Former U.S. ambassador to the Bahamas, entrepreneur and film producer Nicole Avant is opening up about grief and her parents’ legacy. Her memoir, “Think You’ll Be Happy,” recounts the night when her mother, Jacqueline Avant, was fatally shot during a 2021 home invasion and how Avant learned to turn her pain into purpose.
“I wanted to make sure that her legacy was cemented, ” Avant said in an interview with “CBS Mornings.”
Jacqueline Avant was married to music industry legend Clarence Avant and was a Los Angeles philanthropist and activist who was a big supporter of programs for children and the arts.
“My mom lived a life, and she lived a great life of 81 years, and she was purposeful with her life and positive with her life,” Avant said.
She said her best-selling memoir is not about loss, but about life itself.
“My mom would always say, we all talk about the circle of life, and then we put death outside of the circle, but death is inside of the circle, and I wanted to make sure that people understood that they weren’t alone, and that it’s OK to have the emotions.”
Just days before Avant’s mother died, her husband, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos, lost his father. The couple described the challenges of experiencing grief together.
“I said, ‘We’re going to go through so many rollercoaster rides, and we have to make a decision to each other that we’re going to stay together and we’re not going to let this rip us apart. We’re not going to let this take apart our marriage,'” Avant said she told Sarandos. “I understand how that happens with tragedy.”
Two years later in 2023, Avant’s father — music executive and film producer Clarence Avant — died at 92. He had been living with the couple.
“I was with Clarence when he passed and it was, for me it was very part of this life cycle, because I was not in town when my father passed away, and so to have this very intimate moment with Clarence at the end of his life … was really incredible,” Sarandos said.
Sarandos recently wrote a foreword for “Think You’ll Be Happy” at Avant’s request.
“Nicole pointed out to me, she said, ‘This is part of your journey too and it would be great if you could share it,'” Sarandos said. “It had occurred to me how much I had learned from Nicole and from this book about grief itself and I’m a fairly private person so writing this was a different exercise for me and for us.”
Working together professionally
The couple has also worked together professionally, with Avant describing Sarandos as supportive.
“I don’t go to him and say, ‘This has to be on Netflix. This has to be on Netflix.’ I go to him and he says, ‘What are you working on?’ And I say, ‘Oh my gosh we have this Six Triple Eight project and I think Tyler Perry is going to do it.’ Then he didn’t want it to go anywhere else,” she said of the movie, which was released in December.
For Sarandos, he sees more live streaming events coming to Netflix following the 2024 Christmas NFL games that aired on the streaming service.
“The main thing is I want them to be big events. I want people to be very excited,” Sarandos said. “It’s interesting because you know you can get to almost anything you want any time you want now, so in those moments when you actually get together live, it’s very exciting.”
