Latest / The Breakfast Club / INTERVIEW: Mara Brock Akil Talks ‘Forever,' Black Love, Lessons From Storytelling, Girlfriends’ Movie + More

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INTERVIEW: Mara Brock Akil Talks ‘Forever,' Black Love, Lessons From Storytelling, Girlfriends’ Movie + More · The Breakfast Club

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Wake that ass up in the morning. The Breakfast Club Morning,
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: everybody is j n V.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: Just hilarious, Charlamagne the gud We are to Breakfast Club
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: and Lola Rosa is here as well, and we got
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: a special guest in the building, legendary.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: That's right, Miss Mark rock A Kill.
• 0:16
  Speaker 3: Welcome, thank you, good good morning, good morning. Nice to
• 0:19
  Speaker 3: be here.
• 0:20
  Speaker 4: How are you, bless Black and Holly favorite. How's your energy?
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: It's great? Okay, I'm really I'm floating.
• 0:25
  Speaker 4: How does it feel to have yet another hit TV show?
• 0:29
  Speaker 3: Another another hit TV show? But this is global?
• 0:34
  Speaker 5: This is like the first time I have been on
• 0:37
  Speaker 5: a stage this big. Normally my shows are on up
• 0:42
  Speaker 5: and coming networks, so I feel like an angen new
• 0:46
  Speaker 5: Actually I feel I feel both veteran and both. I'm
• 0:52
  Speaker 5: also in awe. You know, it's just this an idea
• 0:57
  Speaker 5: is a global conversation. That is, it's kind of I'm
• 1:01
  Speaker 5: sitting in that. Mostly my career, I've been thinking about
• 1:04
  Speaker 5: a national conversation, but this is a global one. And
• 1:07
  Speaker 5: I mean, I've always known that our stories are global,
• 1:11
  Speaker 5: but for it to be a reality, it's pretty special
• 1:14
  Speaker 5: and another hit right to be at it? Thirty years
• 1:17
  Speaker 5: in the game, thirty years in the game.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: But let's talk about it.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: Of course, for people that are just tuning in, you
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: created shows like Girlfriends the.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Game, Being Mary Jane. You've written on The Jamie Fox
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: Show and so many others. But this one.
• 1:30
  Speaker 5: Is so many, see so many see you.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: This one's on Yeah, this one's on Netflix.
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: So how did the next the Netflix play come together?
• 1:43
  Speaker 5: We're doing for I had a deal, you know, my
• 1:44
  Speaker 5: career did garner me a really wonderful deal out of
• 1:47
  Speaker 5: that deal?
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: I did stamp.
• 1:48
  Speaker 5: From the beginning, I hope you guys all saw that
• 1:50
  Speaker 5: amazing documentary that Roger ross Will directed, but about doctor
• 1:55
  Speaker 5: Abraham Kindy's work about the racist lies, I mean, the
• 2:00
  Speaker 5: myths of racism. That was my first offering in my deal,
• 2:04
  Speaker 5: and this was the second. It took a minute, strikes
• 2:08
  Speaker 5: and executive changes and whatnot. It took a minute to
• 2:11
  Speaker 5: get this one out, but it was it was special.
• 2:14
  Speaker 5: From the beginning, I met Judy Bloom somebody Else's come on.
• 2:18
  Speaker 6: Come on, two of my favorite storytellers.
• 2:20
  Speaker 5: Come on, I mean, I mean, and that's God.
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: First of all, I didn't even realize that the book
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: was going to be fifty years old.
• 2:29
  Speaker 5: By the time re released, it was not even in
• 2:31
  Speaker 5: my thinking of that time seventy five.
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: But yeah, it took us a minute to get it out,
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: but we got it out.
• 2:38
  Speaker 5: And so when Netflix heard that that my take on
• 2:44
  Speaker 5: her story she was about, they were like, we are
• 2:48
  Speaker 5: about that too.
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: So it was a beautiful synergy.
• 2:51
  Speaker 5: One thing I will say about Netflix, when they're behind something,
• 2:53
  Speaker 5: they are behind it completely supported, resourced. I think that's
• 2:57
  Speaker 5: what's important to me in this this moment of this
• 3:01
  Speaker 5: hit show is that it was my vision was supported financially.
• 3:06
  Speaker 5: And also the episode Vive we went to the vineyard,
• 3:12
  Speaker 5: taking your crew across the country in the middle of production.
• 3:16
  Speaker 5: That is another level of support and in a place
• 3:19
  Speaker 5: that the infrastructure is not there. Thank you so much. Yeah,
• 3:22
  Speaker 5: so it was it was amazing to feel like, wow,
• 3:24
  Speaker 5: I'm supported, to got money, to have the vision that
• 3:27
  Speaker 5: I want and to get the people that I need,
• 3:30
  Speaker 5: the collaborators.
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: It's been amazing.
• 3:33
  Speaker 5: So short answer is Judy Bluem is marlbacker kill Netflix
• 3:37
  Speaker 5: wanted all of that.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: We approach Netflix, do you approach it differently?
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: Because you know what a lot of the shows that
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: we spoke about is you have to wait for next week, right,
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: So it's almost like you can't wait, you schedule it,
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: you write it down. Well, Netflix, a lot of times
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: it's a lot differently because everything is right there, smacking.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: You can binge watch.
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: It at your own leisure.
• 3:55
  Speaker 5: Yeah, correct, when you know that's I think that's what
• 3:58
  Speaker 5: I'm thankful for to know how to make television and
• 4:02
  Speaker 5: be able to stretch the canvas differently given different circumstances.
• 4:05
  Speaker 5: And so my job is to keep those keep you
• 4:08
  Speaker 5: on those eight episodes. I learned that back in the
• 4:12
  Speaker 5: day when we used to have to do cliffhangers for
• 4:14
  Speaker 5: the season, like you know, during Girlfriends or even Moesha.
• 4:17
  Speaker 5: We had to get you watching for the you know,
• 4:19
  Speaker 5: for the end of the season or if there was
• 4:20
  Speaker 5: a break in the middle of the season. So I
• 4:22
  Speaker 5: learned how to craft that shout out to my mentor,
• 4:25
  Speaker 5: I'm always gonna shout out my mentor, Ralph Farquhar.
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: I learned how to.
• 4:29
  Speaker 5: Make TV that way, how to keep you engage, how
• 4:31
  Speaker 5: to keep.
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: That binge going.
• 4:34
  Speaker 5: So I understood that, but it also was it was
• 4:38
  Speaker 5: also sort of just a fun way to play in
• 4:41
  Speaker 5: their sandbox. How do you win on their with their rules,
• 4:45
  Speaker 5: and so that was for me as a creative is wonderful.
• 4:48
  Speaker 5: But there's like that athlete spirit in me, like I
• 4:51
  Speaker 5: want the like all right, I'll with the ball, let's go.
• 4:53
  Speaker 5: So that was fun to figure out.
• 4:55
  Speaker 6: You said Judy Bloom was your first permission slip as
• 4:59
  Speaker 6: a storyteller.
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: Oh my goodness.
• 5:01
  Speaker 6: So how does your in a child feel knowing that
• 5:03
  Speaker 6: you have done such justice to want her iconic works?
• 5:06
  Speaker 5: Why does my innergy she feels on cloud nine. She
• 5:09
  Speaker 5: is twirling, she is cartwell. I used to cartwell back
• 5:12
  Speaker 5: in the day. I could cartwheel, backband, all the things
• 5:14
  Speaker 5: she's doing. All of that, I'm very proud of myself.
• 5:17
  Speaker 5: It was interesting because my body of work, or I
• 5:20
  Speaker 5: approached my work, I don't ever I never saw myself
• 5:23
  Speaker 5: as needing ip. I'm like, I'm full of stories. I'm
• 5:27
  Speaker 5: full of original stories. So but when the opportunity to
• 5:33
  Speaker 5: reimagine one of her books, there was no thinking. My
• 5:36
  Speaker 5: hand just went up and I feel like it was
• 5:38
  Speaker 5: a little protective as well. It was like, I want
• 5:40
  Speaker 5: to protect that story. I want to be able to
• 5:41
  Speaker 5: tell that story. But my little girl is like she's
• 5:47
  Speaker 5: she cabbage passion.
• 5:51
  Speaker 4: Does she feel like she made it.
• 5:52
  Speaker 5: Do you feel like you felt like she's felt like
• 5:54
  Speaker 5: she's made it a long while ago. I think this
• 5:56
  Speaker 5: is different in that it's a full circle moment.
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: I feel.
• 6:00
  Speaker 5: I often say that you become a writer as a
• 6:02
  Speaker 5: reader first, and so I used to get lost in
• 6:05
  Speaker 5: the pages of Judy Blue, and so for me to
• 6:08
  Speaker 5: be just the divinity of it, like the divineness of it,
• 6:12
  Speaker 5: that I would come full circle fifty years later, like
• 6:15
  Speaker 5: those kinds of things, right, It's almost like it was
• 6:17
  Speaker 5: written for me. It was written for me and Judy.
• 6:19
  Speaker 5: Matter of fact, I'm going to get a chance to
• 6:21
  Speaker 5: meet her personally.
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: I'm so excited going down to Key with yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, ok,
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: yeah yeah.
• 6:27
  Speaker 5: You live this life once and I'm gonna live in
• 6:29
  Speaker 5: that dream. So I'm excited to meet her. We met
• 6:31
  Speaker 5: at the time on zoom and talked on the phone
• 6:35
  Speaker 5: and emailed, but just to meet her and say thank
• 6:38
  Speaker 5: you and have her signed my book. I'm just that
• 6:40
  Speaker 5: twelve year old girl is running to Key with it.
• 6:44
  Speaker 4: I've done it a couple of times, yeah, just to
• 6:46
  Speaker 4: Cooks Blue.
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: About love, Yeah, just to know.
• 6:50
  Speaker 5: That's why what I really would love is for people
• 6:53
  Speaker 5: to honor more of their story, the craftsmanship, sitting in
• 6:56
  Speaker 5: the chair and writing. That woman sat in the chair
• 6:58
  Speaker 5: and wrote. I mean, it's like she never got out
• 7:03
  Speaker 5: of the chair, just writing and that and what it
• 7:06
  Speaker 5: would do just someone sharing the story, just my own
• 7:09
  Speaker 5: testimony is it ignited something in me. And I think
• 7:13
  Speaker 5: that even the feedback I'm getting from the show, not
• 7:16
  Speaker 5: just the show, but the shows I've had in my career,
• 7:18
  Speaker 5: it has ignited other storytellers. And I want us to
• 7:21
  Speaker 5: do I want us to do more by that. We
• 7:23
  Speaker 5: have so many stories in us that will die in
• 7:26
  Speaker 5: us if we don't even start crafting them and writing
• 7:29
  Speaker 5: them down.
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: And I appreciate like social media.
• 7:32
  Speaker 5: And we can do things video and content. I get
• 7:34
  Speaker 5: that too, and that's a beautiful expression. But to literally
• 7:38
  Speaker 5: craft story from a writing perspective, to have those layers
• 7:42
  Speaker 5: of theme and complexity, and understanding that her book is
• 7:48
  Speaker 5: still through this show now, is still it still lives,
• 7:55
  Speaker 5: It's universal, it's forever. But I'm bump what I did there.
• 8:00
  Speaker 7: The original book was written in the seventies, Yeah, seventy five.
• 8:03
  Speaker 7: Why did you choose to specifically set this story in
• 8:06
  Speaker 7: twenty eighteen. Well, I had to look at what would
• 8:10
  Speaker 7: make it fresh today and what to maybe have to
• 8:13
  Speaker 7: look at what where the kids are today? And Judy
• 8:17
  Speaker 7: and I talked about, well, they know a lot about sex,
• 8:21
  Speaker 7: like there's so much you could just hit Twitter, hit
• 8:24
  Speaker 7: hit whatever.
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: There's no Twitter anymore. You get the point.
• 8:27
  Speaker 5: But intimacy, connection, those things, I think we're further away.
