The Netflix series Dear White People, which picks up where the film of the same name leaves off, is a satirical look at America that weaves together the universal story of finding one’s own identity while forging your own unique path, set against the backdrop of a predominantly white Ivy League university where racial tensions are always just below the surface. It is a hilarious and heartfelt look at social injustice, cultural bias, political correctness and activism, and what that means in the millennial age, and it explores it all with such brutal honesty that you’ll sometimes want to look away while you’re laughing.

During this 1-on-1 phone interview with Collider, show creator Justin Simien (who also wrote and directed the feature film) talked about how the Dear White People TV series came about, determining the format and structure of the show, putting together the team of writers and directors and finding the right showrunner, assembling this cast, how that Scandal parody came about, having a good idea of where Season 2 and 3 will go, and the influence of Trump’s America. He also talked about his desire to do sci-fi, musicals and drama features, and how he would gladly make a sci-fi musical, should someone give him the money to do so.

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Image via Netflix

Collider: After the movie and the fact that the title alone seemed to stir people up, are you surprised that people seem to have got even more riled up with the TV series, even though it has the same title? Are you more desensitized to the reaction, at this point?

JUSTIN SIMIEN: You know what? I was more surprised at how organized they’ve gotten with their harassment. They totally organized a campaign against us, which was shocking. But at the end of the day, it’s the same vocal minority. They were never gonna watch the show, anyway. Once again, their outrage just really, really helped promote the show and made sure that everybody knew that there was a show called Dear White People coming on April 28th. It stings a little bit, just because I hate that, as a black artist, I always have to explain myself. But at the same time, as a storyteller, it’s fascinating because it really, for me, peeled away a layer on this really strange alt-right subculture, and I can’t wait to mine that for future episodes. And now that I have all of these like and dislike robots, it’s really weird. It opened my eyes to people who sit around and have meetings to talk about targeting certain liberals to try to take them down. Some people’s lives are defined by it. It’s really weird.

Do you feel like the reaction to the show really proves the point of the show?

SIMIEN: Every time. Every single time. I think that’s kind of fun, actually. I love reading about things like the reaction to A Clockwork Orange when it came out, or Do the Right Thing. That’s stuff that I was too young to be able to process, at the time, but my favorite artists went through that. It’s kind of flattering, to be honest.

How did the Dear White People TV series come about? Did you always feel like you had more to say than what you were able to say within the confines of a film? Did you have a plan to explore this in a TV format, after doing the film?

SIMIEN: It started forming in the back of my head, like most things. I had been writing this for years, and there were so many character threads, storylines, ideas and conversations that I had to drop, as the movie got closer to being a possibility for production. So, I already had a bank of stories, and then I went on the road with the movie. For about a year and a half, I paid the rent just visiting colleges that were in the middle of some racial crisis, to screen the movie and talk to students about it. A year and a half of my life, after that movie, was spent talking to students and kids that were directly dealing with it. At the end of that, I was chomping at the bit to keep going. Lionsgate brought us in for a meeting to discuss the possibility, I pitched my version of it, and we were off to the races, after that point. It really was a very organic process. I never felt like I had to fight for it, which is very unique in my experience of Hollywood, so far.

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Image via Netflix

Showrunners and show creators talk about how much they love working for Netflix because they’re allowed to bring the voice they were hired for, and they get very minimal notes that are actually helpful. Did you find that to be the case, for yourself?

SIMIEN: Yeah. I think they were a little bit more hands on with me because it’s my first time doing a TV show, but I never felt like the notes were coming from some sort of ulterior motive. A lot of the time, when you get development notes, it’s more about audience share and fear and money. It has very little to do with telling the story. But every time we talked to Netflix, it was all about making sure the story was great and making sure that we were telling the story to the best of our abilities. They really continued to push us to do our best work. In that sense, it really was quite refreshing. And the wilder things that I wanted to do really didn’t get a lot of push-back. Exploring the different way of formatting the show, and certain themes that I thought for sure someone was going to have an issue with, they were great with. It was a unique first television experience.

How did you determine the length of the episodes, the number of episodes, and telling each episode from a different character’s point of view?

SIMIEN: I had that conceit in mind for awhile. Even stuff that comes out every week, I tend to wait until it’s over and binge it all together. It really seemed like I had an opportunity to do what I originally wanted to do with the film, which was to tell this really long, multi-protagonist piece, where every character had their own fully formed short film within the greater project. I thought it would be really cool to think of it as a single piece. The number of episodes and the timing, and all of that stuff, is contractual and more of the business side of things. For us, there were some stories that just didn’t need to be 30 minutes long. We’d watch a cut and it would feel like, “You know what? This could be shorter.” It served a purpose because the show is really binge-able. Not every episode requires a full half-hour, so sometimes you can watch three episodes and that feels like a very satisfying chunk that doesn’t take up too much of your time. So really, we ended up going a lot shorter than we were asked to because brevity is the soul of wit. We wanted it to be as funny and as concise as it could be.

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Image via Netflix

How did you go about putting the rest of the team together, as far as the showrunner, the group of writers, and the directors, and why did you feel it was important to have a female influence?

