Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart, live from the WNYC Studios in Soho. Thank you for sharing part of your day with us. I am really grateful you are here. Today, we continue our week-long lead-up to the Tony Awards with the play Yellow Face. It's nominated for best revival of a play. Its star, Daniel Dae Kim, is also a nominee. We'll hear from him and playwright David Henry Hwang. Then, Mark Twain once said, "The reports of my death was an exaggeration," but the new biography about him from Ron Chernow is not. We'll kick off our June Full Bio series today with Ron Chernow on Mark Twain, and another installment of our WNYC Centennial Series, 100 Pieces of Art, will get recommendations from Bronx Museum curator Eileen Jeng Lynch. That is our plan.

Let's get this started with a new Judy Blume adaptation from a trailblazing showrunner, Mara Brock Akil.

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A new series reimagines one of Judy Blume's most beloved and challenged novels, 1975's Forever, into a romantic drama about two Black teenagers living in Los Angeles. Set in 2018, the show follows Justin and Keisha, who were elementary school classmates. Then they reconnect at a party on New Year's Eve 2017. At first, Justin doesn't exactly remember her, but when he does, it gets about as close to love at first sight as you can get. Of course, there's trouble brewing. A video of Keisha was shared around, causing her to switch schools and to question Justin's true intention.

The two of them are also athletes. This is happening during one of the most pivotal moment of their lives, their senior year. The show takes us on a journey of their budding relationship as their families, schools, their peers, everybody gets in the way, a review in Variety said of Forever, "The eight-episode series shines because it refuses to mock teenagers and young love while showing the fullness and wholeness of the Black community."

One reason is the show's creator, Mara Brock Akil. She's a pro. She brought you Girlfriends, The Game, and Being Mary Jane. Mara is joining me in-studio. It is nice to meet you.

Mara Brock Akil: It's a pleasure to be. Thank you for having me.

Alison Stewart: It's so interesting thinking about your shows being mostly about adults, but this is really about teenagers and teenagers' lives. What aspects of teenagers' lives and of romance did you think would be interesting to explore on screen?

Mara Brock Akil: They're full of humanity. I think a lot of times when you say YA, I think it connotates this idea that that's for them, this is not for us, if you're older than a certain age. I think when you accept that they have a full humanity and you explore the full breadth of it, then you realize, "Oh, it's another universal story about love. It's another universal story about people. I can engage and enter into the story that way." Judy Blume did that for me.

Alison Stewart: When did you first read it?

Mara Brock Akil: I read Forever in middle school now. I didn't even have a boyfriend, I couldn't have a boyfriend at that age, but I knew it was my near future. What I appreciated about Judy Bloom's books was that she met us at that truth. She met us at our real questions, at our real curiosity, at our real-- trying to understand ourselves. She didn't talk down. She writes characters, I could say, on their spine. They swivel on their own spine. There's no one looking down at them, examining them.

My number one, I often say too, that you first become a writer as a reader. I like to believe that some of Judy Blume's pen is in the recipe of me. In writing anything in my course of my career, I always like to set the character on their own spine, their own ideas of self, how they got there, and move from there. Forever was no different. Though I've written a lot about adults, I wrote these children, young people believing them, believing their heart's desires, believing their curiosities, believing their questions. I sort of anchor myself in them to help craft them.

Alison Stewart: This book is about your first experience with sex. That's one of the big challenges of the book. It's one of the reasons it gets challenged now. How are you able to look at sex differently with today's teenagers? Because it is very different than it was 50 years ago.

Mara Brock Akil: Yes. In fact, Judy and I talked about that, that she didn't know if the book was going to be relevant today because of the nature and the progression of sex and kids' access to it. Just people talking about it. There's social media. Anything you want to know about sex is out there, and parents can't really stop that. We wondered, "Well, what's the importance of it now?" I said, "Okay, let's meet the characters there. You're right, this generation, in a lot of ways, in some cases, are sex positive." Sex is not their question, but intimacy is not there. As much as we have technology to connect us, we're very disconnected. We're in the era of loneliness. Why is that? Our children are rooted and centered in that.

Also, the book is not just about sex. The book is about emotional self. It's also about how do we explore these things, our emotional self, our physical self, and protect a future. Kids today, what is it like being a kid today, a young person today, and even thinking about a future? Those are a lot of things to talk about. The pathway to success, which is examined in the show, is it always one way. Is that the only best way? What the parents are, the pressures on these kids by having to attend high-achieving academic environments and what are the consequences to that? What are the challenges to that? Is that the right path? So all of that was in the book, too.

