I feel like I spent the first decade of my career trying to seem normal and trying to seem palatable and trying to seem like I wasn't too much or too weird or too specific. And I think that the things about myself that I tried to hide are the things that now I'm trying to put at the center of the work.
I think the goal is to find things that feel anti-algorithm — stories and characters that couldn't have been generated by a machine trying to please everyone. And weirdly, I think that's what connects with people the most, because audiences can feel the difference between something that was made to be consumed and something that was made because someone was burning to make it.
I think that somewhere along the way I internalized an idea that the goal was to sand off all the strangeness until you become a surface that lots of people can project onto. And what I found is that the more I did that, the more I disappeared, and the more I leaned into specificity and strangeness, the more people seemed to connect.
Explaining your why, as long as you're doing it authentically, can create grace and space to where we can disagree, but know we're coming from good places.
And the years pass, and you continue to perform blackness for people in a way that is palatable, right? In a way that keeps everybody there and not walking out the door. And that is only something I can do for so long, you know.
people like Willie Nelson, people like Dolly Parton, these really great storytellers, when they're singing, you know, if you see Dolly Parton on TV singing, and you press mute, it just looks like she's talking to you, because she is. She's telling the story.
I write in this book, sometimes you have to ruin your reputation to save your life. So, you know, I like people. I don't like putting on this front of, oh, I'm, you know, too busy to answer the phone. And so I didn't really listen to any of them because I was trying to listen to whatever this little heart of mine was trying to say.
the gap between that public self and the messy vulnerability of our private selves is often huge, you know, and that's true whether you're talking about how your life is actually going versus the Instagram post you just got up, put up, or that you saw of someone else, or like how professional and put together you're seeming on a Zoom call when actually you're not wearing any pants, you know, just out of the frame.
We all feel that we have to perform this version of ourselves that knows the script, that, as you said, is commanding and decisive and desirable, the best public version of ourselves. We're performing that. But actually the gap between that public self and the messy vulnerability of our private selves is often huge.
We spend our adulthood trying to cover feeling and trying to numb ourselves and distract ourselves. And so acting we get back to the source of like these raw exposed unhinged feelings
I'd stopped trying to find Matilda, because I realized she'd been inside me the whole time. She was the girl I'd been dreaming about since I was three. I didn't become her. I just finally let her out.
I remember being in those parties. I remember feeling- being surrounded by people who all seem like they have it together and seem like they are having the time of their lives. And I remember certain times feeling very alone in the middle of it.
Details in fiction are everything. Even kids write and say, "I like your books because people brush their teeth." I mean, it's that kind of, you know, everyday stuff. And that gives us a bond with the characters.
I think the way we speak, like you know, the body, the way we actually make the sounds and especially when we're talking to ourselves in, you know, what we would call our natural voices, like that is in some way maybe the most honest part of ourselves coming out.
If you allow yourself to live a life where you can take these bold, unique choices and build on top of them, you can move away from doing things that are different into doing things that are wonderful.
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.