SIMIEN: I just felt it would be really irresponsible to tell stories coming from female points of views without women in the writers’ room, but also behind the camera. Yvette Lee Bowser, who is a legend and an icon and who created a full genre with Living Single, was the first up. When she came on board as the showrunner, together we were able to flesh out the team and find some really great writers and have a bunch of diverse opinions in the writers’ room. It was always my idea to have a team of rivals where we were fighting about things because the characters had to be disagreeing. There had to be a point for every counterpoint, and vice versa. And with the directors, I’m a fan of all of these people that we hired. I just felt like, wouldn’t it be cool, if I had a collection of people that I admire, putting their own cinematic spin on this world? I didn’t shoot this like a TV show. I encouraged everyone to think of it as cinema. It’s on Netflix, but we really had to push beyond the typical two-shot, medium shot, kind of robotic way of doing TV. I encouraged everyone to come up with a cinematic vision and point of view, for every single episode. That was really important to me ‘cause that’s the kind of TV that I want to watch and that’s the business that I want to be in.

Did anything most surprise you, in bringing in other people, having them play around in your world, and hearing their insight into your characters? Did they take any of the characters in directions that you wouldn’t have expected?

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Image via Netflix

SIMIEN: Nothing really surprised me, I have to say. Moving into it, as a person who’s used to being the director, I wasn’t quite sure, at first, what my role was. This was my first time doing anything like this, so some of it is naivete, but what I came to realize is that, if you’re a creator who’s also a director and writer, it’s a very hands-on process. It’s very difficult for a director who’s focusing on one 25-minute piece to consider all of the ways in which it fits into a whole, so you’re kind of director the directors. It’s a weird position to be in, but I also found it very satisfying because it’s just a different way of storytelling. What I loved is that all of the directors were so open in taking the influences of the film and the first few episodes, and riffing on it and bringing their own idiosyncracies to it. One of the things I loved is that, in the fifth episode, Barry [Jenkins] had a moment when the characters looked directly into camera and started talking. And I didn’t say that because I didn’t want to commandeer and press on Barry, or the other directors, how I would do it. So, when he did that, we both smiled because it was such a Simien thing. He was like, “This is me doing you.” It was so cool ‘cause he did it in a way that’s different than the way I maybe would have framed it, but he just really tapped into the DNA. That was really fun. It was cool to see these other artists riffing on what I put forth, in the beginning of the series.

You have a couple of actors from the movie playing their same character in the TV show. How did that come about? Did you ask everyone back and then wait to see who was available, and did you ever consider having entirely different characters on the TV show, as opposed to recasting?

SIMIEN: The original concept was to have everybody from the movie and just keep it going. But timing and timelines don’t really work out that way, so once it became clear that a lot of the core cast, or at least the four that the people think of as the core cast of the film – the show has expanded that a bit – couldn’t return because they were contractually obligated to do other things, or they were shooting movies, then we started to look at new cast members. That began to change the whole dynamic because once you replace one person, the whole thing has to be looked at again to make sure that the dynamics are right. I’m a big fan of every actor that was in the movie, but this was the way it had to happen. A lot of that was really due to timing and needing to make the show at a certain time. We didn’t really have the luxury of waiting for everybody. And I think it was great because it refreshed it a bit, for me. These actors are all really gifted. They were able to pick up where another actor left off, but not really do an impersonation of them. It was fun. It was the same characters, but it was coming through a new vessel. It was really refreshing, and it was great to see how seamlessly some of the old cast members could fit into that.

Did you tell your new cast not to go back and watch the movie again, so they could make these characters their own, or did you not do that?

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Image via Netflix

SIMIEN: The funny thing is that I didn’t have to. That’s the brilliance of Logan [Browning], Antoinette [Robertson], DeRon [Horton] and John Patrick [Amedori]. They automatically have the skill set to interpret what was there. In theater, this happens all the time. You take on roles that other people have made famous, all the time. They just all brought a spark to it. Also, as a director, I try not to implement a way for working, for every single actor, across the board. I try to work with each one, on an individual basis. Some of them reported back that it was really great to watch the movie, and then read the script. The characters, as written, are just a bit different than as portrayed, which is always the case. I think that freed people up to bring their own interpretations to the role. So much of it is the actor imprinting their own life into the character.

How did the Scandal parody series within the series come about, and had you thought about any other possibilities?

SIMIEN: There are so many alternate universe shows that did not make Season 1, and I cannot wait. Those are my favorite things to shoot. The Defamation of it all came from just sitting down and coming up with scenarios. I love mining these everyday experiences that a lot of us have, that haven’t really been talked about yet. The black viewing party, or predominantly black viewing party, for Scandal night is such a staple for a lot of young black people. I just thought that would be a really fun way to portray the scene where Sam is introducing a white boyfriend to her black friends because Scandal involves a series of interracial relationships that the audience has very strong opinions about. I don’t know. It’s the way my brain works. I’m a little shady, I guess. But I would do it to myself, in a heartbeat. It’s all love. I definitely have fun commenting on the real world and interpreting through the Dear White People lens.