Alison Stewart: Who was your sounding board? Who is your teen sounding board?

Mara Brock Akil: I have two boys.

Alison Stewart: I have one.

Mara Brock Akil: I've been a mom before, except my first. My first son is my biggest muse on this project. He's also a collaborator. I want to shout out to him on that. As Justin discovers his voice musically, he is the musical voice of Justin. Also, he and his group Until Tomorrow, they have a song in Episode 4. He also helped me shape the environment by just being himself, by me caring about him so much, wanting to get it right as a parent, wanting to help guide him through his rite of passage. He's my muse.

Then close to him are his friends. Then outside that, his school community, his life community. I tend to approach my work, the truth, through fiction. The journalist in me just started paying attention to the generation at large. He was how I entered into the world through my heart space. I think the best screenwriting in this medium is to make people feel, and I have all the feels for my sons.

Alison Stewart: My guest is showrunner Mara Brock Akil. She's joining us to discuss Forever. It's a new romantic drama series about two teens in LA. It's streaming now on Netflix. It's in LA, not in Jersey, like in the book. The cast is predominantly Black. What were your main factors in your decision to-- You really reimagine the story. It's the heart of the story, but it is reimagined.

Mara Brock Akil: Yes. I really held onto the essence of the book, but a lot changed because I was making three big decisions. One is deciding that Katherine would be Justin. Katherine, back in 1975, was considered the most vulnerable. Also, if you think about her in society with the birth control pill just coming out, that she can actually now explore herself safely and hold onto her future. I posit that in 2017, 2018, who is the most vulnerable then? I posit it's the Black boy, that the conversations that Black families have to have one, "Can my son be alive?" Let's just start there.

Those were very real concerns. They still remain those concerns. Especially during that time between Trayvon Martin's murder and George Floyd's murder, Black families were screaming into a vacuum about what was happening to our children. No great zip code and no great school was necessarily going to protect them, especially when the fashion item of the century is a hoodie. You're just, as Dawn would say, "Catastrophic parenting."

In that space, part of what you're trying to protect is not just their body, but then now intersects into the conversation on a Black male body. That is in our country's history, full of strife, full of pain, full of death. You got to talk about that before our Black boys can consider their own feelings about love, about desire, they're considered enemy number one just by their physical presence. That's very harrowing. "Can I just consider these very natural rites of passage and not be considered a violent person?"

You don't think about that when you start having babies and their toddlers and their cute little elementary school, middle school. You're like, "Oh, shoot. Oh, shoot, we got to have these hard conversations." Judy and I leaned it. She leaned into that and understood that. She's like, "Wow. Just by changing that--" It also allowed for, like the book, the interiority of a character that we don't see on screen. Justin, he's not often on screen and certainly not the main character. It was really lovely to explore male vulnerability, and then more specific, Black male vulnerability. When I think often there's images bestowed upon them to be of a certain way in order to be considered masculine and strong and all of that. That was the first choice.

Keisha is Michael in the book. Michael, he was drawn in, but only through Katherine's perspective. By pulling her in 50-50, it allowed me also to examine two types of Black families, the traditional nuclear family, two-parent-led families, and then the single mother that is surrounded by the village. It allowed me to show both families who have the same goal, love fiercely both of their children, but having to approach it differently.

In the book, some of the ills of the society of that time were in the supporting characters, the tough stuff that teenagers were swimming through. I decided to put the toughest thing that I think this generation is dealing with- the phone- in the middle of this relationship and how it connects and completely disconnects, harms, and all the things that it can do when misused and/or-- especially the blocking, which was so hilarious to really examine how well it helps tell plot and story-

Alison Stewart: Oh, that's interesting.

Mara Brock Akil: -around a love story about miscommunication. Adding that to their generation and reflecting it back to them was really fun. Also just from a storyteller perspective, I was like, "Oh, my God, this is just rich."

Alison Stewart: The group text.

Mara Brock Akil: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Can explain a lot.

Mara Brock Akil: Yes, can explain a lot. The third element, like I said, changing it and then changing the Black family. In the book, Katherine's parents allowed her a lot of independence and freedom. One, with the onset of the birth control pill, it was a freeing idea for young women back 50 years ago that there's a way to protect their future. Differently, Black families, especially during this time period, where I realized we were sort of narrowing their opportunity to have a rite of passage because of the way we parented, we were so afraid all the time. We kind of kept them in the house a little too much. Not a lot of independence. Thank God that Justin found Keisha and Keisha found Justin because even the fact that they chose a Black girlfriend or a Black boyfriend gave them some space to get to know each other and really get to know themselves.