• 8:35
  Speaker 5: Even though we are more technical technolo I can't get
• 8:38
  Speaker 5: this word out technologically advanced, we don't have. Though these
• 8:44
  Speaker 5: tools are meant to connect us, we are using them
• 8:46
  Speaker 5: in very disconnecting ways. And I think that to bring
• 8:50
  Speaker 5: the phone into the conversation, one of it is an
• 8:53
  Speaker 5: opportunity to talk about something unique to this culture.
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: I mean, excuse me culture, but this generation.
• 8:58
  Speaker 5: Excuse me, what it is doing to them personally emotional,
• 9:03
  Speaker 5: their emotional self there there, and then how it's even
• 9:06
  Speaker 5: affecting their physical self and then affecting their future. And
• 9:09
  Speaker 5: that's what the book was about, how do we explore
• 9:11
  Speaker 5: our emotional self, our physical self while maintaining a healthy future.
• 9:16
  Speaker 5: And this was my conversation today. Also between I also
• 9:21
  Speaker 5: wanted to talk about in the black family.
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: By by changing the white family.
• 9:24
  Speaker 5: To black, it allowed me to also talk about a
• 9:27
  Speaker 5: time that I think is very important for us to document,
• 9:32
  Speaker 5: between Trayvon Martin's murder and George floyd murder. George Floyd's murder,
• 9:37
  Speaker 5: we as black people, we as black families, as mothers
• 9:40
  Speaker 5: and fathers, we were screaming into a vacuum about the
• 9:44
  Speaker 5: fear over our children.
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: And there was no amount of fancy zip codes.
• 9:48
  Speaker 5: Or education that can save your child, you know, And
• 9:53
  Speaker 5: that was scary, and I wanted, I needed a place
• 9:56
  Speaker 5: for me as a mother to release all of that fear.
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: And then also then look at how much.
• 10:02
  Speaker 5: We are we are out of love, but we are
• 10:07
  Speaker 5: raising our children from that fear, and how that is
• 10:11
  Speaker 5: hurting our children and their inability to have a natural
• 10:15
  Speaker 5: right of passage to explore again their emotional their emotional self,
• 10:21
  Speaker 5: their emotional maturity, their physical self, their physical maturity, to
• 10:25
  Speaker 5: have sex or not have sex, who to have it with,
• 10:28
  Speaker 5: what's the right conditions, all of those choices that they're
• 10:32
  Speaker 5: supposed to be making right now to protect.
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: The beautiful future. And that's another thing.
• 10:37
  Speaker 5: We need to open up some space because our children
• 10:40
  Speaker 5: also need a future and it's tough out there, and
• 10:43
  Speaker 5: I couldn't imagine being them today thinking about people, what
• 10:47
  Speaker 5: do you want to be with your grow up? Well,
• 10:49
  Speaker 5: what's out there? And so and we adults need to
• 10:52
  Speaker 5: get it together. And so this is a part of
• 10:55
  Speaker 5: my offering.
• 10:56
  Speaker 8: When the When the book so and back in the seventies,
• 10:59
  Speaker 8: it was controversial because of the things that it explored.
• 11:01
  Speaker 8: Today it's not controversial because we are so open. Like
• 11:04
  Speaker 8: what you talk about when you were crafting, like what
• 11:07
  Speaker 8: the storyline would be and how you would redo it.
• 11:09
  Speaker 8: Were there things that you were like, I want to
• 11:11
  Speaker 8: make sure I get to or make sure I get
• 11:13
  Speaker 8: in this storyline. Because you also made it feel closer
• 11:14
  Speaker 8: to home for like black teens, you know, now forever
• 11:17
  Speaker 8: feels like it's our story. But you had to do
• 11:19
  Speaker 8: it a different way.
• 11:20
  Speaker 4: You know.
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: I think it's controversial black male vulnerability. It's just there's
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: no room for it. I think there's no images for it.
• 11:28
  Speaker 5: And yet when I'm looking in the world and within
• 11:31
  Speaker 5: my own children, their friends in the community beyond that,
• 11:35
  Speaker 5: a lot of boys and more specifically black boys, they're
• 11:38
  Speaker 5: not all that hard, you know. They don't have any
• 11:41
  Speaker 5: room for their complexity, they don't have any room for
• 11:44
  Speaker 5: their feelings. Like it's always funny to me, especially by
• 11:47
  Speaker 5: the group of boys that I'm around. They're all privileged,
• 11:49
  Speaker 5: they live a great life. Time to take a picture,
• 11:51
  Speaker 5: they were laughing two seconds ago. You try and take
• 11:53
  Speaker 5: the picture, and then they get that stoic.
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: Cake what you mean mugging for?
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: You know?
• 12:00
  Speaker 5: And if you realize how much that's imparted on young
• 12:03
  Speaker 5: black boys all the time about what is manly? What
• 12:06
  Speaker 5: are those images of what a man is? And I
• 12:09
  Speaker 5: wanted to make a room.
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: For the real reflection. I'm actually looking at the real thing.
• 12:15
  Speaker 5: It's just what gets on that bigger screen and how
• 12:17
  Speaker 5: important it is. I know, we talk about representation matters.
• 12:21
  Speaker 5: That's why it matters. You got to see yourself.
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: In order to decide is that beautiful? Is that how
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: I want to look?
• 12:29
  Speaker 4: You know?
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: Is that right? That type? You know? I can't see it.
• 12:32
  Speaker 5: And I think I also think boys, and working on
• 12:36
  Speaker 5: this project, it made me look at something I hadn't
• 12:39
  Speaker 5: looked at before. I think boys are getting their heartbroken
• 12:41
  Speaker 5: a lot sooner.
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: I felt so bad for justin the whole time.
• 12:45
  Speaker 8: Why because I just felt like some of the things
• 12:48
  Speaker 8: that they were experiencing, Like I mean, I remember being
• 12:51
  Speaker 8: that age and going through like my first like relationship things.
• 12:53
  Speaker 8: But I don't know, I just felt like a lot
• 12:56
  Speaker 8: of times the characters they were yearning for this like
• 12:59
  Speaker 8: space of life, like I don't know, to just be
• 13:02
  Speaker 8: okay and the things would be going good and then
• 13:04
  Speaker 8: something what else would happen to be? Something small would
• 13:06
  Speaker 8: be like for Kesha, like the video gets sent to
• 13:09
  Speaker 8: her phone and she's finally in this relationship.
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: You know what I mean.
• 13:11
  Speaker 8: Like things were just like happening and I'm like dying kids,
• 13:14
  Speaker 8: Like why can't they just be and not deal with
• 13:17
  Speaker 8: these things?
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: But yes, life, and it's also technology that we didn't have.
• 13:21
  Speaker 5: We got some freedoms without you know that they don't
• 13:24
  Speaker 5: They're not afforded. And so that's what I want to
• 13:27
  Speaker 5: talk about. It's like, are we making any room for them?
• 13:30
  Speaker 5: Like one of the things that I love when we
• 13:32
  Speaker 5: every production meeting, I said, we're making an epic and
• 13:35
  Speaker 5: intimate love story within a love letter to Los Angeles, right,
• 13:39
  Speaker 5: And what that meant to me is that we need
• 13:41
  Speaker 5: to see them in scope and scale and epic. I
• 13:45
  Speaker 5: need to see them their bodies in the space in
• 13:48
  Speaker 5: Los Angeles. What that means is that they it's a
• 13:51
  Speaker 5: feeling cinematically that I'm making you feel that they belong here,
• 13:56
  Speaker 5: and when they belong here, they belong to us, And
• 13:58
  Speaker 5: so you would engage with our children differently, psychologically, emotionally.
• 14:03
  Speaker 5: Those things are important in our image. On the details,
• 14:07
  Speaker 5: the details on anyone makes them feel more human to you.
• 14:10
  Speaker 5: So I want to make just room for their humanity
• 14:13
  Speaker 5: so that we think about the measures around technology, we
• 14:20
  Speaker 5: think about what the rules are for these kids. I mean,
• 14:23
  Speaker 5: these kids are being told today that you make one
• 14:25
  Speaker 5: false move, you won't get a scholarship.
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: I mean, come on, it's the truth that follows them
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: for the rest of their lives and the rest of
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: their lives.
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: And that where is any room, there's no humanity in that.
• 14:33
  Speaker 8: That's how I felt, maybe that that was yes, at
• 14:36
  Speaker 8: the humanity part. I'm like, yo, she's young, she made
• 14:38
  Speaker 8: a mistake.
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: Yep.
• 14:39
  Speaker 8: Now it's following her, and it's like he's in love
• 14:41
  Speaker 8: and he just doesn't how to navigate it. Now he
• 14:43
  Speaker 8: feels like he's not a good person or not not
• 14:45
  Speaker 8: a good person. He doesn't feel like he can win
• 14:47
  Speaker 8: the girl in the beginning of things, and I felt
• 14:49
  Speaker 8: bad for that, Like.
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: But you know what, back in the day. Back in
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: the day, boys have to walk across the room to
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: ask you to dance. Did you ever have you ever
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: done that?
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: This course?
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, how did you ever get rejected?
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: No?
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: Before you was, because I'll be honest, I only went
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: when I knew I was going to be received. If
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: I knew I was gonna get rejected or there was
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: a fifty to fifty chance, I wasn't gonna try. Of course,
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: remember it wasn't you know back then it was a
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: party and everybody standing on the wall and you have to,
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: like you said, you have to walk across. And if
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: I knew this person wasn't feeling me, didn't weaken, we
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: didn't have a crush on me, didn't write me, I
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: wasn't going. But if I knew that I got that little stair,
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: that little smile, I was gonna go.
• 15:33
  Speaker 5: So it was well, those socials that you have to
• 15:37
  Speaker 5: learn in real time, we're not learning that.
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: There's no space for that.
• 15:41
  Speaker 5: So I'm advocating for I want the kids to be
• 15:44
  Speaker 5: back outside. Like it's even sad we shot on Fairfax
• 15:46
  Speaker 5: Avenue right it's a ghost town right now.
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: But back in twenty eighteen, where it was depicted.
• 15:52
  Speaker 5: That was a place for them to be, but there's
• 15:54
  Speaker 5: we are where are kids allowed to be?
• 15:57
  Speaker 4: But that's why I love the scene. I love the
• 15:59
  Speaker 4: scenes and mall.
• 16:02
  Speaker 6: Oh god, especially at the prom, because I feel like
• 16:04
  Speaker 6: in that moment, Justin was you know, everybody talked about
• 16:09
  Speaker 6: he's chasing the young lady.
• 16:10
  Speaker 4: To me, it felt like he was chasing his blackness.
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, thank you for seeing that.
• 16:15
  Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, one of the things I was trying
• 16:17
  Speaker 5: to say, trying to keep your son, trying to keep
• 16:19
  Speaker 5: our children safe.
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: Sometimes we're isolating them.
• 16:21
  Speaker 5: He had a pretty prison, but it was up on
• 16:24
  Speaker 5: the hill, isolated, and he's looking for more. But I
• 16:29
  Speaker 5: can also understand don she's so scared to put him outside,
• 16:32
  Speaker 5: you know, also scared is he going to measure up
• 16:35
  Speaker 5: to where they are? You know I'm saying she's probably
• 16:37
  Speaker 5: not saying that, but that's psychologically, it's kind of it's
• 16:40
  Speaker 5: under there.
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: But fun fact, I was so proud as.
• 16:43
  Speaker 5: A producer to put all those black and brown kids
• 16:48
  Speaker 5: taking over the Pantamonica Peer. I don't you know, I
• 16:51
  Speaker 5: found one of the location. I think that's I think
• 16:54
  Speaker 5: the last time someone took over the Peer at that scale.
• 16:58
  Speaker 4: Was.
• 17:00
  Speaker 5: I was like, okay, but that means something to me,
• 17:03
  Speaker 5: That means something that we how we take up the space,
• 17:05
  Speaker 5: the epicness and the beauty of us. These these kids
• 17:09
  Speaker 5: are looking like this all over our country and we
• 17:12
  Speaker 5: see it on Instagram or TikTok or things like that.