How far ahead have you thought about the story you want to tell? Do you have a good idea of what Season 2 would be, and have you thought about anything further down the line than that?

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Image via Netflix

SIMIEN: I definitely have a great idea of what Season 2 is. I feel really connected to what I feel Season 2 should be about, but I also like the idea of keeping it loose. This isn’t sci-fi or a mega-drama that needs to lead to a very specific conclusion. I like the idea that, each season, we get to figure out what show we are now. If we’re not responding to the way the country is changing, or to the dialogue in the country, than the show doesn’t really work anymore. It becomes like a time capsule. We always have to be free to respond in real time, or as close to as real time as we can, to the country because this is a conversation piece. These characters represent all of us in society. So, I have an idea of where everyone ends up, ultimately, at the end of their arcs, but I try not to think too far ahead. For Season 2 and 3, I have a pretty good idea of where I want to go with the characters, but I also remain open. How the show is responded to by the audience will also determine what I do in Season 2. People who hated the movie, or had issues with the movie or certain things with the movie, I incorporated those viewpoints into the show. We’re portraying a very real conversation that’s happening in the country.

You wrapped this show on Election Day, so there hasn’t yet been the opportunity to have Trump’s America seep into the lives of these characters and this world that you’ve created. Will that directly affect your writing or the storytelling, in future seasons, now that that is our reality?

SIMIEN: Of course! In a weird way, we speak to it. We spoke to it, inadvertently. On a subconscious level, we were probably preparing for the worst. And while it was certainly a shock, going back and doing post on the episodes, we got chills in a few moments. It was almost like it was too soon, even though we had written it, months before the election. There’s no way to talk about race in America and not acknowledge what’s happened. This is the first time that people who have had the ability to avoid these conversations before are really seeing that us not dealing with slavery and the history of racism in America does affect global politics. That puts people in power that ought not be. I think a lot of folks that were not necessarily aware of that are now not only aware, but energized and actualized. That’s gonna absolutely be in the DNA of every season to come. We can never change this. This is our history now. America is a different country, and it will forever be a different country, after the election of Donald Trump.

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Image via Netflix

Because there has been such a lack of real and authentic black characters, do you feel an extra spotlight on you, and an extra weight and responsibility with making sure you portray that on this show?

SIMIEN: I try not to get into identity politics, which is funny because I have a show called Dear White People, or representation and portraying the race a certain way. That’s an old school style of portraying, and that’s not my thing. My thing is to try to tell the truth, as honestly as possible. For me, the weight is, how can I tell the truth through fiction, the best that I can? How can I drill down to the truth of these conversations into what these characters are going through? And what’s so cool is that, a lot of times, when you’re the only game in town, black audiences can be disappointed because you didn’t do that storyline or you didn’t cover this because there’s so few black stories in the culture. But what’s great is that, right now, there are multiple depictions of young black people on TV. You have my show, Chewing Gum, Insecure and Atlanta, and all of them are very different versions of black people. What’s so cool about that is that Americans that are not necessarily watching black shows, or who were only watching one or two, can see that we’re human beings. We come in many, many different flavors with many different ideologies and many different cultural assumptions. We’re human beings. We’re at the intersection of all of these things. I think that begins to open the door for more black characters to be the everyman, and to be at the center of a piece that everyone can universally imprint themselves upon. That wasn’t always possible.

Where will you be putting your focus while you’re waiting to hear about future seasons? Are you working on any film projects, as well?             

SIMIEN: Yeah, there’s a couple projects that I’ve completed recently, in terms of writing, that are now going through various development stages and hopefully making their way towards production. I’m attached to a couple of things, but obviously, being up in a writer’s strike situation, I have to sit on my hands for a bit. Luckily, I’ve been banking scripts. I tend to take on too many projects, at the same time, but as I’ve always done, I will continue to shift my focus onto whatever feels most urgent, in the moment. I’ve got a lot that I want to do and a lot of stories that I want to tell. I definitely know people that work harder than I do, but I’m ambitious and I want to get it done, at some point. I want to get all these stories out, at some point. So, there are a few things that I’m probably going to pivot to while we wait.

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Image via Netflix

Nobody ever wants to give specifics on things because you never know what will go into production yet until it actually goes into production, but are there specific genres that you want to work in?

SIMIEN: I’ve been sitting on a horror satire for some years, and with the success of Get Out, we now finally have a pathway to make the movie. That’s something that I’m very excited about taking to the next level. I’m also really interested in musicals. That’s probably my favorite genre of cinema, besides sci-fi. I really want to make some dramas, too. It’s interesting that people think of me as a comedy director, even though Dear White People is on a tonal line, at all times. There’s something about just doing straightforward drama that feels so gratifying, as an artist. I can’t help but crack jokes when I’m writing, but I definitely have a couple dramas up my sleeve, too, that I’m really dying to sink my teeth into. So, musicals, drama and sci-fi, and I want to keep going with satire.

And then, you can make a sci-fi musical because we all need that!

SIMIEN: Here’s the deal, I need that! At some point, someone will be foolish enough to give me the money to make that, and I will gladly do so!

Dear White People is available to stream at Netflix.

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