Hey guys, Willie Geist here with another episode of the Sunday Sit Down podcast. My thanks as always for clicking and listening along. I got a good one for you this week. My guest is Emmy winning actor, producer, writer, director, and everything else you can possibly be in Hollywood. Lina Waith. She is truly one of the brightest young stars in Hollywood.

Lena won her Emmy writing an episode of Master of None.

That's the Aziz Ansari Show.

She also starred in the episode entitled Thanksgiving, which is the story of her coming out as gay to her own family.

She also created and wrote the show The Shy, which has a big audience on Showtime, and her current film is called Queen and Slim.

It's got a lot of people talking. We'll let her explain the premise of the movie, some of the

controversy behind the movie. You also might know her from Ready Player One, the Steven Spielberg film.

He handpicked her to be in that movie. And she's going to be

starring in Westworld coming up as well. She's got a lot going on in her life. Comes from Chicago.

When she was a teenager, she moved to Evanston, Illinois, which is on the sort of precipice of being a

suburb. It basically is a suburb, but a close in suburb. And she talks about how moving to that more diverse area around Chicago sort of broadened her view. She gets into a bunch of her inspirations. Interesting for a young woman to grow up wanting to be a TV writer, not necessarily an actor because of the shows, the faces, and the stories she saw on TV like the Cosby Show in a different world.

She's a fascinating woman, a talented woman, great to talk to.

I think you're going to really like if you don't already know Lena Waith.

This is your introduction to one of the biggest stars coming up in Hollywood.

Here now, my Sunday sit-down conversation with Lena Waith.

Lena, thanks for doing this. I appreciate it. Thank you for having me. I told you, I'm about an hour out from having finished the film. My heart's still beating out of my chest. Yeah. Congratulations. It's incredible. Thank you so much. Let's go back to the genesis of it, how it came to you. James Frye brought to the idea. Yeah, I mean, how did it start? I was at a party in Hollywood, as they say. I was with my wife and, you know, I was just standing there and James Frey came up to me. And I know who he is. He introduced himself. He said, hey, I have this idea for a movie that I can't write. And I was like, well, what's the idea? And he's like a black man, black woman on a first date, on their way home, get pulled over by the police, which is never a fun thing for a black person. Things escalate very quickly. They kill the police officer and self-defense and decide to get in the car and just go. And I was like, yeah, you can't write that, but I can. I was like, I think it's a really interesting idea,

interesting starting point. He had an outline and another title, and I was like, I don't want any of that. I just want that nugget. And I was like, you know, obviously in fairness, I'll share story by credit because you planted the seed, but I really wanted to grow the tree on my own and do it myself and he didn't have any issue with that. He was like, go for it.

And so I did.

And I really just started any issue with that. He was like, go for it.

And so I did.

And I really just started the process of developing these two characters that were kind

of become with this algorithm for all of us as a people and just sort of what it's like to

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