About
I write horror and comedy, and I don't think they're doing different work.
i write a lot
I am eighteen years old, currently studying film in Chicago. Writing was the first instrument I had for making sense of what I had inherited.
RESEARCH
Before film, there was research. I spent years reading and writing my way through the questions that would not leave me alone: how this country was built, who it was built on, and the mechanisms by which it has continued to fail the people who built it. Writing was how I metabolized that material. Then I understood that film is a language in its own right that can be studied and mastered. Film gives me the ability to alter what an audience believes.
TRADITION
I have spent my time studying the people who are paving this path for me. From Gina Prince-Bythewood to Spike Lee, Barry Jenkins, Ava DuVernay, John Singleton, Ryan Coogler, Jordan Peele. And even the actors: Viola Davis, Denzel Washington, Angela Bassett, Octavia Spencer. What every excellent artist taught me is this: in the arts, the reason a person shows up is the thing an audience ultimately feels.
METHOD
Every project I write begins with a thesis. What am I arguing, and whose life, whose joke, whose relationship, whose government will carry the argument? It makes the first page harder to write, but it makes every page after it more intelligent and more personal.
Comedy is not a departure from this. I believe humor is an act of resistance, and the capacity to locate joy in the face of oppression is one of the bravest things a person can do. I intend to write both registers at a professional standard.
RECKONING
The industry I am entering has not finished paying for its inheritance. The legacy of Jim Crow persists in Hollywood, and Black filmmakers work at a disadvantage that no one has to name aloud for it to function. As a Black woman I am positioned inside that condition rather than outside it. My response is quality and volume: make the work undeniable, make a great deal of it and make the path legible for whoever is behind me. There will be a day when a Black filmmaker's name carries the same weight as anyone's. I intend to be part of the reason.
PRESENT
Today, I am a member of Mezcla Media Collective. Signed to Moore Creative Talent. Training in improvisation at The Second City, Chicago. Building a slate of shorts, features and television to shoot and shop over the coming years.