Amena Brown:
Hey. Okay, before we fully get into the episode, I got to say something. Over 300,000 of you have been listening to this podcast since it relaunched, and that makes me so happy, and I'm so thankful for each of you. If you're digging the conversations and stories here, here's something you can do to help spread the word. Ready? If you haven't already, I'd love for you to follow me on Instagram. You got your phone out? Okay, now, pull up Instagram. You got it? Okay. No, before you start scrolling, go there and find @amenabee, like Amena B-E-E. Oh my gosh, look. There's my face, right? Okay, follow me there if you're not already. Are you following? Okay. For extra credit, comment on one of my posts and say hey, and I promise I will say hey back. It's been fantastic been in the HER living room with you this year, and we've got more amazing guests and hilarious stories to share next year. Now, let's get into the episode.
Amena Brown:
Y'all, welcome back to... Oh my gosh, it's the last episode of HER with Amena Brown of 2020. Don't get scared. It's not the last episode ever. I'm going to totally be back every week talking to y'all. But this is our last episode of 2020, which means if you are listening to this, you made it. You made it, it's been a very hard, strange, weird kind of year, but we're here. You're here listening to this, and you are here to talk with my guest. Wait, I'm going to the talking. But some of y'all are talking, too. I know I'm not there with you, but I know y'all are talking back to us when y'all listen, and I'm sorry I can't hear you. We're going to try to fix that at some point. But for now, you talk back, even though I can't hear you, and I'm going to be talking to you, even though I know you not here.
Amena Brown:
But be excited, because today, I am talking with writer, storyteller, theater critic, arts journalist, and playwright. Show your HER with Amena Brown love to Kelundra Smith.
Kelundra Smith:
Yay! I'm so excited to be here.
Amena Brown:
Let me tell y'all. There are a few guests on this podcast whose phone numbers I actually have. Some of them I don't, and I have to email their people to email their people to email their people, but some people's phone numbers I do have, and I really did call Kelundra up, and I was like, "Would you come on my podcast?"
Kelundra Smith:
And I said yes!
Amena Brown:
And she told me yes, and I was so glad, because Kelundra has been very booked and busy this year, so I am so happy to be closing the year talking to you. Kelundra and I are going to get into the depths of the best of TV for 2020, and there is quite a bit to talk about, because we all had some extra time to watch TV, differently than in other years. I want to get into that, but before we get into that, I just want to hear more about you. I want our listeners to know more about the work you're doing. And the reason why I thought about you, actually, to talk to you about this episode... Obviously, Kelundra's been to my house, we've hung out as well, but what made me think about you for this episode, Kelundra, was all of the journalism work that you've been doing the past few years, really. You and I even reconnected again, actually, through some other journalism work that you were doing and some stuff I was working on.
Amena Brown:
First of all, I want to talk about... Have you always been interested in writing and arts? I think it's interesting that, in your work, the writing and the arts are always at this intersection, which I think is so dope. Has that always been true for you? Did it start out more of an interest in writing or more of an interest in arts? When did you see those two come together for you?
Kelundra Smith:
That's a really good question. I would say that the writing came first, because the reading came first. If you let my mother tell it, I started reading and writing when I was three years old. That's where the writing came in, and I would just make up stories. Before I could write, my first audience was my Cabbage Patch dolls, and then it expanded to Barbies. Then, when I started writing, I would write, actually, on the walls with Crayola crayons.
Amena Brown:
No, I need you to explain to us how you wrote on the walls in a Black mother's house and you lived. You lived to tell us about it.
Kelundra Smith:
I've always been very short. I was always very short, so no one ever really noticed. I would write on the walls and stuff, and then I think my parents realized, "Okay, instead of spanking her, let's just redirect this energy." Then, they would get me gel pens and gel notepaper to doodle and write on and stuff like that. It transitioned from the walls to the gel notebooks. I would just make up stories about all kinds of random things, and that was where the writing started for me. It was literally just little stories.
Kelundra Smith:
Then, when I was 10 years old, I was in the after-school program, because my parents couldn't pick me up from school until 5:30, six o'clock. One day, I remember we were after school, one of my friends from elementary school and I, and we were in a teacher's classroom, and she had a copy of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
Amena Brown:
Wow.
