(smooth music)
- I'm not really nervous about anything,
because, in the writer's room, I'm a performance artist.
You know, I try to act out what I think
the characters would do,
and we're all in kind of a competition for eyes.
So it's like, you know, I'm trying to find
the most shocking, organic, natural thing
that the characters would go through.
And so, if people bump against it
they're like, "No, we can't do that,"
I say, "That's why we're gonna do it."
- So give me an example.
What's one of those where they said,
"Ehhh, can we do this?"
- There's a couple things we had.
In the first season we had a situation
where a really tough guy robs our lead character, Franklin,
thousands of dollars in drug money.
And Franklin's still a kid.
He's encountering for the first time
these really, really dangerous types of people.
And So he has to get his money back.
And he and his best friend are with this guy
who they enlist and get his help
to find the money from another guy.
And I suggested, well, this guy gets frustrated
with interrogating the other guy so
he takes him in the back and he rapes him.
And so I say this in like a writer's room
and they're like "Oh my god" and it's like no
and I act it out.
- I'm not sure how that goes.
- And I know that I'm affecting some of the writers
when they're visually like aghast
and ya know I say we gotta do this.
(exciting music)
I think part of my reputation that I don't like
is that I'm some like black, militant like guy
like really serious and I don't like white people.
And it's like dude, I'm kind of a goofball.
I'm funny and I'm self effacing and everything.
But I'm very serious about story telling
and then like you say telling the narrative
that hasn't been told before
and what I don't like is
when I have people who are not
from various cultures that are trying to story tell me
dictate to me what they think it is.
You get all contested an executive
feels that they know better than you
the story that you're telling
then I turn like
"You're not gonna fucking tell what my story is."
It's like this is why this character does this
and you bought this for some reason.
And I if I do this I know the audience is gonna respond
in a certain way.
If I do what you wanna do,
we jump the shark and then that thing turned out.
I don't feel there's a lot of people of color
in the business that feel comfortable saying
"it's gonna be like this, I don't care
what the hell you say."
- And if you didn't fight, and capitulated
you're not doing your job.
- Exactly.
- Right? I mean I've actually used that line before
that if I let you do this,
I'm not doing the job you hired me for.
- Exactly. Exactly.
(exciting music)
- They say this when you're learning how to write
no matter how you try to salivate it
whatever, you're gonna find out who you are
as a person through your writing.
And even if you try not to, your stuff is gonna be personal
ya know?
And we will know what kind of person you are
through the characters that you write.
And I think that's very, very true.
- So what type of person are you?
What have you learned?
- My thing is, I've kind of like evolved
into a zen master where like I know what I can control
and what I can't control and I celebrate
not being able to control certain things
so that it makes it more enjoyable
to see things propagate and be fascinated
with what's happening.
- What's the film or TV show that made you
wanna do this for a living?
- I grew up on movies.
Movies, I always believe that films saved me
from delinquency ya know?
I watched movies in the theater at an early age
and also on television at an early age
but specifically speaking as a writer
what really inspired me to write
and have a certain kind of civic, cultural vision
as a writer it may not be politically correct
to pull up this name but, Woody Allen.
Ya know I went to see, when I was in high school,
I went to the Revival Theater
and I went to see Bananas and Annie Hall.
And I was watching these films and it was like
funny and then dramatic and stuff like that
and I just realized this guy wrote every word there
nothing was improved everything was on book
and I was just like okay so this is what I have to do
I have to really learn a lot about how to
to write in a way the actors, to have the material
it just rolls off the tongue.
(exciting music)