• 17:14
  Speaker 5: But to put it on that scale, that level of beauty,
• 17:16
  Speaker 5: Anthony Hemingway directed his butt off in that.
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: You know, the kids were just beautiful.
• 17:22
  Speaker 5: The our costume designers amaze, our production design was amazing.
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: Our cinema tygraph was amazing. You know what I'm saying.
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: We had We had the thing lit up.
• 17:30
  Speaker 5: I was on cloud nine that day that we shot
• 17:33
  Speaker 5: and we got out of their safe and sound.
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: That's also important.
• 17:36
  Speaker 5: But it's uh, our kids having space in the world,
• 17:42
  Speaker 5: chasing their chasing themselves, figuring out who they are, including
• 17:47
  Speaker 5: of their blackness, including of their you know, what they like,
• 17:50
  Speaker 5: just who they are. Even the making room for I know,
• 17:52
  Speaker 5: I get a lot of comments around he likes Naruto.
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, a lot of black kids love Narto. You know,
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: we're a part of the world. So that was fun.
• 18:00
  Speaker 6: And as much as it's a story about the kids,
• 18:02
  Speaker 6: it's a story about the adults right, Like, like the
• 18:05
  Speaker 6: way Judy Bloom made people feel seen at thirteen, it
• 18:07
  Speaker 6: feels to me like you're making us feel seen at
• 18:09
  Speaker 6: forty something, fifty something. So what do those ages need
• 18:12
  Speaker 6: that nobody's writing about.
• 18:16
  Speaker 5: I'm going to keep saying this over it just more complexity, more.
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: Of our human side.
• 18:23
  Speaker 5: Like don't you know I've said before, I don't you know,
• 18:26
  Speaker 5: I don't really believe in positive images. I think they
• 18:29
  Speaker 5: can be just as damaging as negative images.
• 18:32
  Speaker 4: What do you mean found on that break that down?
• 18:34
  Speaker 5: Because okay, so the negative image is is a product
• 18:41
  Speaker 5: of a lie, going back to the documentary, like, it's
• 18:45
  Speaker 5: the perpetuating the lies and the mists of us that's
• 18:50
  Speaker 5: been out there. So a lot of black people want
• 18:52
  Speaker 5: a positive image because they want to rewrite the wrong
• 18:57
  Speaker 5: of somebody else's view of me. But what that doesn't
• 18:59
  Speaker 5: as an artist, it keeps me behind the eight ball.
• 19:01
  Speaker 5: I'm chasing up and trying to clean up somebody else's mess.
• 19:05
  Speaker 5: I'm from the Zori nil Hurston school of thought. I
• 19:07
  Speaker 5: know my people, I see my people. I want to
• 19:09
  Speaker 5: be able to talk about them fully and in the
• 19:12
  Speaker 5: spectrum of our humanity, there is.
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: Light and dark. We are not. We are not perfect.
• 19:18
  Speaker 5: To be perfect, that's just as hard to be perfect
• 19:21
  Speaker 5: as it is to be bad.
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: Like I want to, I want the spectrum of my humanity.
• 19:24
  Speaker 5: I want to be able to make a mistake and
• 19:26
  Speaker 5: have my village patch me up and put me back
• 19:29
  Speaker 5: out there. I deserve that. You deserve that, We deserve that.
• 19:32
  Speaker 5: And so I want the spectrum of who I am.
• 19:35
  Speaker 5: And sometimes i'm you know, sometimes I'm not great, and
• 19:38
  Speaker 5: sometimes I am in the same day, in the same hour,
• 19:42
  Speaker 5: and I deserve that, that sort of exploration of who
• 19:45
  Speaker 5: I am as a human being, and I give that
• 19:47
  Speaker 5: to my characters. I think Dawn, for instance, you know,
• 19:50
  Speaker 5: people there's a lot of conversation about her as a mother,
• 19:53
  Speaker 5: but that black mother has raised a lot of kids
• 19:57
  Speaker 5: to get them, to keep them alive, does she or
• 20:00
  Speaker 5: looking at herself? Yes, my hi, my name is Marb
• 20:04
  Speaker 5: Barack and kill and I'm a former Dawn. I put
• 20:06
  Speaker 5: my pain on the screen. I think, you know, I
• 20:09
  Speaker 5: wanted to out of love. I'm trying to overprotect my
• 20:13
  Speaker 5: children and rightfully so.
• 20:15
  Speaker 6: Yeah, but and you end up, well, she ended up
• 20:17
  Speaker 6: raising her child out of fear and not love, and
• 20:20
  Speaker 6: that's a question I always ask because I feel like
• 20:22
  Speaker 6: my father raised me out of fear and I love,
• 20:24
  Speaker 6: not meaning that he didn't love me.
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: Yes, they love, and the kids know that. The kids
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: know that they love. But it still feels constrained.
• 20:29
  Speaker 6: But that dynamic was amazing, the way you had don
• 20:32
  Speaker 6: you know, being the overprotective parent who was raising her
• 20:34
  Speaker 6: son out of fear and I love. But then the
• 20:37
  Speaker 6: father Wood Harris character was you know, high emotional like
• 20:41
  Speaker 6: Q you know, very vulnerable, soft with his son in
• 20:45
  Speaker 6: a way that we don't really see on TV, especially
• 20:48
  Speaker 6: between black men and between black men period.
• 20:51
  Speaker 4: You thought that was incredible.
• 20:52
  Speaker 5: Thank you, I really, first of all, shout out to
• 20:55
  Speaker 5: Wood Harris and Karen Pittman, thank you.
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: Kill You couldn't catch did it any better? No?
• 21:01
  Speaker 5: I mean that, I mean as soon as we met
• 21:04
  Speaker 5: Lovey and Michael and put them together, it was like,
• 21:07
  Speaker 5: come on, chemistry off off the jump.
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: Their chemistry was amazing. Karen and Woods, you know.
• 21:18
  Speaker 5: That I did want to depict two types of black
• 21:20
  Speaker 5: families that are that we that we recognize, right but
• 21:24
  Speaker 5: speaking about the Edwards for a moment, it just shows
• 21:28
  Speaker 5: you the need to have two partners in a home
• 21:32
  Speaker 5: just the balance of it all.
• 21:33
  Speaker 4: Astely, I think.
• 21:34
  Speaker 5: That Eric could be that because he has such a
• 21:37
  Speaker 5: solid foundation in down and vice versa. I'm saying, I
• 21:42
  Speaker 5: feel like he had his emotional maturity is because how
• 21:46
  Speaker 5: much he is loved also by her and so and
• 21:51
  Speaker 5: he can allow for her fear in a moment like this.
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: Keep in mind, he's also aware of her worries.
• 21:58
  Speaker 5: About her children were so he understands and boys, and
• 22:04
  Speaker 5: he understands how how assertive she is, and he knows
• 22:08
  Speaker 5: all that stuff about her. And that's a lot of
• 22:09
  Speaker 5: my backstory when I'm writing those characters, and how much
• 22:13
  Speaker 5: and it's and it is irritating in parenting when you
• 22:17
  Speaker 5: have different approaches at a very crucial moment when now
• 22:20
  Speaker 5: the kids can talk back, you know, I mean when
• 22:22
  Speaker 5: they're younger, it's a little you know, it's a little
• 22:24
  Speaker 5: easier on the parenting different dynamics sometimes, but the stakes
• 22:29
  Speaker 5: being high right these these children about to be out
• 22:32
  Speaker 5: of the house, those things get a little bit, you know,
• 22:35
  Speaker 5: we all react a little differently.
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: We'll talk about the importance of that. I think we
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: missed that a lot.
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: We've seen it a lot more with my parents, But
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: I think in these days, people don't, I don't think,
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: care to really respect a two parent household.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: It just seems like it's it's.
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: Very loose, and people forget about what it means to
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: kids and how important it is.
• 22:54
  Speaker 5: Well, it's just another witness to the you know, to
• 22:56
  Speaker 5: the witnessing in a lot of ways, Like you know,
• 22:59
  Speaker 5: one of things in my own parenting, I used to
• 23:02
  Speaker 5: get frustrated about why the kids seem to act up
• 23:06
  Speaker 5: a little bit more with me than they did with
• 23:09
  Speaker 5: their father.
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: And I was like, and I would complain this lame
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: all the time.
• 23:13
  Speaker 5: And then I later I realized, Wow, what a privilege
• 23:15
  Speaker 5: it is that your children are the safest with you
• 23:20
  Speaker 5: to act that you know what out you know, and
• 23:24
  Speaker 5: you're just like, oh, I am the safest place in
• 23:27
  Speaker 5: the world for them to be to just show they ask.
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: And when you.
• 23:32
  Speaker 5: Realize that honor, it's like, oh, okay, so then how
• 23:36
  Speaker 5: can I then how can I just be fortified, you know,
• 23:39
  Speaker 5: in order to take those moments right? When I realized
• 23:43
  Speaker 5: then I feel like the father or the second parent
• 23:46
  Speaker 5: is the first bridge to the outside world, and how
• 23:50
  Speaker 5: needed that role is because they kind of, you know,
• 23:54
  Speaker 5: they they rise up a little bit.
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: They you know, they they act, they act a little
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: bit better.
• 23:59
  Speaker 5: For dad, you know time and in the case of
• 24:01
  Speaker 5: our home, right and so there's a bridge to that
• 24:04
  Speaker 5: emotional uh maturity that they can.
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: Move through. And then then you drop them off at
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: somebody's house and they come back. Your kid is.
• 24:14
  Speaker 5: Amazing, they did this, they did that, And you're like, oh,
• 24:17
  Speaker 5: so you do know how to act.
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: And that that just rhythm.
• 24:22
  Speaker 5: And then sometimes you know, when I would be upset
• 24:26
  Speaker 5: about things, I did have someone there to tell me.
• 24:29
  Speaker 5: Are you're fine, they love you, You're you're you're you're
• 24:34
  Speaker 5: tripping a little bit. You just relax a little bit.
• 24:36
  Speaker 5: But that level of care, that level of the dance
• 24:44
  Speaker 5: between the parents and the child is actually beautiful when
• 24:47
  Speaker 5: you finally settle down into it and get into the roles.
• 24:51
  Speaker 5: They're just rolls and it's okay to it's okay to
• 24:53
  Speaker 5: lean into them. And then and then there's sometimes that
• 24:56
  Speaker 5: like I get things that they don't get. I get
• 24:59
  Speaker 5: not just the acting out, I get those I get
• 25:02
  Speaker 5: those intimate details, you know, I get those real when
• 25:05
  Speaker 5: they're really really safe and they're telling you things, You're like, oh, shoot,
• 25:08
  Speaker 5: I'm trying to remember it so I can so I
• 25:10
  Speaker 5: can go back and tell.
• 25:11
  Speaker 8: Don't tell that and something you don't yeah for a while.
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: Right, Well, see my wife, My wife will say, well,
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna tell dad, but he's not gonna judge. You're
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: not getting in trouble or you know some things. But
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: I have the most difficult time with really being understanding, right,
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: And the reason being is similar to what you just said.
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: Like my wife will yell at my kids every day,
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: right for something small. I yell once a week, yes,
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: and it's the worst thing ever. And I'm like the
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: time mom doesn't yell like it was the same yell,
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: but they feel like Mom is that safe place they
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: can open up, they can be comfortable, but Dad is
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: the barrier to the outside world.
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: To the outside world, and to see that.
• 25:49
  Speaker 5: And then on on Keisha's side, being you know, having
• 25:52
  Speaker 5: a single mother, how much you need a village. So
• 25:56
  Speaker 5: she's very resourced and you know, the Edwards were more
• 25:59
  Speaker 5: resource finance. Actually they got nannies and housekeepers and stuff.
• 26:03
  Speaker 5: She's got the bills, she's got cousins, she's got her grandfather,
• 26:07
  Speaker 5: her dad. And then we that was that was purposeful.
• 26:09
  Speaker 5: We revealed that the Dad's been around. We just he's
• 26:12
  Speaker 5: not physically there all the time and he's not carrying
• 26:15
  Speaker 5: his complete share, but he is present.