Alison Stewart: Your two leads, Lovie Simone. Is that her last name?

Mara Brock Akil: Yes, Lovie Simone, beautiful, talented actress.

Alison Stewart: She's so great. She was so great in Greenleaf.

Mara Brock Akil: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Michael Cooper Jr. plays Justin. He said a really interesting thing about you to the Hollywood Reporter. He said "she" Mara, "She cares so much about her craft and about her story that it's palpable on set. It's this binding thing of passion and love for the story. The reason why I got into acting was of service. I think Mara understands that as an artist, it's not about you, it's not about self. It's how we can serve each other and how we can connect to them."

Mara Brock Akil: Wow, Michael, thank you.

Alison Stewart: It's beautiful, right? It made me wonder how do you let young actors find their voice, but you control the set.

Mara Brock Akil: I want to give a shout-out to writing. I really enjoy crafting. It's on the page. I think when a well-crafted script, especially in the collaborative art form, it is-- I've heard it been called a blueprint, and I understand it because it changes as you add elements. The script is the foundation to the house. When you see these tall buildings here in the city, they got to go deep in the ground so that building can stand strong. That's how I see my work. I go deep in the ground so that those actors, those directors, those production designers, cinematographers, all of these storytellers, wardrobe, costume, the composer, everybody gets to stand on top of that foundation and build that beautiful structure. It's the script. It starts there. My love is poured into it so that people have a vessel to pour their love and talent into it. I think that's how we got there.

Alison Stewart: We're talking about Forever, which you can see now on Netflix. My guest is showrunner Mara Brock Akil. We'll have more after a quick break. This is All Of It.

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You're listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. I'm going to get it right. It's Mara Brock Akil.

Mara Brock Akil: Yes, thank you.

Alison Stewart: Mara Brock Akil. She's a showrunner for Forever. Let's talk about your characters, Justin and Keisha. What's going on in their lives when we meet them?

Mara Brock Akil: Oh, my goodness. It's that junior year right before it all hits the fan, where your future's around the corner calling you, and college applications. Keisha knows from the jump, she's very clear. She knows where she's going. She wants to go to Howard. She's hiding a bit at the start of our show because she's hiding a big secret, a big mistake she made. Instead of leaning in and telling her family, because she just cannot face the shame, she sees how hard her mother is working, and for her to make such a mistake, she just cannot face it. She allows her mother to believe that the microaggressions that are happening at school are just too much, always having been the only Black girl or the few Black girls in these institutions, and she allows her to stay below the 10.

That's a big challenge in LA. When you're a kid and you don't have a car and you're trying to see each other and stay below the 10 at a Catholic girls' school that more Black and brown girls are there. Justin is still in his trajectory of going to the most elite schools at a very high price. He's going into his junior year believing that he's way behind getting recruited in his first dream, which is D1 basketball because-

Alison Stewart: Who doesn't.

Mara Brock Akil: -who doesn't? The NBA, who doesn't want that career? He comes from a family, it's interesting, the family just believes, "Believe in your children's dreams and support them to the fullest. Believe in them. Believe in them." I think we tune in very quickly that you realize maybe the parents are allowing that carrot just so that he'll just get to college, but allowing him to be a little bit naïve in that pursuit. It's very important. We're meeting, we call it neurodivergent today, but at that time, he represents a lot of people, because I think I'm undiagnosed. ADHD and how challenging school is in general. Just his learning style is not the most popular so it's going to be challenging to learn in those traditional environments and fast-paced environments.

We're meeting him, just a bit insecure about himself and his life. He's in a padded prison. The beautiful home, beautiful life. Who doesn't want to live? They got a pool.

Alison Stewart: Golden handcuffs.

Mara Brock Akil: Golden handcuffs. I think that's how they can keep him safest. I don't think they consciously want to do it, but subconsciously, you're like, "Well, stay here. Have all your friends here. Stay safe, stay alive." This is what is underneath this beautiful life that they're living. You meet him at a time when it's very difficult to just even say what he wants. Meeting Keisha is the first thing he realizes he wants. He understands desire, he understands love immediately. Through love, he gets to discover more of who he is, which progresses away from this fake identity of, "I'm going to be a D1 athlete," and he finds out really who he is and he connects to himself musically.