Kelundra Smith:
We, at 10 years old, started reading this book, which is way above our heads, but it inspired poetry me, so I started dabbling into poetry at that point, and it just grew from there with the writing. Then, with the arts, I always say the arts, jokingly, came in because theater's where they put the kids who talk too much in class. I was always getting in trouble for talking too much in class. A's in academics, N's in conduct.
Amena Brown:
Yes!
Kelundra Smith:
They were like, "We're going to put her on a stage, and maybe she'll shut up." That's how it started as a little kid.
Amena Brown:
Oh, I love that. I feel like my journey is similar, in that I started out with reading. I don't know, it was like books were this holy grail to me. Somebody somewhere sat down and wrote this, and I'm here reading this, and I've never met that person, but I love this. I was like, "Whatever they're doing, let me do that." I just think it's interesting. I love hearing the stories of other writers, what leads you to writing, and that pathway is so fascinating to me. You've had a chance to write for so many amazing publications. You've had the chance to be a writer, to be an editor as well, which I think the more I write, the more I'm like, "Editors are so necessary, it turns out." They are not the big bad wolf of this situation.
Amena Brown:
I think, as writers, we're always like, "Who going to flatter me and tell me that my things are brilliant all the time?" Then, an editor comes along like, "I don't think you told the whole story." I'm like, "Oh, I'm sorry. You missed the boat there of telling me that I'm brilliant. You don't need to be coming in here and giving me corrections." But you've had a chance to have all of those experiences. What has it been like writing about theater in a year where we watched a lot of our theater productions not be able to be produced? What has it been writing about arts right now in a year that a lot of us consumed a lot of art, maybe a lot more art than we would have, because we were at home? I know some of my friends had kids, that they had to keep them busy with something, some movie to watch, some music to listen to. What has that been like, versus your earlier journey as a journalist?
Kelundra Smith:
This year, like for everybody, has been like no other. To give people an idea, I've been a theater critic and arts journalist for the past almost 10 years, and I'm one of the only Black women writing theater criticism in this country. As far as Black women who are writing for daily newspapers and magazines doing theater criticism, there are less than a dozen of us in the U.S.
Amena Brown:
Wow.
Kelundra Smith:
I spent most of my 20s, while everybody was going up in the club, I was spending Friday nights in the aisle seat. In a year, in a typical year, I would see maybe 75 shows, and that's in Atlanta.
Amena Brown:
Wow.
Kelundra Smith:
Right? My colleagues who were in places like New York and Chicago are seeing 150 shows, easily, in a year. I remember the last show I saw before everything shut down. It was that Sunday. I was in the audience of the theater that sat about 200 people, and there were maybe 40 of us in the audience, and I was viewing this production of The Brothers Size by Tarell Alvin McCraney, who people may know him because he wrote Moonlight. I remember sitting in that theater and having this feeling of, "Savor this, because you're not going to have it again for a long time."
Kelundra Smith:
In the absence of spending every Thursday, Friday, Saturday in a theater, I all of a sudden had so much free time, but it didn't feel like free time. The role for me of the critic then transformed, because we then started to have, especially when George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery happening, this reckoning with race and how we look at race in various institutions. The American theater was having and is still having this reckoning as well with the We See You, White American Theater movement and all of that.
Kelundra Smith:
The role for me as a critic changed in many ways, because then, I had to become the arts reporter, because then, you started to see theater companies, dance companies, museums shutting down, and somebody needed to be telling the stories of this for the public. We started to see scandals come out. There's a theater company in Atlanta that was called to the carpet for sexual assault, gender discrimination, racial discrimination. All of this was happening all at once, so I had to turn on those journalism muscles, so to speak, and start telling those kinds of stories. It has changed my approach to criticism when I get back to criticism forever, because my criticism has always sat at the intersection of, where does art and writing and race and gender and all of that mix up. But now, to be able to tell those deeper stories, I'm not interested in going back to the fluff. I think it has added even more depth to my criticism in the long run, too. It's been a wild and crazy year.
Amena Brown:
Wow. Just hearing the amount of shows, and thinking all of that changing. I remember the last show we went to see, I actually was hired to host a podcast, so I had to go to New York to record. My husband and I were like, "Should we splurge on a trip to New York?" And we were like, "Yeah!" And this is February time. Our last Broadway show that we went to see was Tina on Broadway. All of these were like... You know how this goes when you're in New York. These were last-minute tickets, it's cold. We were just like, "You know what? Who cares? We're doing it." It just didn't... It shouldn't have, but it didn't occur to me that was going to be my last Broadway show of the year, and that we're ending this year and not exactly knowing yet what the process will be to see some of that come back to life.
