The Ladies Of ‘Dear White People’ Talk Owning The Room, Meryl Streep & Season 3 Deets: EXCLUSIVE

Things are very different at Winchester University this term–and the ladies of Dear White Peopleare happily diving into the juicy details for Season 3. When we last left Sam (Logan Browning), Joelle (Ashley Blaine Featherson) and Coco (Antoinette Robertson) they were all facing some very tough truths about themselves. Things get even heavier this season.

When Season 3 opens three months later, all three of the women are in very different places in their lives. They are learning –as many of us did in college–that the true journey is about growth and evolution. Ahead of the Season 3 premiere of Dear White People, STYLECASTER sat down to chat with leading ladies–Logan Browning, Ashley Blaine Featherson and Antoinette Robertson to chat about trauma fatigue, why #MeToo is such an important theme this season and some hilarious behind the scenes secrets.

“I believe there is a thing as trauma fatigue,” Robertson reflected. “Sometimes you really just need a moment to take care of yourself and check-in with how you’re feeling. I feel like when you’re bombarded with all the negativity of the world, you can just experience emotional burnout.”

The burnout is something nearly all of the characters on DWP are battling this season–leading them to analyze various aspects of their identities. “As far as Joelle is concerned, I don’t think she’s so much dealing with trauma fatigue,” Featherson explained. “I think she’s emotionally exhausted because she takes on what everybody else is going through and suppresses it a little bit. I think that’s a real thing too.”

Continue reading at STYLECASTER.

Image: Laura Valencia/SHEMedia.

'Dear White People' Vol. 2 Is Wittier, Bolder, Darker And More Impactful (Review)

Somebody is stirring up sh*t at Winchester University, and all of our faves are getting sucked into the storm. From the opening sequence of Dear White People Volume 2, it’s quite clear that the black students at the Armstrong-Parker House are about to confront much more than they did in the first season of the acclaimed Netflix series. Season 2 opens with an age-old debate, one that has started plenty of wars on Black Twitter and probably ended a friendship or two: salt versus sugar grits. The second season bangs on from there. Two weeks after the tumultuous protest against integrating Armstrong-Parker, and three weeks after Reggie (Marque Richardson) found himself staring down the barrel of a campus police officer's gun, Sam (Logan Browning) and the crew are struggling to pick up the pieces. It doesn’t help that they are now sharing their dorm with residents of the recently burned down Davis Hall. It's a change that has transformed their once safe space amid a predominantly white university into one fraught with microaggressions and disharmony. Apparently, the Caucasians find the scent of fried foods and Armstrong-Parker's choices in television programming offensive.

Mirroring the first season, Dear White People creator Justin Simien angles each episode of the 10-part second season from the perspective of one of the show's main character. However, this time, we go well beyond the surface, even stepping away from Winchester's campus completely. It’s not just Sam, Reggie or Coco (Antoinette Robertson) who get a spotlight this season. Lionel (DeRon Horton), Joelle (Ashley Blaine Featherson) and even Kelsey (Nia Jervier) get some well-deserved and much-needed fleshing out — giving new perspectives to the multiplicities and differences in the black diaspora.

Volume 2 of Dear White People is bolder. With the Trump election behind us, we're standing firmly in the midst of his presidency, batting a resurgence of white supremacy and racist rhetoric. Simien confronts it all head on. Though she’s used to her radio show "Dear White People" bringing forth criticism, it is now Sam herself who is under attack. A Twitter troll, @AltIvyW, is making her life miserable, assaulting her and the black study body with cruel tweets, abusive language and even threats to their safety. The mystery surrounding the identity of the troll is a thread that runs throughout the entire season. The relentlessness of being called everything from a monkey to a "half-breed bitch" is wearing down the most outspoken black woman at Winchester, and she's certainly not coming out of it unscathed.

Continue reading at Shadow and Act.

The S&A 'Dear White People' Interview

The highly anticipated film-turned-series, "Dear White People" has finally hit Netflix today, April 28. The series, which follows Sam White (Logan Browning) and the other Black students at the fictional Ivy League Winchester University, picks up where the film left off. This time around all of the students will be getting their chance to eviscerate racism and speak their truths, through this wonderfully written satirical piece. Ahead of the series premiere, I sat down with writer and director Justin Simien who wrote the film and all 10-episodes of the first season, Logan Browning who stars as Sam White (a role that Tessa Thompson originated in the film), and Brandon P. Bell who will reprise his role from the film as Troy Fairbanks.

We discussed expanding the world of the film into a series, what inspired Simien to write the film in the first place, and how our current political climate will inform the show.