He's also feeling a little late because we do span it over junior year and senior year. They're half of junior year and then we expand it through the course of senior year. We have the summer. I got to direct Episode 5, which bridges their junior and senior year and the summer of.

Alison Stewart: It's such an extraordinary episode. I told you before we started that it's called The Vineyard.

Mara Brock Akil: Yes.

Alison Stewart: It's one of the best representations I've seen of Black Martha's Vineyard in a really long time.

Mara Brock Akil: Thank you. I wanted to get it right, Alison. Being one who has been summering there for 15 years now, I just felt like it was my duty to get it right. I couldn't mess it up. I was very nervous to mess up.

Alison Stewart: What did getting it right mean?

Mara Brock Akil: Our love. The amount of time expense. Just thinking about the Vineyard holds us through the tough parts of the year, just to drink up freedom, liberation, joy, rest, safety, collectively. It's not just for my family or your family, it's a bunch of Black families that migrate there every year for that joy. I couldn't think of a better place to set this love story and anchor it in the magic of it. Love should have all those little fireflies and summer magic in it. I wanted to anchor in the young people's love story in the best experience I have had as a human being of Black joy has been for me and my family on the Vineyard.

Alison Stewart: I would say your son goes out, but you know he's going to come home.

Mara Brock Akil: You know they are coming home.

Alison Stewart: They're going to come home at night.

Mara Brock Akil: Even if they get in trouble, they're going to get dropped off, probably by the friendly-

Alison Stewart: -cops.

Mara Brock Akil: Yes, and it's going to be okay. Or they're going to call you. They're probably not going to drop them off, they're just like, "Come get them."

Alison Stewart: That's what I tell people. You send out a Black son, and he comes home.

Mara Brock Akil: Ooh, gosh. You're going to get me tearing up. Intrinsically, you send them out, they're going to come home. The worst thing you have to worry about is, say, the biking, but there's bike paths even. You're just like, "Oh, God, just stay on the bike path, please." The safety of that island lets you breathe a little bit.

Alison Stewart: What was a tough decision you had to make in the showrunning of this show, Forever, that you were worried about? It was a tough decision, but you're glad you made it.

Mara Brock Akil: I think just depicting the sex tape of it all, too. Just getting into the weeds of that. I know the legacy and the history of the demeaning images that Black women have had to shake off their entire existence in this country. I didn't want to attack another Black woman in that sort of way. I didn't want it to feel that way. Being honest, a young Black girl who probably has never been seen, felt she was invisible most of her life coming into her beauty, in the time where young girls are leading the conversation around what happens at the party. Maybe, oh, wow, the first time you get a boyfriend, it's the star, the one who's actually going to the NBA, there can be a lot of confusion in your decisions and your choices.

I thought I could best maybe serve young women by allowing Keisha to be so brave and take on a subject that has been challenging to this generation. Not just young people, that's grown people, too. They entered into life with the inability to mess up, that there would be a public record that would last forever for the choices that they would make with this technology. I thought she would be brave to do that. In doing that, though, she deserved a beautiful love. She deserved a Justin, that we all deserve someone who can love us and look past our mistakes and see who we really are and see our beauty, whether it was a sex tape or not, just a general sense of Black women deserve that kind of love.

Alison Stewart: My guest is showrunner Mara Brock Akil. We're talking about Forever, which is on Netflix. Before you go, I have to ask you, what was a piece of advice that you got that you come back to regularly in your life, in your career?

Mara Brock Akil: It's funny. I put it in the show in the last episode. Keisha's upset, and now she's back in communication with her mother, and her mother gives her the advice my mother gave me, that, "If you think this hurts, sweetheart, I promise you that God will give you the equivalent or better." What that really means is that we either need to repeat the lesson because we need to learn the lesson, and we'll attract that back into our lives, but if you thought it was great, you're getting something great again, or you get better because you learn the lesson, and it's time to ascend, progress, and get the reward of your intentionality around growing.

That has helped me in relationship, that's helped me in my career, that helps me in my mothering. I know I'm going to get the same kids back.

Alison Stewart: [laughs]

Mara Brock Akil: My point being that if I keep meeting that problem, or in relationship to my kids, just to connect with them over and over again, there's nothing I ascend every time.

Alison Stewart: Forever can be seen now on Netflix. My guest has been showrunner Mara?

Mara Brock Akil: Mara.

Alison Stewart: Mara Brock Akil. Thanks for coming in.

Mara Brock Akil: Thank you, Alison. I really appreciate it, being here today.