Amena Brown:
But I will say, a part of what's been really exciting is seeing how artists and writers are innovating this space that we're in of not being able to be in what was the conventional environment where you see a show, where you'd go there and be there in person, and you're sitting there in the audience and seeing everyone on stage. It has been amazing to me to see the ways that people are using internet and social media and video games. There're all these ways artists are innovating, and you've been a part of that.
Amena Brown:
This just happened. As we're recording this, y'all, we're recording this December of 2020 for the time capsule, and just this month, Kelundra, you were a part of a series of virtual plays. It was Interface: An Evening of New Virtual Plays. Can you talk to me about this? I think this is so... First of all, I think it's amazing all the different ways that you write, that you are a storyteller, that you are a theater critic, that you are a journalist, and now a playwright. For those of us as writers, in certain ways, it's all the same, but in other ways, those things are very different. You don't often find people that can do journalism well, and then can turn around and write a play well. Talk to me about Interface. What was the process of that coming about? How did that feel different to you from the other writing that you've been doing?
Kelundra Smith:
Before I do that, can I say a note about Tina?
Amena Brown:
Yes, yes!
Kelundra Smith:
The Tina I went to, the press opening of Tina last November.
Amena Brown:
Okay.
Kelundra Smith:
My mom and her best friend who was her maid of honor in her wedding, has known me my whole life, had never been to a Broadway press opening with me before. I normally go to New York in November, and then I usually am there in January in the frigid cold, but this January, it wasn't cold in New York at all. But anyway.
Kelundra Smith:
November, we go to the press opening of Tina. It was crazy, because sitting there with my mom and her friend, and Tina Turner is 100% their childhood icon, they're being transported back in time to trying to dance like Tina Turner when they were 10 years old. Adrienne Warren, who plays Tina in the musical-
Amena Brown:
Speak her name today!
Kelundra Smith:
... was nominated for a Tony Award.
Amena Brown:
Speak Adrienne's name today.
Kelundra Smith:
She's nominated for a Tony.
Amena Brown:
Adrienne, I know you listening, girl. Maybe not. But if you listening, you are wanted on this podcast, because she blew me away. Blew me away, Kelundra.
Kelundra Smith:
Adrienne Warren is nominated for Best Actress in a Musical for the Tonys, and if anybody else wins, they lying.
Amena Brown:
Period.
Kelundra Smith:
She is the show. She's fantastic. To be able to be there with my mom and her best friend, and they be there on a press opening with me, Tina is a memory I will share forever and ever, and I think it was really enlightening for them, because I they looked around and they noticed only brown people on the orchestra level. You know what I mean? We were row E, we were in the press seats. You know what I mean? And we're the only brown people around us, and I think that was very eye-opening for them, to this is what the field looks like. If I can say anything, part of my work also as a writer is to bring more young writers of color, more Black writers into the fold. I want for press nights to look like America looks. I just wanted to say that, but yes, Tina is a special show for me for many reasons. That definitely is one of them. But Interface.
Amena Brown:
Yes, talk to me about Interface, honey. Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Kelundra Smith:
Interface emerged... A friend of mine, Bridgette Burton, we went to college together. She's a theater producer, theater artist, and she and I were talking one day about how we notice that so many theaters had gone to either doing podcasting or staged readings or pre-recorded performances and trying to put them online, and none of it seemed to be really incorporating the technology that we have available to us at this moment.
Kelundra Smith:
Just musing and ideating one day, I was like, "What if we commission six local playwrights to write original 15 to 20-minute-long plays that reflect on how our relationship with technology has evolved over the last 20 years? We're going to hire an ensemble of local actors to perform, we're going to have directors, we're going to have stage managers. We're going to incorporate the technology, make it totally digital. What if we could do that?" She said, "Well, Fulton County Arts Council has this grant, so let's see if we can get it."