• 26:23
  Speaker 6: I would just say that everybody is represented in this show.
• 26:28
  Speaker 6: What's the most uncomfortable truth you had to face the
• 26:30
  Speaker 6: right forever?
• 26:31
  Speaker 5: Honestly, just you know, you'd like to think that you're
• 26:37
  Speaker 5: an amazing mother, just with my shortcomings as a mother.
• 26:42
  Speaker 5: I think when I acknowledge that, I think not only
• 26:46
  Speaker 5: my children and then our our community of children need
• 26:49
  Speaker 5: more space. We had to look at where I was
• 26:52
  Speaker 5: allowing that. I think that was uncomfortable. I think the
• 26:56
  Speaker 5: other part was the depiction of getting into the nitty
• 27:01
  Speaker 5: gritty around these like the sex tapes and then the
• 27:05
  Speaker 5: betrayals that are happening with these children whose brains aren't
• 27:09
  Speaker 5: fully functioned yet and making bad. Wanted to make sure
• 27:14
  Speaker 5: I protected Keisha by also allowing the truth to be told.
• 27:18
  Speaker 5: I'm saying, and the way it is experienced, and it
• 27:22
  Speaker 5: can be the outcome, you know, even and it's he's
• 27:30
  Speaker 5: he made a horrible choice. I actually think Christian is
• 27:33
  Speaker 5: not I don't I don't. I know he messed up
• 27:37
  Speaker 5: royally right, But I also think that there's room for him,
• 27:41
  Speaker 5: but I know that people are like no.
• 27:43
  Speaker 8: So when he came back into this not that I was,
• 27:45
  Speaker 8: I was like, why why is he backing around and
• 27:48
  Speaker 8: all these things? And she's dealing with so much stuff
• 27:51
  Speaker 8: right now.
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: We don't make And that's the other thing too.
• 27:54
  Speaker 5: I've seen grown women not make great decisions, I'm saying,
• 27:56
  Speaker 5: and we just.
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: Put all this pressure.
• 27:58
  Speaker 5: She's sixteen, you're young, and we're trying to negotiate a lot.
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: One of the things that I was trying to arc out.
• 28:04
  Speaker 5: What the Keisha character is what would it be like
• 28:07
  Speaker 5: to be invisible at a PWI for most of your life,
• 28:12
  Speaker 5: not think, not be reflected back that you are beautiful?
• 28:17
  Speaker 5: And then the first time you get attention from the
• 28:19
  Speaker 5: ball or I'm saying that, who is How are we
• 28:22
  Speaker 5: making those decisions? How are we making those choices to
• 28:25
  Speaker 5: be seen, to be loved, to be cared for. In
• 28:29
  Speaker 5: a time when speaking about sexuality, especially that period and on,
• 28:36
  Speaker 5: young women are saying, hey, I have sexual urges.
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: I mean girls they love.
• 28:41
  Speaker 5: To They're they're the ones leading sometimes the blowjob conversation.
• 28:47
  Speaker 5: They're like, we can do so you're in this world
• 28:49
  Speaker 5: that some things are really okay.
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: To do and just trying to negotiate all of these things.
• 28:56
  Speaker 5: It's she made, she made a batchelor, he made a
• 29:01
  Speaker 5: bad choice. Everybody's trying to impress, somebody trying to do.
• 29:05
  Speaker 5: These kids are managing a lot, and then the public
• 29:09
  Speaker 5: record of it and the forever record of it.
• 29:12
  Speaker 3: It's very hard to live with.
• 29:14
  Speaker 5: So I think that faith your question was what some
• 29:18
  Speaker 5: of the hardest things, trying to be honest about the
• 29:20
  Speaker 5: times and honest about why people are making the choices
• 29:24
  Speaker 5: that they are making, even when you are I know
• 29:29
  Speaker 5: that's no not a lot of compassion for the Christian character,
• 29:33
  Speaker 5: and I'm aware of that, and that was very That
• 29:35
  Speaker 5: was a very tough choice to make, trying to make
• 29:40
  Speaker 5: it as honest and grounded as possible and so that
• 29:44
  Speaker 5: it can be the thing in the middle of this
• 29:46
  Speaker 5: love story that they actually moved through. What's great to
• 29:50
  Speaker 5: me about Justin and Keisha's that they both.
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: Come from love.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: They know it.
• 29:56
  Speaker 5: It may be a little complicated, it may not be
• 29:58
  Speaker 5: you know, ideal and times, but they know they're loved.
• 30:02
  Speaker 5: And what's beautiful is to watch two young people choose
• 30:06
  Speaker 5: love from having been loved. And I think what's beautiful
• 30:10
  Speaker 5: for us as a community, especially family, especially as parents,
• 30:14
  Speaker 5: is our ability to witness our children's choices while they're
• 30:18
  Speaker 5: still in our home. What it's also happening in society.
• 30:21
  Speaker 5: They're calling it late bloomer. I think that's the new term.
• 30:24
  Speaker 5: I mean, young people are not even getting to feel
• 30:27
  Speaker 5: desired until they're like damn, they're thirty. Yeah, they're not
• 30:31
  Speaker 5: even know like that reciprocal like he liked me, I
• 30:34
  Speaker 5: like her.
• 30:35
  Speaker 4: What they got to go outside? You got to get
• 30:37
  Speaker 4: off out there for that.
• 30:38
  Speaker 5: I think there's that's there's that too, and then and then,
• 30:41
  Speaker 5: and that's the other layer we're putting on it.
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: We go outside.
• 30:44
  Speaker 5: But some of our kids and some you know, that's
• 30:46
  Speaker 5: I wanted to talk about putting our kids in private
• 30:48
  Speaker 5: white institutions. They go through most there's a there's an upside, right,
• 30:55
  Speaker 5: you're trying to give them the best education, set them
• 30:56
  Speaker 5: up for the best you know, future. But the consequence
• 30:59
  Speaker 5: of a lot to that is they're not being seen.
• 31:02
  Speaker 5: That's social. They don't feel beautiful, they don't feel handsome,
• 31:06
  Speaker 5: they don't feel important, there's nothing marrying them back.
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: Oftentimes that's what I feel like. So that so when
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: you say they have to get outside. They are outside.
• 31:18
  Speaker 8: To that party in the stairs, and Justin tells her
• 31:20
  Speaker 8: that she's beautiful, yes, or gorgeous, and she stops and
• 31:23
  Speaker 8: I'm like, I mean, but to your point what you
• 31:25
  Speaker 8: just said, they're like the only black kids.
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 31:27
  Speaker 8: For her to hear that from him, it probably was
• 31:29
  Speaker 8: a whole different type of your gorgeous or you're beautiful,
• 31:32
  Speaker 8: whatever you had said to her. But I didn't even
• 31:33
  Speaker 8: think about that point of it. I just thought it
• 31:35
  Speaker 8: was just our first time interacting with a boy.
• 31:36
  Speaker 5: She like, yeah, you know, yeah, there's not enough to
• 31:38
  Speaker 5: sort of like. And it may be that maybe other
• 31:41
  Speaker 5: kids like them, but maybe they're conditioned not to for
• 31:44
  Speaker 5: race reasons or things of that nature.
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: But I don't know that.
• 31:46
  Speaker 5: Our kids sometimes they're outside, but they're not always connected.
• 31:50
  Speaker 5: That's why we've spent a lot of time and money
• 31:53
  Speaker 5: trying to get to the vineyard.
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: But that's two weeks. Yeah, that's two weeks.
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: But it's funny that you said that.
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: That's you know, my daughter had the same problem, and
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: I wanted her to go to HBCU because of that.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: I went to Hampton and she didn't.
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: She went to great schools a lot of white kids,
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: but nobody ever approached her, so she didn't feel beautiful,
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: she didn't feel away, and then when she.
• 32:11
  Speaker 4: Should be there approached her.
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: No, nobody proud now.
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: But the problem is she never felt that love exact
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: so she a little depressed. She felt like she wasn't
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: as beautiful as she is. And then when she finally
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: when she got when she went to n YU, there's
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: no campus, so she felt even worse.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: And then COVID hit. So now, if you you know Manhattan,
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: Manhattan is.
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: Your campus, so there is no campus, so you're going
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: to venues and clubs with everybody. And that made me
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: nervous because now she's not well equipped. And thank god
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: she found somebody that did find it. But at first black, yeah,
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: but at first she was.
• 32:47
  Speaker 8: You have to say that, y'all kids are going to
• 32:49
  Speaker 8: very nice schools, so it might not always be black.
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but you know, it was very difficult.
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: But I felt guilty about that for years because I
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: was like, am I setting them up for failure?
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: Am I setting them up for somebody not to love them.
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: I went to a black school, I lived in a
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: black neighborhood, so I'm seeing love all day long and
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: she didn't have that feeling.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: She didn't have those friends.
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: Which which is probably why she's so close to me
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: now and I'm kind of like her best friend. Like
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: we go out and we do things like right now,
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: she just text me Dad, what time you coming home?
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: And she's twenty three years old? What is just that relationship?
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: But give me it gave me a guilt as a parent.
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: It's funny when you asked me what I have to face?
• 33:21
  Speaker 5: That's that, that's that, there's I know we made choices
• 33:24
  Speaker 5: for a certain reason, but you're thinking, ooh, what you know,
• 33:28
  Speaker 5: my kids are fine, But also that's what you moved
• 33:32
  Speaker 5: through when you're just trying to give them the world,
• 33:34
  Speaker 5: the best, the best you can give them, and you realize, oops.
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: I missed that part.
• 33:40
  Speaker 5: So they are getting outside and then La specifically, you
• 33:43
  Speaker 5: know these kids don't want to drive it like I
• 33:44
  Speaker 5: was at the DMV like at nine am on my birthday. Yep,
• 33:48
  Speaker 5: they are not so I mean that. So it was
• 33:52
  Speaker 5: how are they even seeing each other? And that goes
• 33:53
  Speaker 5: back to where are the spaces. I was at the
• 33:56
  Speaker 5: skating rink, I was at this, there was I was
• 33:58
  Speaker 5: at the mall, I was here. That's not happening that
• 34:01
  Speaker 5: much anymore, and so I that concerns me as well.
• 34:07
  Speaker 5: So I'm hoping that some of these images on the
• 34:09
  Speaker 5: show makes people want to connect, get outside, be back outside.
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: I think we need that, I mean, but the.
• 34:17
  Speaker 7: Beauty of it is let me get a damn question,
• 34:21
  Speaker 7: miss kill.
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: How the whole town knew about the sex tape? But
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: Keisha mother, Well, now it's funny.
• 34:29
  Speaker 5: That's why we were in la That's why I did
• 34:32
  Speaker 5: above the ten and below the tent. Certain communities can
• 34:35
  Speaker 5: know it and hold it and let you know it
• 34:37
  Speaker 5: when they feel like it. But below the ten, she
• 34:40
  Speaker 5: was able to keep that. She was able to keep
• 34:42
  Speaker 5: that going. And that shows the disconnect of the village.
• 34:45
  Speaker 5: There was no parent from those communities that thought to
• 34:49
  Speaker 5: call Shelley.
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: That is all, you know. That's the other thing I did.
• 34:54
  Speaker 5: Make a commentary on that, being a black parent, sometimes
• 34:57
  Speaker 5: in these schools, you're you're a parent, but are you
• 34:59
  Speaker 5: really a part of the community. Sometimes, and now I'm
• 35:02
  Speaker 5: not saying it's one hundred percent like that, but sometimes
• 35:04
  Speaker 5: that's where things do part. You know, when when there
• 35:09
  Speaker 5: is judgment or or maybe that's the wrong word, when
• 35:13
  Speaker 5: there's not real community, when there's not real connection, when
• 35:16
  Speaker 5: there's not real care that you're just seeing as a
• 35:19
  Speaker 5: part of this like a sprinkle on top to our communities.
