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What James, 48, lacks in work experience he makes up with his life story.
Growing up, he says school bullies called him every racial slur in the book.
Some assumed he was black; others thought he was Puerto Rican.
His mother is Irish-American; his dad is black, Native American, and Dominican.
The show straddles the border, with scenes depicted both in California and Mexico.
But James, who doesnt speak Spanish, admits hes not comfortable being labeled a Latino filmmaker.
Or a black filmmaker.
Thats what it feels like.
Did you feel that way working on the show?The whole time.
Everythings so new to me.
All of our writers, theyre such an amazing group, but they all have more experience than me.
Theyre definitely all smarter than me.
I know that your life has been very painful and hard.
Id love to hear about your childhood.
I know you were adopted after living in some foster homes.
How old were you?I wasnt a baby, but I think I was a toddler.
I have little memories, but nothing really.
Most of my memories start when they brought me to their house in New Jersey.
At first we were there, then we moved to rural Connecticut.
To me, they have always been my family.
We lived in a small town called Morris.
Waterbury was our big city.
Morris was just like a dying little town.
A small farm town.
What were your parents like?My mom was amazing.
Everything thats fucked up about me is my own fault, but everything good about me is my mom.
My dad was a really complicated man.
He had his own demons, and we lived with that.
He was only around on the weekends, like a couple of days a week.
He was in the city.
He basically had his own life.
Were your sisters adopted?One was their biological daughter.
The other was adopted; she is black.
Then I had a couple of foster brothers, too.
They were all older than me.
It was so the opposite in my house.
I think that made me who I am.
Even though I spent decades in a gang, thats the energy that I feel comfortable with.
Your father was volatile when he was home?
Was he abusive?I grew up really scared.
My memories are basically of being terrified of him.
But I think it made me a really good artist because Im able to read a room.
When youre a little kid, you have to know when the fuck to run.
Was he abusive toward all of you?It was mostly centered on me.
There was stuff with my mom, too.
My mom tried to protect me cause I was the baby.
There would be some really violent act with my dad, and then Id feel worthless crying in bed.
Hes wrong about you.
I grew up feeling that way, diminished or disregarded by the world.
And you find other kids who also got told theyre a piece of shit their whole life.
I think were just dudes without dads who didnt know how to be men.
It became a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Did you know anything about your biological parents?
That was all the information that I had.
And you never met them?Never met them until recently.
They found me throughThe New Yorkermagazine.
They found me after I got out of prison.
What are they like?Its wild to meet my father.
Its like nature versus nurture.
I see that in him.
He was a drummer, a musician.
Meeting my mom, shes really interesting, too, which really is extremely cool.
Theres something that happens when kids lose their parents.
It doesnt matter how old you are, you still feel like an orphan.
So that just totally screwed me up.
When did she die?I lost my mom in 2003.
And I was like, Oh yeah, she was always there for me.
Heres this woman who was so strong.
She weighed like 100-something pounds.
My dad was like 300 pounds.
What about your ethnic background?
And then the world expands and people were like, Youre Puerto Rican.
Later, some people even thought I was Middle Eastern.
You could be absolutely anything!
But you know, when youre mixed, youre basically just nothing.
You know what I mean?
For my black friends, I was too light.
With my Latino friends, I couldnt speak Spanish.
Youre basically always other.
But when youre young, its really, really painful.
I had so much shame about that growing up.
Was your dad born in the Dominican Republic?No, hes from here.
Its just part of his blood.
So hes black and Dominican and Native American.
Do you feel any of those cultures in your identity now?
Growing up, everyone thought I was Latino though they thought I was Puerto Rican, not Dominican.
Its something I naturally connected to but also felt outside of.
Also, the wanting.
There are clumsy attempts at it when youre a kid.
You see, like,Blood In, Blood Outand take a stab at talk in Spanish.
Or reading Malcolm X and wanting to be black.
And being none of those things.
I think thats why the [Mayans] character of Adelita was really important to me.