Kelundra Smith:
We put together this grant application in 48 hours, and we got almost a $10,000 grant. We were able to employ 20 artists to be able to put together these plays. What we did was, we commissioned six playwrights, I was one of them, and I gave them a year and premise. We start in the year 2000, we end in the year 2023. We had six plays. One was called Chatterbox, and it was two teens in a chatroom for the first time, and that was set in 2000. In 2005, we had a couple in a long-distance relationship trying to stay connected via Skype, and that was Sunrise, Sunset by Amina McIntyre, not Amena Brown. Different Amina.
Amena Brown:
Yes! Amina McIntyre is a beloved playwright friend of mine. Yes, yes.
Kelundra Smith:
Yeah. She wrote Sunrise, Sunset. Then, our third play was called Girl by Marium Khalid, and it was about an older couple who's trying to use iPads to keep the woman's memory alive as she's battling with Alzheimer's. Then, we had a play set in 2015 called Good Man Hunter, about a group of friends who are trying to navigate online dating after one of them has had a very public breakup from her YouTube coupling, and she's trying to switch to Vine and steal followers, and it's a lot of fun. Then, we had Free Game by Elliott Dixon, and that one is about fathers and sons who are navigating an online education program inside of a prison.
Kelundra Smith:
Then, the last play, which I wrote, was called Long Time, No See, set in the future, about two girls who see each other for the first time three years after there's a COVID-19 vaccine. They try to pick up where they left off the last time they saw each other, but they find that their lives are... They'd been through so much in the meantime, and they're trying to see if they can get back into the groove of things as it was before.
Kelundra Smith:
It was a really awesome experience. We were able to reach about 1,000 people across Fulton County and across the country with Interface, and it's really cool to see that people are still finding the videos and watching them on YouTube. Really, what we did differently is we kept it locally minded, and we did all live. Every night, we had... Which is pure insanity. Let me just say. We had 12 actors and two stage managers, plus the two of us as the producers, going live three nights in a row, and hoping that nothing went wrong.
Amena Brown:
Oh, wow! Oh my goodness, Kelundra.
Kelundra Smith:
And it worked!
Amena Brown:
I'm stressed hearing that. But the results were amazing.
Kelundra Smith:
The results were amazing, and I'm just so grateful for my friend Bridgette for believing in that vision and being like, "Yes, girl. Let's do it," and for all of the artists who worked with us. We were able to get partnerships with different restaurants to provide meals for our cast and crew on opening night. Maker's Mark did a virtual opening night party thing with us, where they sent all of our cast and team drink kits and then have one of their mixologists do a cocktail mixing session virtually with us. It was just all so dope. In all of the craziness that has happened this year, there have also been a lot of moments to be grateful and to be creative, and I don't take that for granted at all, and hope that that's something that everybody remembers, is that even in the chaos, there's just so much to still be grateful for. If you can just find the place in your soul that you can clear out for what's in you to come through, it just works.
Amena Brown:
Come on and speak a word to the people, Kelundra. "Even in the chaos, there is still something to be grateful for." That is a word. That's a word, Kelundra, and I love it. To your point, it's inspiring to me to hear how Interface came about, and the fact that people can still engage with this work. I know y'all listening, and I know y'all want to watch right now, and you can, and the links to this are going to be in the show notes. Okay? Y'all can go right there. It's going to be all the links. Go to there and just watch it and share it. All those things. We want to get those views as high as we can get them, folks, so go there and put your face on Interface. Do that. Now.
Amena Brown:
Kelundra, I want to talk with you about best TV of 2020, and I'm a person who always enjoys television. I have a few friends who are very saintly and they're very, "I just read books on the weekend. I don't even know what's new on TV." And I like having them as friends, so that they can be saintly while I am watching trash. Just very steeped in watching a lot of things on TV. I was doing that, then the pandemic came in, and I was like, "Wow, I have now been given additional reasons to watch more television."
Amena Brown:
I want to start with new TV of 2020. Best new TV of 2020. Let me give y'all a caveat, okay? Now, Kelundra is actually an arts journalist, so she could really put together for y'all critically best of 2020. What we're doing here is basically what Kelundra and I think is best, okay? We're telling you what we thought was the best, okay? You can tell us back what you think, but for now, you're going to listen to us tell you what we think is the best. Let's talk about this, Kelundra. When you think about new shows of 2020 that you are like, "Oh my gosh, I loved it," what are the first couple of shows or few shows that come to your mind?