• 35:24
  Speaker 5: And I say that in a generality, I think there's
• 35:26
  Speaker 5: certainly some families who are figuring that out. But so
• 35:29
  Speaker 5: it's not please don't come for me that we can't
• 35:33
  Speaker 5: figure that out. But what I've also noticed in these
• 35:37
  Speaker 5: communities is sometimes I mean in these worlds, because Shelley's
• 35:42
  Speaker 5: from a different economic backets she's lived, she doesn't live
• 35:45
  Speaker 5: anywhere close to where these communities are. She's further away
• 35:49
  Speaker 5: from the information. And it took Dawn to find out
• 35:54
  Speaker 5: to bring it back to her.
• 35:56
  Speaker 6: You know, black love has been so commodified lately, right
• 36:00
  Speaker 6: like I feel like, you know, you see people doing
• 36:01
  Speaker 6: the matching outfits on the ground, or you know, they
• 36:04
  Speaker 6: have black love weddings.
• 36:05
  Speaker 4: But what makes Forever feel real and not curated?
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: I would ask you, what did you feel.
• 36:14
  Speaker 4: That I actually saw myself?
• 36:16
  Speaker 6: I saw me and my wife, you know, I saw
• 36:19
  Speaker 6: my teenage daughter and her friends. I saw how I mean,
• 36:24
  Speaker 6: It's it's a little simple things like the conversations they
• 36:26
  Speaker 6: was having it to cookout, like arguing about you know Kanye, Yeah,
• 36:30
  Speaker 6: they smoking the weed, and then the kids come and
• 36:32
  Speaker 6: they try to put it out, but you know, they
• 36:33
  Speaker 6: dance into their own music. I just felt like, that's
• 36:35
  Speaker 6: just real aesthetics. That's what real black love and black
• 36:40
  Speaker 6: relationships look like. And even things like you know, not
• 36:43
  Speaker 6: arguing it, or trying not to argue in front of
• 36:45
  Speaker 6: the kids, or even if you and you and your
• 36:47
  Speaker 6: significant other disagree, not showing that in front of the child.
• 36:51
  Speaker 6: It was times that we would be like yo, yeah,
• 36:53
  Speaker 6: and then she would know, and then he would say
• 36:55
  Speaker 6: what he said a vice versa, and I just I
• 36:57
  Speaker 6: just thought that was powerful.
• 37:00
  Speaker 5: It's just be paying attention to my own life, the
• 37:02
  Speaker 5: life around me, just paying attention to us. I think
• 37:05
  Speaker 5: that's my job as a storyteller, you know, Nina Simone says,
• 37:10
  Speaker 5: I'm here to reflect the times. It's for me to
• 37:12
  Speaker 5: look at us, look at each other, and find all
• 37:16
  Speaker 5: those I know about your guilt because I have it
• 37:18
  Speaker 5: and I have my own.
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying.
• 37:20
  Speaker 5: I know about these things. I know about how how
• 37:24
  Speaker 5: beloved by a black man who can be very strong
• 37:27
  Speaker 5: in his opinions, But it's not intimidating. You know, he
• 37:31
  Speaker 5: might feel intimidated to the world, but he's not intimidating
• 37:33
  Speaker 5: to me.
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying.
• 37:34
  Speaker 5: I know there's love there and also and he knows
• 37:37
  Speaker 5: I'm strong black, a strong black woman. She's got an opinion.
• 37:40
  Speaker 5: I'm gonna say something. I can say it without losing
• 37:44
  Speaker 5: my softness.
• 37:45
  Speaker 4: I want your kids to bring home a black significant other.
• 37:47
  Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, not because of racism, but because you want
• 37:50
  Speaker 6: somebody to understands. You want somebody that's gonna understand you
• 37:53
  Speaker 6: and what you will.
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: To protect you and protect you and to protect you.
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: That's what I mean.
• 37:56
  Speaker 5: Think at the core of a parenting, we want to
• 37:59
  Speaker 5: be we want to love our kids, and we want
• 38:01
  Speaker 5: our kids loved, and we want them protected.
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: We want them safe in the world. And so.
• 38:06
  Speaker 5: You know, our history will tell us that it just
• 38:08
  Speaker 5: seems like the odds are better that way.
• 38:11
  Speaker 8: Keisha's story, well, first to bring home the black significant other.
• 38:15
  Speaker 8: When Dawn she's upset she and Justin doesn't have his
• 38:19
  Speaker 8: phone or whatever. But then at one point she's open
• 38:21
  Speaker 8: to him getting back into the world and having the
• 38:23
  Speaker 8: phone or whatever. Because Wood Harris is like, you know,
• 38:25
  Speaker 8: he met a girl, like, you know, ease up on
• 38:27
  Speaker 8: him a little bit when they had that conversation when
• 38:30
  Speaker 8: she findances down with him and she's trying to like
• 38:31
  Speaker 8: get in his business about who he's dating and who
• 38:33
  Speaker 8: the person is. As a mom yourself personally, what did
• 38:38
  Speaker 8: you put into that conversation that you do with your
• 38:40
  Speaker 8: own kids when you're trying to enter into their world
• 38:42
  Speaker 8: and like make sure that even though they're at the
• 38:44
  Speaker 8: white schools and all these things, the blackness is still
• 38:46
  Speaker 8: there without being like you got to be black, because
• 38:48
  Speaker 8: she was very like soft, but she was also it
• 38:50
  Speaker 8: was obvious she wanted him to be with a black girl.
• 38:53
  Speaker 3: We just talk real, you know.
• 38:56
  Speaker 5: We've always just been honest with our kids from the
• 38:59
  Speaker 5: jump there, from their level of understanding, you know what
• 39:02
  Speaker 5: I'm saying, using their language for their entry into the conversation,
• 39:08
  Speaker 5: you know, uh, being very honest. Why, I mean, why
• 39:14
  Speaker 5: I want you to be with a black woman? You know,
• 39:15
  Speaker 5: even though that could be challenging, even though it's like
• 39:18
  Speaker 5: I can, yeah, you can date whoever you want to date.
• 39:20
  Speaker 5: This is going to be your life. But I'm gonna
• 39:21
  Speaker 5: tell you why, and just I just why. I think
• 39:24
  Speaker 5: it's beautiful. I just think I just give my opinion,
• 39:27
  Speaker 5: but make room for theirs. That's I think that's what's important,
• 39:30
  Speaker 5: is for me to make room for theirs. For so
• 39:34
  Speaker 5: I use that, I use you know, it's funny because
• 39:38
  Speaker 5: even the music, I think one of the things. Music
• 39:41
  Speaker 5: is a big part of the show, and it's funny.
• 39:44
  Speaker 5: In my car, I let them have the ox. I
• 39:50
  Speaker 5: just want to know. I just want to witness them.
• 39:52
  Speaker 5: I want to know what they're thinking about. So every
• 39:54
  Speaker 5: like fourth you know, like if you get like a
• 39:56
  Speaker 5: Spotify account and you don't you do like the base,
• 39:59
  Speaker 5: you got to get a commercial like every four songs,
• 40:01
  Speaker 5: So in my car, you get a lecture every four songs.
• 40:03
  Speaker 5: And we used to debate about, Okay, if I don't
• 40:07
  Speaker 5: let you eat McDonald's all the time because of X
• 40:09
  Speaker 5: y Z, I need you to understand what these lyrics
• 40:13
  Speaker 5: are doing, what you're eating.
• 40:14
  Speaker 3: And so he's like, mama's just to beat, just to beat. Well, no,
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: it's more than a bet. So we would talk about that.
• 40:18
  Speaker 3: They push back. We talked about misogyny and things like that.
• 40:21
  Speaker 5: He's like, well, the women, some of the female rappers
• 40:23
  Speaker 5: that got I said, yeah, misogeny is not particular to
• 40:25
  Speaker 5: one group of people.
• 40:26
  Speaker 3: It's massage's misogyny.
• 40:27
  Speaker 5: It's just like you know, racism is racism, it's it's
• 40:30
  Speaker 5: it's so you get to talk to your kids and
• 40:35
  Speaker 5: find out who they are and give them your point
• 40:40
  Speaker 5: of view while the world gives them gives them their
• 40:43
  Speaker 5: point of view. And so I think if you remain
• 40:45
  Speaker 5: a trusted place, they are going to hear your voice,
• 40:49
  Speaker 5: God willing, they will hear it before they get themselves
• 40:51
  Speaker 5: in any type of danger or you know that kind
• 40:53
  Speaker 5: of thing.
• 40:54
  Speaker 3: But I feel like just giving them my opinion, what
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: emotional space, and then showing my.
• 41:00
  Speaker 5: Life, you know what I'm saying, living my life, you know,
• 41:03
  Speaker 5: like even like with even like your career paths or
• 41:06
  Speaker 5: your future path, teaching them how I recognize that I'm
• 41:10
  Speaker 5: a writer? I reminded, how did I know that I
• 41:13
  Speaker 5: was a writer? How did I know what my path was?
• 41:16
  Speaker 5: Teaching them those things, what it's going to feel like
• 41:18
  Speaker 5: in your body, what it's going to look like, how
• 41:21
  Speaker 5: you're going to act, you know when it's going to
• 41:26
  Speaker 5: take discipline?
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: Where's the sacrifice in these ideas? You know what?
• 41:31
  Speaker 5: Even like you know, yes, Mom and Dad, we made
• 41:35
  Speaker 5: a lot of money. But understand, we're built on a legacy.
• 41:38
  Speaker 5: Let's go back to grandma and granddad and grant grandparents,
• 41:41
  Speaker 5: and let me tell you where you came from. This
• 41:43
  Speaker 5: is you know, us owning more than one home is
• 41:45
  Speaker 5: not new to this family.
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: It happened over here. Understand that. Understand So you got to.
• 41:49
  Speaker 5: Give them history, opinion, knowledge, show it be it. You know,
• 41:56
  Speaker 5: even when we talk about dreams, I talk about my dreams.
• 41:59
  Speaker 5: I still got dreams and so and dream take resources.
• 42:03
  Speaker 3: So are you going to hit that basketball train or not?
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: Because I could use that money.
• 42:09
  Speaker 6: So I want you to stay there for a second, like,
• 42:11
  Speaker 6: how was your own evolution spiritually, emotionally as a mother.
• 42:15
  Speaker 4: How did that influence the writing of fel Oh completely?
• 42:20
  Speaker 5: So my writing styles I tend to muse off of
• 42:23
  Speaker 5: I find them. I tell the truth through fiction. I'm
• 42:26
  Speaker 5: a journalism major. I went to Northwestern. Shout out to Northwestern.
• 42:29
  Speaker 5: I'm always called shout out. I love Northwestern. One of
• 42:32
  Speaker 5: the best choices I've ever made. I went to medil
• 42:35
  Speaker 5: So A lot of my.
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: Approach to a to a story, I start to lock
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: in on there'll be a muse and then I open.
• 42:43
  Speaker 5: Up to see what what is happening in the zeitgeist,
• 42:45
  Speaker 5: what is happening at strong sociology classes? Like what's where
• 42:50
  Speaker 5: are we at as a people? So figure out where
• 42:53
  Speaker 5: the teenagers were where we're at today. So my children
• 42:57
  Speaker 5: were my muse because that's what I was concerned about.
• 43:00
  Speaker 5: So I came into this, this project just as a
• 43:05
  Speaker 5: concerned mother.
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: My guilt.
• 43:07
  Speaker 5: Am I doing this right? Am I giving enough space?
• 43:09
  Speaker 5: Did we pick the right schools for them?
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: We pay?
• 43:11
  Speaker 5: Did we set up our life in a way that's
• 43:13
  Speaker 5: really going to support them as you start to think
• 43:18
  Speaker 5: about the more complexity parts of their life as and
• 43:21
  Speaker 5: life was changing fast because of technology as well.
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: Right, So that's.
• 43:26
  Speaker 5: Where I was at the same time that the Judy
• 43:28
  Speaker 5: Bloom opportunity came. And that's where my big bang happens. Wow,
• 43:33
  Speaker 5: And that's how I put those So I'm musing off
• 43:35
  Speaker 5: of my own parenting. So I started therapy because of parenting.