She looks like shes right out of a Botticelli painting or something, but she inhabits Adelita so much.
I had to get out of my head because she embodies this woman.
Hes basically everything, but hes not what I was thinking of when I think of Latino filmmaker.
A lot of the producers or production heads were from Mexico or Mexican-American, too.
Hang on, I thought Bryan Gracia is the only Mexican-American.
Who else?Well, Sean [Tretta] is Italian and Mexican-American.
Debra Moore, shes also mixed, but I think shes half Mexican-American.
I think Carlos [Garza], our writers assistant, is actually from Mexico.
And Andreas not Mexican-American, but shes first-generation Italian-American and shes just fucking badass.
So there are certain cultural things that you would not be able to speak to.
The shows on the border, so its important to have those people in the writers room.
With the actors, too.
To get those details right is so important.
But they actually live at the border, where its not about politics.
You have to get out of that mind-set.
The last thing I wanna do, excuse me, is spend every day with a police officer.
What I really want to do more than anything is tell the story from the inside out.
The culture is very important, but its not a show for Latinos.
Its not a show for Mexican-Americans.
I think all that is just as important, that feeling of being an outsider.
And that doesnt come with your culture or ethnicity.
Its just how some of us are born.
I was called an [N-word] and spic all the time at school.
So Id never want to go to school.
I took a whole pack of Ex-Lax to not go to school once.
I ended up in the hospital cause my stomach hurt all the time.
Still to this day, everything I feel is in my stomach.
Coming down to talk to you, I feel nervous in my stomach.
I discovered punk rock when I was like 12, and thats what changed everything.
Even with this show, people take a stab at frame me as a Latino filmmaker, right?
But Im not a Latino filmmaker.
Im not a black filmmaker or a white filmmaker.
I would always just like to be a punk-rock filmmaker cause thats the culture I chose.
As much as I am all of those other things, I am punk rock.
But being mixed, culturally, your culture is always outside.
I think there are just those of us wholl always feel like outsiders no matter what.
Thats where it really started.
We were all kids who had been outsiders, and we all just found each other in this culture.
That was the first time you felt accepted.Thatsthe first time I ever felt accepted in my life.
And that always felt so safe to us and thats why it became the gang.
You had to violently stamp those out because what we had was precious and that was poison.
I understand gangs and Im not an anti-gang person cause I totally understand the reason for gangs.
So, for the first time, you feel safe and you feel loved.
Just wanting to be fucking seen and to set the world on fire.
All of us, we wanted to plant our flags like,Fuck you.
I feel like all of this is a weird hallucination that Im having.
Or Im still in prison and Im asleep having this dream right now.
In some ways, that seems more real.
I told her I was gonna change my life around.
I told her Im gonna have a baby and name her Carol Sue thats my moms name.
Im gonna figure it out.
Im gonna find someone who will love me.
I just made all her all of these promises.
She squeezed my hand like she heard me.
My girlfriend said, since I was always talking about making movies, lets move to California.
My whole life, I have this fucking body bag of shame that I just carry everywhere.
Even coming in here.
You know what I mean?
I just feel I cover everything in this slime.
I feel a lot of shame for everything.
I was in prison for a year and a day.I was really lucky.
Was it the hardest year of your life?It was because I had come so close.
Then I walk outside the next day and it was just like a CBS procedural.
All of these people came out of nowhere and their guns are on.
Theyre just like, Mr. James.
To this day, people call me Mr. James and I get a chill.
I got locked up and we had to put the house up to get me out.
That was the longest night of my life, thinking,All of this is over.
Im going back to where I came from.
Thats the reason I only did a year.
I feel like that with the actors.
For us all to have the same complexion of skin just means the world.
Usually, we are just the one and everyone else is white.
To see all of us in the room was really cool.
It doesnt mean everything, but it means a lot.
I think were all just broken and fucked up.
Most of us are mixed.
Like were all fucking mixed, all right?
Theres a small difference between being an outlaw or a criminal and being an artist.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