Kelundra Smith:
Lovecraft Country.
Amena Brown:
That was my first.
Kelundra Smith:
I had the incredible honor of being able to interview Aunjanue Ellis recently for The Bitter Southerner, and thanks to people like your listeners, that story actually made The Bitter Southerner's best stories of 2020, so thank you to everybody listening who read it, and who isn't listening, but needs to be listening who read it, because that was a huge honor and really awesome. I have to say, Lovecraft Country. The other thing, The Good Lord Bird on Showtime.
Amena Brown:
Yo, yo! That was a good one.
Kelundra Smith:
Fully crazy. That was a good one. Fully crazy. You know what? In a surprise and delight moment, if we're going to deviate... We went a little highbrow to start, and we're going to deviate. Also, something that surprised me, have you watched Sneakerheads on Netflix? It is delightful.
Amena Brown:
No, I did watch Sneakerheads, and then when it was over, I was like, "Wait, no."
Kelundra Smith:
They only gave us six episodes, and I need more!
Amena Brown:
I need more of this. Yes. Sneakerheads was fabulous, absolutely. Yes.
Kelundra Smith:
I had those three come to mind immediately. I would also say, for TV... We're thinking new in 2020, because I was going to say a lot of things that I was watching this year was also... We had some shows conclude this year.
Amena Brown:
Okay, discuss. Discuss this as well.
Kelundra Smith:
The Chi. The Chi ended for us this year, and that was a very interesting ending in terms of how Lena chose to do that, because they had a lot of casting changes, and then they had to rewrite and all of that stuff. I think they handled it as best they could, honestly.
Amena Brown:
Yeah. As a Chi fan, I was curious about that, because I was like, "Whoa." There was this whole focus on a certain actor that had been made the central character, and then to have that actor, to really have two actors that were main to the plot removed, I was like... I actually went into the season this year like, "What is y'all going to do about that?" Once we got into the season, I was like, "Okay, okay."
Kelundra Smith:
To me, the kids have always been the best part of The Chi, so to have the focus center on the kids, I was like, "That's the right move to make." Without Kevin, Jake, and Papa, what is the show without Kevin, Jake, Papa?
Amena Brown:
If we're talking about a spinoff, I want it for Papa. I'm not going to lie. Papa is my favorite thing on The Chi.
Kelundra Smith:
Listen, Papa and Maisha-
Amena Brown:
I'm like, "Sign me up for this sweet love y'all got going. Sign me up for that." Lena, I know you listening, too, so if you want to do a spinoff, Lena, Papa's where it's at. He got the wisdom.
Kelundra Smith:
Papa and Maisha need to have the spinoff. It needs to happen.
Amena Brown:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Kelundra Smith:
Also, this is a show that wasn't new this year, but it came to us at the tail end of last year. Okay, we're going lowbrow.
Amena Brown:
Okay, I'm ready.
Kelundra Smith:
Amena, I have watched every, and I do mean every, episode of Sistas on BET.
Amena Brown:
Okay! Okay, I need you to speak to me about this, because I'm not going to lie, that I saw the advertisement and was like, "No."
Kelundra Smith:
It's a mess.
Amena Brown:
Discuss with me.
Kelundra Smith:
I don't know why. It does not deserve me. I have given it 30 episodes of me. The premise, it is these four girls who graduated from, in theory, Spelman together, are navigating dating in Atlanta.
Amena Brown:
Oh, bless.
Kelundra Smith:
In writing it, Tyler's just like, "What if I had these women make decisions that 30-something-year-old college-educated Black women would never make?" That's the premise of every single episode, and I am so deeply invested. It makes no sense.
Amena Brown:
Okay, okay.
Kelundra Smith:
It makes no sense.
Amena Brown:
I'm curious to watch this now, because I saw all the promos passing me by, and I was like, "No." This is not a new show, but I'm going to tell you one that I went back and watched all the way through that I feel similarly to how you feel about Sistas, is The Game. I never watched The Game all the way through, and I got to the middle of it and was like, "What am I doing? Some things don't make sense out here." But for some reason, I'm invested now in Derwin and Melanie. Why did I do this to myself? Now, I got to follow everybody to the end. I have to.
