And when you heard more compelling, you understood that to mean that I needed to write about hardship and overcoming trauma or pain, um and something that reflected or talked more about my identity as a black girl, a black girl from Detroit, a black girl from a low-income community, a black girl who was first-generation college.
I realized people aren't seeing me. people are seeing ideas of me and it was those ideas that kept me depressed and paranoid all these years and I realized I wasn't alone. I don't want to live in a world where we live in ideas of one another. I want to live in a world where we live in the presence of one another, the real people.
I realized people aren't seeing me. I don't want to live in a world where we live in ideas of one another. I want to live in a world where we live in the presence of one another, the real people.
I have a 12-year-old's mentality. Uh, and when I'm moving stuff into the region, guess what, guys? I'm not using that as a leverage point. I'm using the stuff.
I always put 1,000 percent of my heart and time and energy into anything I create. And people can feel heart, they can feel passion. And I think it translates through the screen.
There's just so much talk and that's why there's a cynicism. You get burnt out from all the talk and all the things that you know whether it's safety pins or some other thing to show like I'm on your team. Like after a while it's like I I don't need that. I want you to actually do this stuff.
There's just so much talk and that's why there's a cynicism. You get burnt out from all the talk and all the things that you know whether it's safety pins or some other thing to show like I'm on your team. Like after a while it's like I I don't need that. I want you to actually like those are people that are using their time. They're using their money. They're using their bodies to help a movement to to to to support others who don't have the same luxuries like to to use their body and their time and their money.
We're often our own worst critics. Yes, you know, I know a lot of people will be watching this series and thinking, is Riz playing himself, playing a character? And so much of this, you, well, all of it, you wrote. So it comes from real experience as well as your imagination.
There's a lot of me and Shah, but I think actually there's a lot of Shah in all of us, more than we like to admit. And really the show is about this feeling that life sometimes feels like one big audition.
the gap between that public self and the messy vulnerability of our private selves is often huge. And that's true whether you're talking about how your life is actually going versus the Instagram post you just put up or that you saw of someone else, or how professional and put together you're seeming on a Zoom call when actually you're not wearing any pants, just out of the frame.
you could be all of what you are, and someone would pass on it, desire you privately. But because society says that someone has to look a certain way or be a certain way or that you want to gain favor by having someone who looks a certain way on your arm, I've seen it a lot. And it's always disturbed me, quite frankly, that you're not even choosing what you actually like.
I want to say I've written more books than I've read in the last 5 years. That that that would um reveal me for the pseudointellectual douchebag I actually am.
Well, I was trying to act all serious and say, you know, I'm not a petty person. And then I checked myself and I said, in this case, I'm petty as hell.
I'm just offering a glimpse of some of the things that people may not see, of sweaty hands, of anxiety, insecurity, of trying to be someone I'm not, of making mistakes, learning from those mistakes.