Aramide Tinubu: Hi guys! Justin Simien: Shadow and Act! Y’all were the first ones to put out the “Dear White People” concept trailer back in the day. So we are forever in debt!

AT: So dope! You guys are awesome. So going from the film to the television series, why was that important for you to do?

JS: There was just so much more to say about these people. And, one of the reasons why being a storyteller is so important to me is I really feel like we need to see ourselves in stories. One of the things that is challenging about being a person of color in this society is that it’s so hard to see ourselves. There are so many shades of us. Just because you have a show with a Black woman in it, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it speaks to you.

AT: Exactly!

JS: With the movie, every single one of those characters are characters that I have not seen in anything before. With the show, we get to go even deeper into those characters lives and introduce some new characters that I also haven’t seen in anything before. So, anybody who felt like, “Gosh, I didn’t really get enough of the gay experience, or I didn’t get enough of the male experience or I didn’t get enough of the female perspective.” Whatever you feel like you didn’t get enough of in the movie, we’re giving it to you in this series! (Laughing) Every episode is from a different character’s point of view. So, you get to go home with Coco (Antoinette Robertson), you don’t just see her through the eyes of other people, you see her through her own eyes as she looks at her reflection in the mirror. I just think that’s so important because we aren’t archetypes, we aren’t these sort of ideas of people, we’re people. We have hopes and dreams and contradictions and flaws. A television show gives you the canvas to go that deep.

AT: Logan, you are picking up where Tessa Thompson left off with Sam White, but you’ve really made her your own character. What was that process like for you; looking at what Tessa built and then spinning it for yourself?

Logan Browning: I learned to relate it to theater, which was really fun because I personally haven’t had the joy of being in many theater productions. So, there was this great piece of work, and I saw someone perform brilliantly, and I got to absorb that. (Laughing) It almost feels like cheating, you know? You have so many things to go off of, and I went back to the screenplay, and that was really fun. Just seeing the stage directions, or seeing things that changed and to see them come to life. Reading the lines for myself from the screenplay and saying, that was Tessa’s interpretation as Sam, how does Logan feel about it? So, that was my approach.

AT: Brandon, you’ve lived with your character, Troy for a little bit longer because you were also in the film. So what shocked you about Troy that you didn’t expect coming into the series. What did you learn about him that you didn’t know previously?

Brandon P. Bell: A lot of things actually. Troy’s main relationships are with his dad (Obba Babatundé), Coco, women, Lionel (DeRon Horton) and his role within the Black community and the community at large on campus because he’s in politics. He’s the head of C.O.R.E., the Coalition of Racial Equality, and at the end of the film he was running for President. So for me, it was going deeper and exploring the toll that that’s going to take on Troy. We all know that he likes to smoke weed and write jokes by his lonesome in the bathroom out of a toilet paper roll. That is a part of Troy’s identity that he doesn’t share with anyone. For me, it’s how does he manage all of that but also maintain some sense of sanity and himself? Who is Troy? Without spoiling anything, there is a lot of things that I think the audience will love and get to discover. As an actor, you want that. You want to build and be challenged. Where Troy ends up is great. I couldn’t have asked for a better arc.

AT: All of you went to predominantly white universities, I did as well, and it was …interesting. (Laughing) So Justin how did you come up with the concept for “Dear White People” while in school? Was it because you felt isolated, did you feel like you didn’t belong?

JS: For me, it actually grew out of a conversation that I was having with my best friends at the time about the fact that we were hanging out with other Black kids from the Black Student Union, but we didn’t necessarily like all of them. (Laughing) We were just sort of like; we’re hanging out with these people because they’re Black and for no other reason. So, this conversation that we were having amongst ourselves, it just struck me as so funny that I’d never seen it in a movie before. It was like a conundrum of being Black in America that was never dealt with. Every time you saw a Black movie or a Black television show, magically everyone in the show was Black. The cab drivers are Black, the people working at the coffee shop were Black. My favorite thing about “Boomerang” is that everybody in New York was Black! My experience has always been one of few. My mother who is Creole, is a very light-skinned woman, so people didn’t understand why were holding hands through the mall. Just that feeling of being the only one who understood who you were; and not seeing yourself reflected back in the culture. I just felt like that was something that a lot of us were and are going through, and it just felt like doing a college satire was the perfect way to articulate that feeling. It felt like new territory. It was a jumping off point to get into all of these other issues. But, it all started with the sense of feeling like, “Why is it that I feel like I have to play a version of myself for my Black friends and then another version of myself for my white friends, and a version of myself in class?” Is that unique to the Black experience? Is that a human condition thing? Those were the questions that were on my mind when I started writing the film, and I don’t know if they’ve ever left.