Kelundra Smith:
The Game gave us so much. Gave it to us on UPN and then The CW and then BET. It did it for us on three networks. I did not re-watch The Game, but I think a re-watch of The Game will be in order. The show that I did, I did a little bit of The Parkers and a little bit of The Girlfriends. What I will say about both of them is that, to me, the humor still stands up in both shows.
Amena Brown:
Agree.
Kelundra Smith:
But The Parkers, I don't think we ever gave Mo'Nique, particularly as a female comic, the credit she deserved for the amount of physical comedy that they did on that show. You don't see a lot of women comedians doing that level of physical comedy. They were dancing, flipping, jumping, all that stuff, and you just don't see that a lot. Speaking of comedy, #blackAF, which was extremely strange, but Rashida Jones on episode three made the series, when they got high. Oh my God.
Amena Brown:
I was like, "Come on, Rashida. Welcome. We love to see it." And I'm going to say #blackAF was one of those shows. There are shows that, when they come out, there's immediate disdain on Twitter about them. At first, I would get in my Twitter hive mind and be like, "Well, people on Twitter said they hate it. I'm not going to watch it." But now, I'm always like, "If people hate it, I'm going to watch it anyway, just so I can decide if I actually hate it." When #blackAF, the trailer hit, I remember the tweets like, "No. No, we don't want... We already had to deal with your Black-ish and Mixed-ish. No. Do not do... No." I was like, "I'm going to watch this anyway." And it was fascinating and strange of a journey to watch.
Amena Brown:
I think the most poignant part for me of that series was the moment where Kenya's character is talking with Issa and Lena, and it was all of the Black television producers, and he's having this existential crisis, his character, about what he makes as a Black creator. Some of that felt like meta or Inception a little bit watching that, because I was like, "I identify with some of the questions that are coming up in this conversation." Obviously, there were other points in the series that I was like, "Who did this? Why is this like this?"
Kelundra Smith:
I think the whole series was Kenya Barris having an existential crisis, but I enjoyed moments of that existential crisis.
Amena Brown:
And Rashida was a shining light. You are a shining light, Rashida.
Kelundra Smith:
And she was a shining light.
Amena Brown:
Even though I discovered quickly that people didn't know on Twitter that her daddy is Quincy Jones. That was also fascinating. When the hate came out and people were like, "Who's this white woman?" I was like, "Oh no, guys. You're going to find out in a few minutes that that is literally Quincy Jones's daughter."
Kelundra Smith:
Rashida, sister to Kidada, daughter of Quincy. He's very Black.
Amena Brown:
To be clear. To be clear, everyone.
Kelundra Smith:
Yeah. It's really Black. I love seeing her have... The thing I will say, I enjoyed seeing her have the opportunity to really cut loose. In Angie Tribeca, which that's not a new show, that was her and Deon Cole from a few years ago. They let them cut loose a little bit, but in #blackAF, she really got to cut loose, and it was cool to see what she did when she fully cut loose.
Amena Brown:
I also enjoyed about that show... It's not often I enjoy the Real Housewives parody, because that's been done in some other places, but on #blackAF in particular, in the way that turned for the character Rashida was playing and the character of a couple of the kids as well, I was like, "That was a nice touch. I liked that. I thought that was a jam."
Kelundra Smith:
Yeah, they did a good job with that. You know what I also was watching this year? Euphoria.
Amena Brown:
Okay. You need to talk to me about that, because I don't know if I'm getting old, Kelundra, but I just have to admit, when shows are about teenagers having what, in my mind... Maybe I'm a prude, now that I'm saying this out loud. Okay, but when there's going to be a show about teenagers going on a bender, having addictions, and different things, I don't know why I get, "I don't know if I can watch you have this happen to you." I don't know why I get feeling precious about it. Even a little bit, that's happening to me with the new season of Power, where I'm like, "Okay, but it was different when these were grown people, but now you here." Discuss with me Euphoria, because I haven't watched it, because I've been scared. I've been scared, I've been scared.
Kelundra Smith:
Euphoria is a lot. It is a lot, but our girl Zendaya earned every bit of that award she received. Essentially, for those who are unfamiliar, the premise of it is that there's this young girl played by Zendaya, she's coming back from rehab, but she really has no intention of staying sober. What the series is, really from a macro level, it's like Gen Z commenting on how they're over-sexed, over-drugged, over-diagnosed, overexposed, and we see all of that play out in different characters.