• 43:39
  Speaker 5: I realized, people.
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: Are You're an amazing mom. But I was like, I
• 43:43
  Speaker 3: need to feel like a better mom.
• 43:44
  Speaker 5: So let me start unpacking some of the things, all
• 43:48
  Speaker 5: these sort of all the things that therapists take you through.
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: And so I started.
• 43:53
  Speaker 5: Doing that and realizing how I was parenting from a
• 43:56
  Speaker 5: catastrophic place, a fear not just because of the times,
• 44:01
  Speaker 5: but just all the things, and you realize, Okay, I
• 44:03
  Speaker 5: need to let this go in order to be a
• 44:05
  Speaker 5: better mother. And I think the best way I can
• 44:08
  Speaker 5: do that is offer it in my work and mirror
• 44:11
  Speaker 5: myself and allow. And I think that's the power of storytelling.
• 44:15
  Speaker 5: When you share your story or a testimony in church,
• 44:18
  Speaker 5: it actually hits the hearts and souls and spirits of
• 44:21
  Speaker 5: so many other people. But that's that's why sharing of
• 44:25
  Speaker 5: the story is so important. It's not just about you.
• 44:27
  Speaker 5: It's about the collective us, right, and so bringing all
• 44:31
  Speaker 5: those things to bear and having this amazing opportunity with
• 44:37
  Speaker 5: the book to place all of these things.
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: Even in the translation of the book.
• 44:43
  Speaker 5: I got to talk about what it's like to be
• 44:45
  Speaker 5: black parents, you know, Judy got to talk about what
• 44:47
  Speaker 5: it's like to be white.
• 44:48
  Speaker 3: Parents of that time. But let me tell you what
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: it's like to be black parents in America. I don't
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: it's probably not that different from you know, other generations.
• 44:56
  Speaker 5: But this is the These are the details of our time,
• 44:59
  Speaker 5: and this is what it looks like, and this is
• 45:01
  Speaker 5: why we love our kids just as much as you
• 45:03
  Speaker 5: love your kids, but they have it.
• 45:04
  Speaker 3: They don't have as much freedom sometimes. And here's why.
• 45:10
  Speaker 5: Black boys are just as vulnerable and actually are just
• 45:13
  Speaker 5: as I'm nervous mostly about black boys when it comes
• 45:18
  Speaker 5: to sexuality, because before they can even say they love someone,
• 45:22
  Speaker 5: they're considered enemy number one because of their They're they're
• 45:26
  Speaker 5: not little boys anymore. They are, their bodies just getting
• 45:29
  Speaker 5: bigger muscles on their body, having a penis, they're suddenly
• 45:33
  Speaker 5: like a threat. You have to talk about rape. You
• 45:37
  Speaker 5: got to talk about that with black boys, just your presence.
• 45:39
  Speaker 5: Sometimes it may not be what you and the young
• 45:43
  Speaker 5: woman consent it to, but you are to still in
• 45:46
  Speaker 5: the time if their parents say, we witness that in
• 45:49
  Speaker 5: real time, these things are happening. So we've got to
• 45:52
  Speaker 5: be we can be real clear on consent. We've got
• 45:54
  Speaker 5: to be real clear on these sorts of things. Wanting
• 45:58
  Speaker 5: to put that not to for wanting to not only
• 46:02
  Speaker 5: protect my own sons, but all of these beautiful black
• 46:04
  Speaker 5: boys that I get to, you know, be in community
• 46:08
  Speaker 5: with that I love and I don't want to see
• 46:10
  Speaker 5: hurt and I don't want to see miss understood and
• 46:13
  Speaker 5: misjudged just by their physical presence, nothing more than that.
• 46:17
  Speaker 5: And because they don't like to smile, because you know,
• 46:20
  Speaker 5: they want to keep it real. I want them to
• 46:23
  Speaker 5: see I want them to see beyond that. I want
• 46:24
  Speaker 5: to see black boy vulnerability. I want people to see
• 46:27
  Speaker 5: them as they're fuel that that that they actually can
• 46:31
  Speaker 5: cry and Michael jokes, Michael Cooper jokes and goomore, I
• 46:33
  Speaker 5: gotta cry again.
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: I was like, yeah, you gotta cry again. He's hurt,
• 46:37
  Speaker 3: he's more sensitive, I said, the character sensitive. I said that, so,
• 46:41
  Speaker 3: but yeah, because I.
• 46:42
  Speaker 5: Just want to Yeah, black boys cry and they also ball,
• 46:47
  Speaker 5: and they also go for their dreams, and they want
• 46:49
  Speaker 5: the girl, and and they they get the grades.
• 46:53
  Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying.
• 46:54
  Speaker 5: They do all they struggle, you know, they they're frustrated,
• 46:59
  Speaker 5: they're all of those things, and.
• 47:00
  Speaker 6: Then when they finally get what they want, it scares
• 47:02
  Speaker 6: them for some reason. Because he know he didn't mean
• 47:04
  Speaker 6: none of that stuff he said. I don't want to
• 47:06
  Speaker 6: give it away, but he ain't mean none of that
• 47:07
  Speaker 6: stuff on that last episode. I don't think he really
• 47:10
  Speaker 6: want I know he didn't want to walk away. Why no,
• 47:14
  Speaker 6: I think he was just afraid of what he was.
• 47:16
  Speaker 6: He was afraid of losing it, so he feels like
• 47:19
  Speaker 6: letting it go would be less painful than just losing it.
• 47:23
  Speaker 5: You know what I love about storytelling because it meets
• 47:27
  Speaker 5: the viewer where they're at. You're going to see it
• 47:29
  Speaker 5: that way, and someone's going to see that. While he
• 47:32
  Speaker 5: understood that, he did not have the capacity to let
• 47:37
  Speaker 5: go of her and choose himself, so he needed to
• 47:43
  Speaker 5: choose himself. He would have just stayed up underneath her,
• 47:46
  Speaker 5: and a lot of people do that. A lot of
• 47:48
  Speaker 5: young people do that because it feels good to be loved.
• 47:52
  Speaker 5: It feels good for somebody to call you and want
• 47:55
  Speaker 5: to see you and hug you and kiss you, and
• 47:58
  Speaker 5: you can get lost in that and you can lose time.
• 48:01
  Speaker 3: I think he understood time is ticking, and that's.
• 48:05
  Speaker 5: A reality to being young and making that leap in
• 48:09
  Speaker 5: the especially in the capitalistic democracy.
• 48:13
  Speaker 3: You gotta go. He understood that, and she helped him
• 48:17
  Speaker 3: understand that.
• 48:18
  Speaker 4: It felt to me like he didn't He wasn't chasing her.
• 48:22
  Speaker 6: By the end of the series, though, he was literally
• 48:25
  Speaker 6: just chasing an identity that he hadn't felt before. Like that,
• 48:30
  Speaker 6: like that real blackness, like the blackness that you know,
• 48:32
  Speaker 6: his mom and his dad wanted him to have and
• 48:35
  Speaker 6: not lose by growing up the way he grew up.
• 48:37
  Speaker 6: By the end of the show, he felt like yo
• 48:39
  Speaker 6: going to that prom with her and just being around
• 48:41
  Speaker 6: her and her and her friends, and hear and her
• 48:43
  Speaker 6: say she wanted to go to Howard.
• 48:44
  Speaker 4: It didn't feel like he was just he was chasing her.
• 48:46
  Speaker 4: He was chasing his blackness.
• 48:47
  Speaker 5: To me, I think all can be true. All can
• 48:52
  Speaker 5: be true, But also imagine you get to Howard and
• 48:55
  Speaker 5: all you know is Keisha. He might just be all
• 48:57
  Speaker 5: up underneath Keisha. Yeah, and that and really, I mean, heye.
• 49:02
  Speaker 5: I'm sure he played those scenarios out. I know he did,
• 49:05
  Speaker 5: because we do as a writing team. But what I again,
• 49:10
  Speaker 5: what I love about storytelling is that it meets the
• 49:14
  Speaker 5: viewer where they are. And this is what's beautiful about
• 49:17
  Speaker 5: the show, and all the different conversations that are coming up,
• 49:20
  Speaker 5: all the different opinions that are coming up.
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: This is us.
• 49:24
  Speaker 5: This is the best dinner party you can ever have,
• 49:26
  Speaker 5: and you just this is what we think. And everybody's
• 49:28
  Speaker 5: got opinions, and what sticks to you is for you,
• 49:31
  Speaker 5: and what sticks to you is for you. What irritates you.
• 49:35
  Speaker 5: It's also for you what irritates you. As a writer.
• 49:38
  Speaker 5: This is some game I give. It's like a lot
• 49:41
  Speaker 5: of times people like I don't like that, I don't
• 49:43
  Speaker 5: like that is just as important as the what you
• 49:46
  Speaker 5: do like and writing, because I say, what sticks to
• 49:49
  Speaker 5: you is yours is that's your examinations. That's for you
• 49:53
  Speaker 5: to examine. It's called your attention. You can't shake it,
• 49:56
  Speaker 5: you can't let it go good or bad. Look into that,
• 50:00
  Speaker 5: investigate there, dig there. I think that's what I think.
• 50:04
  Speaker 5: That's why I think, that's why I keep getting hits
• 50:07
  Speaker 5: after hits, is because I like digging deeper into to us,
• 50:12
  Speaker 5: and I think, who doesn't want to be seen? And
• 50:15
  Speaker 5: I think a lot of our stories either they're missing
• 50:19
  Speaker 5: or they've been distorted, like it said the negative, like
• 50:21
  Speaker 5: they've been distorted. I think when you start to really
• 50:24
  Speaker 5: see yourself, you know, you might want to tighten up here,
• 50:27
  Speaker 5: a little tighten up there. For the most party, Like
• 50:28
  Speaker 5: I'm cute, I'm cute, I'm doing okay, I'm doing all right.
• 50:32
  Speaker 5: I can lose five pounds whatever, but for the most part,
• 50:36
  Speaker 5: I'm doing all right.
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: I think that.
• 50:39
  Speaker 5: Those ideas of ourselves or what we're stuck on that
• 50:44
  Speaker 5: may be for you to examine, you to look at.
• 50:48
  Speaker 5: And I think that's why we need more storytellers out there.
• 50:51
  Speaker 6: I think I got three more questions if you've got to, Yeah,
• 50:53
  Speaker 6: what emotional space does Forever occupy than none of your
• 50:56
  Speaker 6: previous shows.
• 50:57
  Speaker 3: Have what emotional space as it occupied?
• 51:00
  Speaker 4: That?
• 51:01
  Speaker 3: I think the cross generational idea.
• 51:04
  Speaker 5: You know, for the most part, I've written adult adult
• 51:06
  Speaker 5: conversation though that I've had parents come into those stories.
• 51:09
  Speaker 3: They're not They're like.
• 51:12
  Speaker 5: Drive bys in a lot of ways. I just think
• 51:16
  Speaker 5: the complexity of family and the and the generational connection
• 51:26
  Speaker 5: and that I just really enjoyed that. I think also
• 51:29
  Speaker 5: the scale emotionally, it allowed me to really scale us
• 51:37
  Speaker 5: that I enjoyed that and it you know, the kids say,
• 51:41
  Speaker 5: take up space. It allowed me to take up space
• 51:45
  Speaker 5: for us and for myself.
• 51:48
  Speaker 6: And what did Judy Bloom teach you about softness and
• 51:51
  Speaker 6: how does that show up in your characters now?
• 51:54
  Speaker 5: Well, softness is details, I think, especially in the book Forever,
• 52:03
  Speaker 5: most of the book is about Catherine's internal feelings thoughts,
• 52:09
  Speaker 5: and to use that much time on the internal space is.
• 52:16
  Speaker 3: Really a privilege. A luxury. Oftentimes most of our storytimee
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: we're more observed than.
• 52:25
  Speaker 5: We are explored. And I enjoyed being able to explore.
