Waithe thought the 1992 Eddie Murphy film would be a great jumping off point for a TV series in 2019. "Rather than idolize the characters, why not look at them through a realistic lens, so to speak?" she says. "Then I realized my characters would be 26 years old — that’s how long ago the movie came out. You are kind of distancing yourself from your parents at 26 and trying to figure out who you are, and also rejecting everything that your parents told you that you are, that you would be. But by the time you get to the second episode, you also realize that these are just young black people trying to figure out their lives, which is really what we wanted to go for. So even if you’ve never seen the movie, you can appreciate the show and see the subtle nuances through which we pay tribute to the original. But we are also trying to create our own lane."
TOPICS: Lena Waithe, BET, Boomerang