Continue reading at Shadow and Act.

Film Review: Dear White People

On my first day of college at NYU, I dragged my three bags up eight flights of steps to get to my assigned room. Many years later now I don't recall what type of door tags the Resident Hall Advisor had made for the first semester, but I do remember how the names on the door, how they looked and how they made me feel.  My dorm door read, "Sarah, Susan, Sally and Aramide". So began my freshman year of college; a strange and often troubling prologue to my college experience as a whole." Justin Simien's Dear White People felt very much like relieving that experience.

I went into the show with extremely high expectations. The film has been garnering serious buzz for well over a year. It centers around the fictional Ivy League Winchester University in or around Chicago. Samantha "Sam" White (Tessa Thompson), the film's protagonist  is a mixed Black nationalist airs a campus radio show entitled "Dear White People". The show exposes the hypocrisies and racial injustices that are ingrained within the university, as well as the micro-aggressions that students of color experience on a daily basis along with with the spaces of privilege and power that the white students on the campus continuously occupy. 

Though often humorous scoldings like  "Dear White people, please stop dancing", Sam also points out completely inappropriate behavior, like the use of the word Nigga by white people even when "hidden" under the guise of reciting rap lyrics. Needless to say, Sam's ruffling quite few feathers.Winchester has also enacted a random lottery selection that leaves students with little choice of where they might dorm. An issue that is seemingly only affecting the historically Black dorm on campus.

There's also tensions between the President of the University's son Kurt (Kyle Gallner) constantly antagonizes standing proudly on his pedestal of privilege. Not the only douche bag in the film, Kurt is constantly at war with Troy (Brandon Bell), the head of the Black dorm and the son of the Dean of Students (played by Dennis Haysbert). Troy also just happens to be Troy's ex, confused about his own identity and place at Winchester, he's constantly seeking his father's approval while trying to accepted by Kurt and his crew.  

Lionel (Tyler James Williams), a black gay student  who can't seem to find his footing anywhere, is the object of both Kurt's ridicule and Troy's disdain. (Tyler is brilliant by the way, just as he was in Everybody Hates Chris). Though he's being constantly shoved into stereotypically labeled boxes by his classmates, Lionel might just discover his own identity in the end. 

I'll admit the film started off slow for me, the narrative was like a weaving basket and I struggled first to understand how all the threads aligned.  Perhaps it was because my expectations were so high. I found my mind racing, desperately trying to figure out where the story was going before it picked up speed. When it did however, it was not at all what I expected. In fact it was much much more.

Instead of the collective story of the token black kids that I and I'm sure many of you know. Simien chose to focus on the complexities of Blackness. What if you don't really have a place in the Black Student Union? Perhaps you find the idea of wearing your hair in it's natural state abhorrent? Maybe the person you love is someone society has tried to shame you into hiding? All of these ideas are assessed in the film. Teyonah Parrish who plays "Coco", the upwardly mobile bougie Black girl whose looking for a Robin to her Paula is freaking brilliant. (Much more range then she is afforded on either Mad Men or Survivor's Remorse.) And yes, it's also made clear that it's NEVER OK to just reach into ANYONE's head and rub your Hands through it. Nor is it EVER acceptable to wear Blackface. (Dear White people, STOP WEARING BLACKFACE!) 

The film isn't perfect, it's not as alternatively sound as I would have hoped and there are some questions left unanswered in the end that I felt as viewers we are owed an explanation.It did however make me think, as it will many of you. It brought me back to that day freshman year of college when my roommate looked at me with disgust and pity when she found a strand of my hair by the refrigerator. (Early on I gave her the "Black people don't wash their hair everyday talk.") Apparently she thought that meant I was just filthy. It also reminded me of the awkward encounters that I had with the other black kids that made up the entirety of NYU 5% black student body at the time. (Like the incident of the girl who acted a fool at a restaurant and didn't tip, or the guy at that frat party who tried to "hook up" with me because I was the only other black person there, or the times when I went to Black history month club and the older students were rude and snooty and wouldn't speak to the freshman.)

The film also reminded me of the time last year when I was leaving my thesis class for my graduate programs (where I was the only black person) at my Ivy League slams matter and I said "that got on my black nerve." And, one of my classmates turned to me and said, "Why does it have to be a "Black" nerve?" 0_O

Dear White People, lets it be known loud and clear that despite the fact that we live in Obama's America, we are not and no where near post-racial. Its unapologetic and brass in your face. It screams loudly and clearly that race and racism are still issues so lets talk about them. Go see Dear White People, and tell me what you think.

xoxoxo Chocolate Girl in the City xoxoxoxoxo