• 52:30
  Speaker 5: And that's what Judy taught in her in her writing
• 52:33
  Speaker 5: all the books. She's an internal writer, and then she
• 52:38
  Speaker 5: allowed us she gave as young people reading her books,
• 52:43
  Speaker 5: you're validating these feelings inside that I don't necessarily show
• 52:46
  Speaker 5: because I don't want to be embarrassed or I don't
• 52:48
  Speaker 5: want to be judged, or I don't want to be misunderstood.
• 52:52
  Speaker 5: So kids are keeping a lot to themselves. And she
• 52:54
  Speaker 5: was being honest on the page. So I believe I've
• 52:59
  Speaker 5: been doing that in my body of work, and I
• 53:01
  Speaker 5: got to do it again to give young people a
• 53:05
  Speaker 5: view of themselves today like she gave us, you know,
• 53:09
  Speaker 5: fifty years ago.
• 53:11
  Speaker 6: My last question is forever about love You've had, love
• 53:14
  Speaker 6: you've lost, or love you.
• 53:16
  Speaker 3: Still believe in all the above.
• 53:18
  Speaker 5: I believe in love. I believe in love. One of
• 53:22
  Speaker 5: the things I'm really proud of with the ending. I
• 53:24
  Speaker 5: know there's a controversy about the ending, but what I
• 53:27
  Speaker 5: love that Justin and Keisha showed us is how love
• 53:31
  Speaker 5: endures and it takes its shape, shifts, can it's dynamic,
• 53:34
  Speaker 5: can change, but love can stay present. And they showed
• 53:39
  Speaker 5: us how to let go and keep love in that
• 53:45
  Speaker 5: In that ending, I think we could learn a lot
• 53:50
  Speaker 5: from Justin and Keisha. You know, the question, you know
• 53:56
  Speaker 5: is someone is this? Is this a forever love or
• 53:59
  Speaker 5: the one you remember forever? And I would like to
• 54:02
  Speaker 5: think that we as we move through our lives as
• 54:06
  Speaker 5: human beings, that when we choose to use that word right,
• 54:11
  Speaker 5: I loved you, that you there's a present that you
• 54:13
  Speaker 5: were so present and so loving that even if you
• 54:16
  Speaker 5: don't last, the couple doesn't last, the love can last.
• 54:20
  Speaker 3: It just it might shift to.
• 54:23
  Speaker 5: Wow, it might just shift to we always just sort
• 54:25
  Speaker 5: of text each other on each other's birthday that you
• 54:30
  Speaker 5: matter to me.
• 54:31
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 54:31
  Speaker 5: One of the fun things you realize when you're revisiting
• 54:34
  Speaker 5: the work, especially as young people, oftentimes that's where our
• 54:40
  Speaker 5: big dreaming happens, and those young loves that a lot
• 54:44
  Speaker 5: of times the best part of you is packed in
• 54:47
  Speaker 5: somebody else's memory of you, and so to have.
• 54:50
  Speaker 3: Access back to those people actually is good.
• 54:53
  Speaker 5: For you to remember who you are when you lose
• 54:56
  Speaker 5: your way, and because you're gonna lose your way, love
• 55:00
  Speaker 5: holds you there. So it is about the past, the present,
• 55:03
  Speaker 5: and the future. And I think that love can take
• 55:05
  Speaker 5: many different forms, you know. And you know, I have
• 55:08
  Speaker 5: my young one plays baseball, and I've learned a lot
• 55:12
  Speaker 5: about watching him sit in the stands play baseball, long games.
• 55:17
  Speaker 3: Long games.
• 55:18
  Speaker 5: But what's beautiful about it is everybody who walks into
• 55:21
  Speaker 5: that batter's box has a different fight. And so I
• 55:26
  Speaker 5: often think about relationship. Right, did you swing the bat?
• 55:32
  Speaker 5: Did you have a they call it? Did you have
• 55:34
  Speaker 5: a good at bat? And sometimes you're at bat, you
• 55:37
  Speaker 5: strike out, but you still had a good at bat.
• 55:40
  Speaker 5: And I think that's what I think love is about.
• 55:42
  Speaker 5: Are we having a good at bat? Are we swinging?
• 55:46
  Speaker 5: Are we using our technique? Are we using all the
• 55:49
  Speaker 5: knowledge we've spent all week learning for this one to
• 55:53
  Speaker 5: two times we get to walk in that batter's box
• 55:56
  Speaker 5: and are we using it?
• 55:57
  Speaker 3: Are we do we?
• 55:58
  Speaker 4: You know? Do we what?
• 56:00
  Speaker 3: Whatever the shoulders and the hips and all that kinds of.
• 56:03
  Speaker 5: All those things, all those things you gotta do with
• 56:06
  Speaker 5: this ball coming at you eighty ninety miles an hour,
• 56:11
  Speaker 5: that's love. And I think that I would like to
• 56:14
  Speaker 5: think that we can all approach it at a good
• 56:18
  Speaker 5: at that.
• 56:21
  Speaker 4: Wow.
• 56:21
  Speaker 8: I have one final question Regina King in her directing, Yes,
• 56:26
  Speaker 8: thank you for asking. Yeah, because okay, so I was
• 56:29
  Speaker 8: trying to look to see what the conversation around it
• 56:31
  Speaker 8: was online. But I remember when I first found out
• 56:33
  Speaker 8: that she was doing it, my first thought was, I
• 56:34
  Speaker 8: wonder what their conversations were like, like what changes she
• 56:37
  Speaker 8: made and what she brought to the screen, because I
• 56:39
  Speaker 8: heard you say a lot of it was about your
• 56:40
  Speaker 8: life as a parent as well.
• 56:41
  Speaker 3: Too, But no, it's you move. Let me be very clear,
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: I muse.
• 56:47
  Speaker 5: I have a muse entry point, and then once I
• 56:50
  Speaker 5: go into that entry point, then I become a journalist
• 56:52
  Speaker 5: almost and look at the world around and then that's
• 56:56
  Speaker 5: how I sort of craft my stories. That said was
• 57:00
  Speaker 5: it's beautiful about the art form is that the art
• 57:03
  Speaker 5: form is a collaborative art form. I had to sit
• 57:08
  Speaker 5: in that chair. Judy had to sit in that chair
• 57:09
  Speaker 5: to write that book. I go look at the book.
• 57:11
  Speaker 5: I had to sit in that chair and adapt that book.
• 57:15
  Speaker 5: But one of the first phone calls you make after
• 57:18
  Speaker 5: you have a script, you call your casting director Kim Coleman.
• 57:23
  Speaker 5: And then the second immediate is who is going to direct,
• 57:26
  Speaker 5: And I called Regina King and said, I think it's
• 57:28
  Speaker 5: time for us to collaborate again. She first Regina I
• 57:32
  Speaker 5: first worked together when in early in her directing career,
• 57:35
  Speaker 5: she directed episodes of Being Mary Jane and she went
• 57:39
  Speaker 5: off to have a really wonderful directing career, and it
• 57:42
  Speaker 5: was like, okay, I need you to Help's helped me
• 57:45
  Speaker 5: reset the tone. We both are mothers, we both love
• 57:48
  Speaker 5: our sons. I needed Regina King, I need that chemistry,
• 57:54
  Speaker 5: her iconic performances as an actress. I would love them
• 57:57
  Speaker 5: rooted in these characters, especially helping us launched this love
• 58:00
  Speaker 5: story within these two young actors, anchoring them in their
• 58:07
  Speaker 5: chemistry and everybody knowing where they are in this play,
• 58:11
  Speaker 5: in this world. Then, of course we built out the
• 58:15
  Speaker 5: team and the decisions that we make together, you know,
• 58:17
  Speaker 5: finding Combio who is our DP, Suzuki our production designer.
• 58:22
  Speaker 5: We collaborate on the ideas of our you know, our
• 58:25
  Speaker 5: costume Minka and Tanja. These are the principal storytellers that
• 58:30
  Speaker 5: we need to help tell our story. Just helping to
• 58:33
  Speaker 5: make those decisions together, it was really lovely to help
• 58:36
  Speaker 5: set the tone for it so that we can take
• 58:38
  Speaker 5: off and run. I mean, you know, Anthony Hemingway coming in,
• 58:42
  Speaker 5: Timby Banks. All of these major decisions are editors, you know,
• 58:47
  Speaker 5: Carolina and Naomi and just Gary gunn Our composer kier Lehman.
• 58:52
  Speaker 5: We put like it's almost like speaking of baseball references,
• 58:56
  Speaker 5: almost like you have your baseball cards out, You're like,
• 58:58
  Speaker 5: we should bring this for this. I got this for this,
• 59:00
  Speaker 5: and you kind of put it together and it's fun
• 59:02
  Speaker 5: to puzzle together.
• 59:03
  Speaker 3: It's fun to sort of collaborate on that level.
• 59:05
  Speaker 5: So she and my company Story twenty seven Hers Royal Ties,
• 59:10
  Speaker 5: we've come.
• 59:10
  Speaker 3: Together to help set.
• 59:14
  Speaker 5: A bar of excellence that we want the show to
• 59:17
  Speaker 5: live in and thrive from.
• 59:19
  Speaker 4: And you know what season two is going, I do.
• 59:22
  Speaker 5: I mean I have ideas. I still have to go
• 59:24
  Speaker 5: through the process, you know. Part of well, I think
• 59:27
  Speaker 5: another thing that makes me successful is how I honor
• 59:31
  Speaker 5: my partnerships and I come into it respectfully and really
• 59:38
  Speaker 5: to always garner that to garner that energy.
• 59:41
  Speaker 3: Back to me.
• 59:42
  Speaker 5: But I have a concept of what I need to do.
• 59:44
  Speaker 5: I won't share it until my partners are signed off
• 59:46
  Speaker 5: on it. But my next steps are me coming into
• 59:51
  Speaker 5: a meeting ready to talk to Netflix around, Hey, this
• 59:57
  Speaker 5: is where I see it, and this is where I
• 59:59
  Speaker 5: think it should go, hearing their feedback, their concerns, taking
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 5: that in consideration, sometimes debating it for a while, but
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 5: finding a way to communicate why I think it's the
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 5: way it's to go, and if not, where is the
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 5: compromise in that, and feeling good about the artistic flexibility
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 5: that I have to craft story to figure that out.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 5: So I'm looking forward to that and success especially. You know,
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 5: sometimes success can make people tighten up too.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 4: He's not playing tomorrow.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 6: Yeah, I hit after heat in multiple decades. Okay, streaming services,
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 6: the linear television, give her what she wants, that's right,
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 6: including the fifty million dollars for girlfriends we need.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 4: It's that simple.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 3: It's that simple. We've been talking about this. It's real.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 5: It's really that simple, and I'm excited. I think it's
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 5: gonna come. I don't know, I feel I feel it
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 5: like I don't know. Last time I was here, we
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 5: talked about it, and I think what was beautiful in
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 5: my journey at that time was for me to claim
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 5: the value and understand the boundaries and understand what it is.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 5: I don't know, just I think and also this success
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 5: breeds more success, so I kind of feel I don't know,
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 5: I kind of feel like I think.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 4: It's time and a success girlfriend just had on Netflix.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 3: Oh my god, oh my god, like they should see
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 3: generational success and people watch it. I watch that. I
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 3: rewatched the whole thing with my mom and I was like,
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 3: this is so different. But you know, it's fine.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 5: Finding out people are putting girlfriends on for their go
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 5: to sleep. It's their they call it their comfort TV
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 5: show that they put on and they just let it run.
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 5: And some people let it run while they go to
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 5: sleep blows my mind. Secondarily, my youngest son, I noticed that.
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 5: He will tell me like his friends are watching it
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 5: and they think, I'm your mom is cool because she does.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 3: So I still got street cred, job, I still got
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 3: it in the game.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 5: I'm up and down all that up and down for
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 5: thank you, thank you, thank you.
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 6: And I don't know if people know, but nine to
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 6: eleven of this year marks twenty five years of girlfriends ago.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 3: This year, so we need to make that announcement right,
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 3: it's time. That would be the announcement to make it.
