t want to do that and I think in the most ideal scenario, you should want to do that. I just don’t want to.”
Even if children might not be in her future, love definitely is in her present … and it might stick around for a while.