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Spoilers ahead for season two ofDear White People.
Season two of Justin SimiensDear White Peopleis exponentially more ambitious than season one.
Two characters in a room?
Theres a long tradition of filmed plays.
You had a very small group of characters working things out on one main set.
Mike Nichols and Sidney Lumet are two of my absolute heroes.
Jack Moore, who wrote the episode, comes from a playwriting background.
I come from a theater background.
Ultimately, this episode was the nexus of why I do the show.
I get to be cinematic and tell stories about characters who normally dont get the cinema treatment.
But then I also really get to have these sort of meta-arguments.
The episode really works on a few levels.
Walk us through the levels.Its about Sam and Gabes relationship, of course.
They both are so, so fricking right that it doesnt even matter by the end of it!
I really loathe the trend towards lots of coverage now in directing.
We dont really have time on this show anyway.
We shot it in three days.
Even by TV standards, thats not much time.
When do we have a glaze against the lens of the camera?
When does the camera move?
When are we going to do a canted angle?
So when we moved in to shoot it, the process was very deliberate.
What I want to see is whats organic, what the actors are bringing to it.
I like to get into a really heavy discussion of what the beats are.
When is there a tactic shift?
When is there a revelation?
When does the balance of power shift?
The actors and I talk about that and decide that together.
Based on those beats.
I come up with my philosophy for this episode.
When characters are shortsighted, our angles are canted, or the camera moves, or its shaky.
Theres a moment when Sam and Gabe are going back and forth very early in the scene.
And she says, Not now, you wont.
And then Gabe makes his first slam dunk.
Sam says, There are ways to speak out that dont scream Look at me.
And then Gabe says, Are there?
If so, they seem to have eluded you.
And how appropriate it is that you talked about this space as a boxing ring.
The characters are smaller in the frame, diminished.
A lot of TV shows are shot that other way.Yeah, they are.
But to me thats not cinema, thats not visual storytelling, and I love cinema.Thatswhat I love.
I dont have a problem with the other kind of storytelling.
I think it works very well for TV.
The filmmakers Ive always loved are filmmakers who do everything with intention.
Close to the face with a wide-angle lens?
Away from the face but zoomed in?
all of that has a subtle effect on your emotions and the way you perceive the scene.
The choices you make as youre shooting can increase the tension, decrease it, amp up this moment.
But I do very little that isnt intentional.
I am not a haphazard director.
I think everything thatcanbe chosenshouldbe chosen.
Some of them storyboard or [do a] shot list.
Some of them dont.
First up is Chapter IV, written by Njeri Brown and directed by Kimberly Pierce ofBoys Dont Cry.
Shes feeling her belly and imagining what it might be like to be pregnant.
I thought that said so much, without any dialogue, about where Cocos heads at.
I love the shot where the camera is so low it looks like it might be under the floor.
Youre looking up at Cocos belly, and it looks like its twice the size of her head.Yeah!
Thats a beautiful shot.
The script is great, but thats a beautiful moment that Kim Pierce invented that wasnt in the script.
She called me up and she said, I really think we need this moment.
Talk to me about Chapter V, directed by Salli Richardson-Whitfield and written by Leann Bowen.
I thought that was so quirky and fun.
Chapter VII, Troys drug drip.
Directed by Steven Tsuchida, written by Yvette Lee Bowser and Nastaran Dibai.
You get trippy with the imagery.
Its a little bit like theMad Menepisode The Crash or theBarney Millerepisodewhere they eat the hash brownies.Exactly!
Both of those episodes were inspirations for us.
Also, theThe Simpsonsepisode where Homer has the really hot chili!
My absolute favorite moment of that episode is the conversation with Sorbet the dog.
I remember we had a lot of conversations about that scene with the online grid.
I was just like, Its gonna work!
Im telling ya, its gonna beso great!
Its one of my favorite moments of the series.
I felt like I was on drugs when that scene came on.Good!
Then we did our job.
you might feel the difference.
I really resisted doing it in the first season.
What, leaving campus?Yeah.
It was very intentional to stay at Winchester.
Her POV is singular.
We go to a space where she is vulnerable.
Weve never seen Sam like that.
So much of what you see of Sam is the person who is strong, articulate, and fighting.
She is in her persona at Winchester, but she cant be in that persona at home.
Its also very familial.
The episode feels conversational.
It feels like what its like to go home.
A lot of that has to do with the way Janicza directs and puts her scenes together.
So its like weve gone inside of her mind, in a way.That was absolutely the intention.
We asked ourselves, what are the conflicting voices in Sams head?
Then we tried to personify them in the form of her family.
That was one of the fun parts about it.
And its also a girls trip, its the first time you see these particular three black women together.
Theres a communion between them that wasnt there before.
We really do put our personal stories in the show.
Ive lost a parent.
So many of us have lost a parent.
How many seasons canDear White Peoplego on?
They can just graduate!
New people might be able to capture your attention!
I dont have a massive plan as to when it ends.
Its just about, Do I have something to say right now?
and right now I do.
But whats the point if you dont take risks, you know?
I feel really good about it, but you just never know!
Is Giancarlo Esposito Voldemort?[Laughs.]
No, hes not Voldemort!
Giancarlo Esposito is not Voldemort.
Is he a ghost?Im not telling you that!
You had the narrator join the cast!
Its something Ive really wanted to do since the beginning of this particular season.
Im conscious about having a narrator at all, and I never want to use it as a crutch.
I always want it to be a vital part of the series.
The writers know who [the character in catacombs] is, and what he means.
Were always trying to open doors that lead to interesting spaces.
That is our mantra in the [writers] room, because it is an expansive universe.
Right, I can see that.
Youre making one of the contained shows.Yeah and you know, I really like thatGilligans Islandphilosophy.
But what may surprise you is how big our island is.
Like the episode with Cocos pregnancy?
At the end, the show jumps forward 20-some years, to a future where she became a mother.Yeah.
As much as the show is about racism, we just also really love storytelling.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