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 4: Only makes sense. The first episode was nine eleven two that.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 7: Still looks so good. All of them still.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 5: Looks I saw Tracy recently we went to go see
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 5: The Wiz went back on the screen.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 3: Did anybody see it on the screen?
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 5: Oh, you guys, I've seen the Wiz over and over,
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 5: you know, but the Wiz on big screen. I haven't
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 5: seen that since I was a young girl. And Tracy
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 5: and I went together to go see it and we
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 5: had a ball. And it was also really fun to
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 5: watch her watch her mom. It was kind of like, oh,
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 5: this is like very meta, right, So that was amazing.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 5: Then Jill, Yeah, Jill my birthday party. So to your point,
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 5: they look smashing.
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 4: To It has to happen. It's going to happen. I
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 4: know what's going to happen.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 6: Yes, because it's like the one black sitcom that we
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 6: really did not get any closure on whatsoever, and there's
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 6: so many loose ends to tie up.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 5: You know, it's really it's not just loose ENSEI it's
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 5: actually very relevant. I think it's a very karmic idea
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 5: to have the show have a ending in a film.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 5: I just want to do a movie because of where
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 5: we as a society have grown around the importance of
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 5: relationships and Tony and Joan breaking up, I think has
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 5: been the hardest thing on the audience, even over Joan
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 5: not getting her man, you know what I'm saying, And
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 5: so I think that that's an interesting thing to put
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 5: back in the chat.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 3: So it's still relevant to this day.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 5: It's like, how does friendship come back together or not
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 5: come back together?
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 7: Right?
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 3: Can you still find that love of your life when
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 3: you choose? You know what I'm doing all right? By myself,
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 3: I'm doing nothing.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 5: There's nothing wrong with me for not having had a
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 5: husband like we But that was a different conversation back
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 5: at the time we were producing that show to where
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 5: we have progressed today five years later.
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 3: There's a different.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 5: Value in society around relationships and friendship and how important
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 5: friendship is and the you know, the the sustaining of it,
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 5: the care of it, the beauty of it, the complexity
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 5: of it. And I'm like, okay, look at us grow
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 5: and then and then also this idea that you're not
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 5: broken because you're not in partnership romantically. It's not to
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 5: say that you don't want that, but understanding that there's.
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 3: A different there's a different.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 5: You know, entry point into that that it's not just
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 5: being married to be married, you want to be really
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 5: partnered with your soulmate or your you know, those was
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 5: a twin flame, which one it did? Whatever, Joe fair
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 5: one it is, whichever one's the hot one?
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 4: That one.
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 8: I was gonna say, So Joan is, you can't say anything,
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 8: but Joan is, actually she does still want to be
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 8: married and be with a person or she just gonna
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 8: do it.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 3: But I'm just talking about where we left her, and
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 3: I'm not gonna give it.
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 8: It's funny because and like it sounds like you're not
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 8: doing all by herself still, I'm just talking about where
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 8: we are in society again, because she would be shared
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 8: with you guys very openly that my writing process, My
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 8: writing process is like who am I musing on?
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 5: And then you open up to seek where society is
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 5: the journalist in me, And that's where we are. And
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 5: that's all I'm sort of commenting on in that where
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 5: we left the show twenty five years, where society is,
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 5: I feel the relevance of girlfriends is almost matched to
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 5: where our ending was. Yeah wow, and so and even
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 5: like we've talked about their physical beauty, even that I'm saying,
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 5: even how as you know, that's important, you know, and
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 5: and and also how do we get there?
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 3: And what are we doing?
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 5: Even my generation of women, which is also the generation
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 5: of those women on girlfriends, We've pioneered a whole new
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 5: conversation around We're openly going to talk about paramenopause and menopause.
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 5: We're not going down like the previous generations being oki
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 5: doped by the lies over there. So it's like those
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 5: there's so much to talk about, I think in a
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 5: new a new iteration of the ending that we're still
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 5: holding on to from twenty five years ago. So it's
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 5: an interesting thing to hold on to in terms of
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 5: like the details of what I would do. I'm not
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 5: going to share that because that's my currency, you know.
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 5: My ideas are my currency. My craftsmanship is how I
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 5: make you know, everybody got a dressed, but it's how
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 5: I make.
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 3: The dress right, you know, And so.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 5: I'm excited for that opportunity. I just I don't know energetically,
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 5: I just feel it differently because I'm on your show now.
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 5: See It's it's like even that is a beautiful omen
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 5: right because we talked about it last time I was there,
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 5: and now I'm back and we're talking about it again,
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 5: and yeah.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 4: I mean, there's nothing guaranteed, but the girlfriends is a guaranteed.
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 4: I don't care what nobody right global easily.
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 6: I want to show you this opposedly this last week,
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 6: now that we're grown, which friend was the most toxic Joan?
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 3: Why did you?
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 6: Because we're her own now, so we have a different
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 6: perception of all of them. Uh Todd Todd Todd had
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 6: no business, had no business maritime.
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 4: But honestly, people always leave Lenn out.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 6: Lynn would be considered very toxic nowadays because she didn't
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 6: have no boundaries.
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 4: She didn't respect nobody's boundaries.
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 3: I think she was the most at one with herself.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 6: Was the only one that was unproblematic to me. But
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 6: Lynn didn't respect anybody's boundaries. I have interesting theories about
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 6: Joan and uh Tony.
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 3: Let me ask you, why did you use the word toxic?
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 6: Oh, I reposed it to me. That was just a
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 6: conversation starter, I know.
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 3: But why did you repost that conversation starter?
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 6: I think I think that they had traits that could
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 6: be considered toxic.
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 3: You know what I want to say about that?
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 5: What I love about the vulnerability and the complex city
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 5: of the characters that later they can be analyzed, yes,
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 5: and give some language about what they were brave enough
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 5: to be. And what I look at between the generations
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 5: is that when we there's this generations, we have more
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 5: language to label things, to label it. I feel like
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 5: those characters and so the word toxic I just sort
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 5: of underscore, highlight and circle because that can be this
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 5: blanket over them that doesn't deserve to be there.
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 3: And that's what I'm saying is that we are complex. Now.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 5: I'm not saying that the complexity means you need to
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 5: be friends with them for a lifetime. You may only
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 5: complex for a while, you know. I'm not saying you
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 5: can't grow from them. I can't say you might, like
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 5: I said, you might not have a good at bat
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 5: and strike out.
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 3: But I don't know.
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 5: I just I want to be I think it's important
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 5: to examine, but not hold the label true and what
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 5: because one of the things that Lynn represents to me
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 5: and what she I think represented to the generation that
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 5: was actually beautiful.
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 3: Is that.
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 5: At the time that I was writing that series, all
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 5: black women were presented that they knew exactly who they
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 5: are what they needed to be in.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 3: Order to be accepted. Lynn represented She didn't know, but
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 3: she was still loved even in her sexual like she was.
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 8: That was probably like the first time I ever saw
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 8: a woman, black woman on camera that she was queer,
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 8: but like we didn't know really what that was it
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 8: she that Yeah, I just thought Lynn was just like
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 8: the girl who just did whatever she wanted to do.
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 8: And everybody has that friend, yes, and those friends they
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 8: have to be strong in themselves to a certain extent
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 8: because you're so different than everybody else.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 5: But if you think about Len and you put it
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 5: in this new drugs, she was break the no boundaries.
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 5: She was actually instead of it being toxic, she was
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 5: actually being progressive. Most people would align queerness to progressive thought, right.
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 3: She was challenging notions.
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 5: Why one could say the way she lived her life
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 5: was communal living, which is now a conversation for the future.
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 5: I'm just saying how we look at things and being
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 5: careful not to I think it's beautiful to analyze because
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 5: that's how we progress, but be careful not to then
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 5: blanket everything with labels.
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 3: Let's go back to forever.
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 5: In twenty eighteen, we were saying ADHD twenty twenty five
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 5: we're saying, you're divergent. Language keeps changing as we understand ourselves,
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 5: and I think that's an interesting thing about the power
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 5: of language. And one of the things I want to
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 5: be mindful of, especially in our community, is how quick
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 5: we are to say, Oh, he's.
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 3: Toxic, she's toxic, toxic, toxic, toxic.
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 5: I would love to say, Okay, maybe that aspect of
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 5: that person needs some development, needs some growth. Don dj Mbi, Mara, Don,
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 5: we are in this, Okay, our guilt fear. Maybe as
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 5: parents we need to release that, understand what it is,
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 5: and let it go, but just be careful not to
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 5: keep blanketing us and our desire to grow and our
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 5: desire to urge, you know, and get whole. So that's
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 5: what I would say. I think what I love about
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 5: the collection of those women, those characters is as complicated
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 5: or toxic as they were, even in that we deserve
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 5: love and they were trying to figure it out, and
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 5: they're different ways to stay together and their friendship and
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 5: then their respective relationships, you know, and and that how
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 5: do we move forward together in the complexity.
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 8: Of us Because Carrie and Samantha fell out and nobody
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 8: calls them toxic when yes, they did know people people
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 8: love so toxic you to the first person I can
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 8: remember say that. People feel like Carrie is like was
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 8: wronged by Samantha, and Samantha is just his free friend
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 8: who just eventually. They still want to see him get
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 8: back together as friends. People want Jill to never speak
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 8: to Jone again.
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 4: No, that's not true.
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 3: People feel like they were bad friends to each other.
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 6: Maybe, but that's not true. We definitely want them to
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 6: get back together. That's part of the closure. We want
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 6: to see if Jill and Joan become friends again.
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 4: Arguing do you guys know?
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 5: But I'm asking you guys, do you really I know
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 5: you do? Charlayne, you are very clear about wanting to
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 5: see a movie.
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 4: You are sixteen years.
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 5: I want to also say I'm always going to take
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 5: a moment to say thank you because you also that
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 5: means a lot to me as a storyteller, Like wow,
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 5: that that level of impact on you and even the
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 5: fact that me and Judy Bloom are.
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 3: The same thing. So I'm a thank you.
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 5: Now, you three you want to are you going to
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 5: go spend some money at the theater to go see
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 5: a girl walk to the theater.
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 3: I'm trying to be in the day. Yes, yes, I agree.
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: My wife is taking me there so fast.
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 6: It's it would be an event. Not too many events anymore.
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 6: It would be an event.
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 3: I think so too. I think people would dress up.
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: I think people on this nice dress.
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 8: Something you asked on Sherry Shepherd for her to open
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 8: her phone. She knows somebody with fifty million dollars X
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 8: these too? Yeah, who you got your phone? Let's call somebody.
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm been trying to shake.
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 3: Let's call somebody. Yes, thank you for joining us, Thank
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 3: you for having me.
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 2: It's on Netflix now. We appreciate it. It's a long conversation.
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: We appreciate it.
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 4: I loved it. I love what you say.
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 3: Thank you, thank you.
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 6: You've always been so intentional, and you're right. Girlfriends gave
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 6: us a lot of a lot of vocabulary.
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah so.
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 5: I had another question, But it gave us a lot
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 5: to It gave us a lot to have a conversation about.
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 5: And I think that's really where everything is at is communication,
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 5: have conversation, share ideas. Were not all we're going to agree,
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 5: but I think we all get to know each other.
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 4: But what do you want for ever? To get people permission?
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 7: To do.
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 4: And that's my last question.
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 3: I promise, what do I want forever love?
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 5: I want people to think more about love in every
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 5: aspect of their life. And actually, even if we're older,
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 5: that it's okay to want that that first love kind
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 5: of feeling.
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 3: Like what do we need to do to get back
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 3: to that first love kind of feeling? I don't know.
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 5: I just think it's I think as a human spirit,
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 5: having a human experience, dancing with love all the time,
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 5: it's got to be our top endeavor.
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 3: So that's what I want.
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 6: Marl Rocker Kill. Thank We appreciate you so much. We
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 6: love you, we value you, appreciate you and all your work.
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 3: Thanks right, thank you. I really appreciate being here. Thank you.
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 3: Breakfast Club.
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: It's the breakfast Club. Good morning, wake that ass up
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: in the morning. The breakfast Club.