From KCRW Santa Monica and KCRW.com, it's The Treatment.

Welcome to the treatment. I'm Elvis Mitchell. The title Queen and Slim, I think, is aocative because, as I've mentioned to its director,

Elena Matsukas, sitting across from me, is both archetypal and stereotypical.

And we start the conversation there.

Thank you so much for being here.

It's good to have you here.

Thank you for having me.

And let's talk about that title, because you meant for it to be evocative.

Did you not? I did, but I didn't come up with the title, Lena Waite, so I can't take credit, but it's one of the things that I love about her writing.

We should say it's Lena Waith, a story by Lena and James Frey.

Right, but she very much wrote the script by herself.

But she came up with this title, and we talked many times about it because I was so pulled in by, you know, but essentially it's supposed

to represent all of us, you know, all of us in the black community and, you know, all black

women are queens in some way, and then Slim, you know, is a way that black men would greet each

other and was a very general term of honor. And also going back to authenticity and how we speak

and get to know each other that we don't really call each other by our names, you know?

So you don't learn their names until the end of the film.

And, you know, also that hopefully audiences are able to see themselves reflected in each of those characters.

Yeah, by basically making them semi-anonymous, you make it archetypal and we actually have to get to know them rather than just identifying them by name.

Absolutely.

We get to know them as they get to know each other, which I also think is really interesting.

There's not a lot of backstory.

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