Lena Waithe on Police Violence and “Queen & Slim”
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The New Yorker
4.3 • 3.9K Ratings
🗓️ 18 November 2019
⏱️ 22 minutes
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Summary
Lena Waithe is the screenwriter and creator of the Showtime series “The Chi,” about the South Side of Chicago, but she tells Jelani Cobb, “Getting your own TV show is like getting beaten to death by your own dream.” Her first script for a feature film is “Queen & Slim,” directed by Melina Matsoukas. It’s about a man and woman who are on a not-great first date, during which they unintentionally kill a police officer at a traffic stop that escalates. “I just wanted to write something about us. But unfortunately, if I’m writing about us, how can I ignore the fact that we’re being hunted?” The film arrives in the aftermath two notorious police killings of black people—Botham Jean in Dallas and Atatiana Jefferson in Fort Worth—only the latest in a long line of similar tragedies. “I do not want that kind of publicity for my film,” Waithe says. “I am like every other black person. . . . Every time these stories hit our phones, a piece of us dies, because we know that we could be next.”
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| 1:11.4 | I'm Dorothy Wickendon on today's Politics and More podcast, the New Yorker's |
| 1:16.6 | Jelani Cobb talks with the writer, performer, and producer, Lena Weath. |
| 1:22.1 | Waith's new film, Queen and Slim, features two people on the run after the accidental killing of a police officer. |
| 1:32.5 | In 2017, Lena Waithe made TV history. |
| 1:36.1 | She was the first black woman to win an Emmy for comedy screenwriting. |
| 1:40.7 | That was for her work on Netflix's Master of None. |
| 1:44.0 | And the episode she wrote was based on her |
| 1:45.9 | own experience coming out to her mother. Wade's debut as a film screenwriter is with the new |
| 1:51.1 | movie Queen and Slim. And while it's not drawn directly from her own life, the film turns on |
| 1:57.5 | an experience that's all too common for people of color, a bad run-in |
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