Kelundra Smith:
We have one girl who's getting into the dark part of the internet and selling weird experiences to men who are trying to fetishize her. We've got girls who are dealing with sexual assault, we've got young men who are dealing with sexual orientation, we've got gender identity. We've got all of that at play all at once, and it is a lot to take in as far as... In your mind, you're like, "Okay, okay. I know..." In your mind, you're like, "These are 16-year-olds. These are 16-year-olds. This is awful, this is awful." But also, you're like, "Okay, but the actors are in their 20s. The actors are in their 20s. It's okay, it's okay."
Amena Brown:
Okay, this is a good part of the talk to give myself.
Kelundra Smith:
It is a lot.
Amena Brown:
Okay. Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Kelundra Smith:
It's a lot in that regard, but it is so good. It sucked me in. (silence)
Amena Brown:
Hey, I hope y'all are enjoying this episode so far. In addition to being a podcast host, I am also a poetry performer and keynote speaker. In the before times when we could safely go to live events and stand in crowds, I traveled all over the country and performed poetry, shared storytelling, and gave keynote talks.
Amena Brown:
Now, we may not be able to gather safely in person, but we can gather virtually. I'm now taking requests for virtual events for 2021, so if you're looking to add poetry, storytelling, and inspiration to your event, visit amenabrown.com to submit a booking request. I'd love to be a part of your event. Maybe we could figure out a way to virtually high-five.
Kelundra Smith:
HBO did three series this year that I have to watch one episode at a time very slowly.
Amena Brown:
That's right.
Kelundra Smith:
Euphoria, Lovecraft Country, and I May Destroy You. I have to just watch one episode at a time, very slowly. I May Destroy You, by the way, I think is fantastic. I think that's got to be, to me, one of the best shows. If we want to talk about one of the best shows of 2020, I May Destroy You starring Michaela Coel is fantastic. It is an examination of consent and how we give and take away consent from people, and how it is given and taken away from us, and what assault to a person's life. It is fantastic. It really is, and Michaela Coel is the type of artist who she makes content to make you cringe. If you've not seen her show Chewing Gum on Netflix, I would say watch I May Destroy You and then Chewing Gum as a comedy to recover after.
Amena Brown:
That's the right order. What you just said is the right order. Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Kelundra Smith:
That's the right order. But I think that they gave us three really good shows starring Black women that do a really nice job in different time periods of looking at our experiences in a way that we don't often see. Then, if we want to also bring it back around to Katori Hall, because Katori Hall actually-
Amena Brown:
Katori, we want you on this show, too, okay?
Kelundra Smith:
She wrote book for the Tina Turner Musical.
Amena Brown:
Please.
Kelundra Smith:
But she also gave us P-Valley.
Amena Brown:
Y'all, Kelundra and I were actually texting during this time about P-Valley, and there was one or two other shows that I could tell from your tweets you were also watching. You were like, "I need somebody to talk to about this," and I was like, "I need somebody to talk to." That's another reason why I was like, "Before we get on the phone and divulge all the good things, let me get her on this recording."
Amena Brown:
P-Valley touched my soul for a couple of reasons. Number one, you, as am I, we are both Southern girls. I'm born, I'm bred in the South. These are my people, this is my place. The air down here is what feels like home to me, period. To see the South represented so beautifully and hauntingly, also. To see not just this generic brush, but Mississippi and this very unique area there, on top of the strip club culture. The layers. Even when the theme song would come on, the theme song of P-Valley is so haunting. I wouldn't even listen to the whole... When I was watching, I'd be like, "We got to fast forward." Katori got me excited and scared, and I don't even know what to feel. What were your thoughts about P-Valley? Talk to me.
Kelundra Smith:
P-Valley, again, we're talking top shows of the year, definitely toward the top of my list. P-Valley gave me so many things. First of all, I don't know where they found Uncle Clifford.
Amena Brown:
[inaudible 00:39:11].
Kelundra Smith:
I don't know. I don't know who was doing the costuming for Uncle Clifford.
Amena Brown:
Every wig. Those nails, Uncle Clifford, I'm just...
Kelundra Smith:
Everything about... The scene where she goes to the plantation that they're trying to put the casino on. Not to spoil it for anybody, but the premise of the show is that you have this strip club. It's called The Pynk.
Amena Brown:
Yes. Or pronounced The Pank in this entire show. It's spelled-
Kelundra Smith:
Yes, The Pank.
Amena Brown:
The Pank, please.
Kelundra Smith:
It's on the border of Mississippi and Tennessee. It is in this town that has seen better days, and there are these developers trying to come in and revive it with casinos, which is actually happening all across the South. It's happened in Alabama, it's happened in Mississippi. You have this moment where the people who have been the mainstays of the town are going up against the government and the developers. That's the undercurrent of what's happening. But the strip club. I don't know where they found the cast, but the cast is so strong in this show. The acting is just superb. Brandee Evans.
Amena Brown:
Give Brandee every petal of her flowers, okay? Every petal of her flowers, she deserves it.
Kelundra Smith:
She was a high school English teacher who was-
Amena Brown:
I'm sorry, what?
Kelundra Smith:
... playing the heck out of the role of Mercedes. Then, we have Uncle Clifford, who's the owner of the club. Of course, we have to, in all-Black shows, either have an appearance by a Loretta Devine or a Jenifer Lewis, and in this one, we have Loretta Devine, and she's divine.
Amena Brown:
Always.
Kelundra Smith:
They dug up Isaiah Washington-
Amena Brown:
Look!
Kelundra Smith:
... in a role that we're not used to seeing him in.
Amena Brown:
Look! It took me a minute to even recognize him, because I saw the credits and I was like, "Where was he?" I had to go Google it, and I was like, "Oh, that was you? That's you right there. That's you. Okay. Okay."
Kelundra Smith:
I thought the same exact thing. I was like, "Who was Isaiah Washington? Oh my God!" The casting, the story, the Southern Gothic aesthetic of it. It was just so well done. It's based on a play, because Katori Hall was first a playwright, and now, she's doing screenwriting. I just thought P-Valley was nothing I'd ever seen on TV before. I was thinking, when we hear about Black people, Southern strip club, people a lot of time think Players Club, but this is not that. She's doing something totally different. She's exploring church culture, she's exploring the intersection of strip club and church culture. We must give a shout-out to Lil Murda for being probably the most complex depiction of a hip-hop artist ever on television.
Amena Brown:
I have to say, I have to say, if y'all haven't watched P-Valley, y'all got to go watch that. Not with your kids, though, I'm going to tell you that right now. You got kids, you want to watch that when they are in the bed.
Kelundra Smith:
In general, leave the kids out of P-Valley, Euphoria, I May Destroy You.
Amena Brown:
In fact-
Kelundra Smith:
Just leave them out of those.
Amena Brown:
... we haven't talked about any shows that you want your kids to be part of, I'm just going to tell you that right now. You have to go to a different podcast to get those recommendations.
Kelundra Smith:
No, no. There's not a lot of... No, we haven't. We haven't done any kid stuff.
Amena Brown:
Okay, talk to me about this, Kelundra. I feel, especially when the pandemic was just starting... I guess I should say there were waves where my relationship to TV was changing during this time of the pandemic this year. Initially, we were all on lockdown, and everything came to a halt. Then, it was like, "Okay. Well, what do I do?" Then, I think at that time, we were like, "In a couple months, it'll be better," and then we realized, "Oh, it's not." There was another wave of, "Oh no. This is my life now. This is not a temporary thing."
Amena Brown:
What were the shows that you would say got you through? I'm going to throw one out there for me, is 90 Day Fiancé. 90 Day Fiancé. I just needed somebody to yell at, and I could yell at Donald Trump for a little while, I could yell at some other politicians for a little while, and then I would just get tired of them. But boy, when you turn on 90 Day Fiancé and you see the grand delusion that is happening for some of these people, it was a nice release to be like, "But she don't like you! No, she don't like you. She don't really want to be with you. No, no. You're trying to control her." It was a lot of that. That was one of my... It was a good distraction, I got to yell at people about their decisions. It was great. That was one of mine. Did you have any shows like that that you were like, "This is helping me make it through this hard moment?"
Kelundra Smith:
I would say that, for me, my reality show... If we're talking about what's next door to 90 Day Fiancé, I'm a Married at First Sight girl.
Amena Brown:
Yes, agreed.
Kelundra Smith:
Married at First Sight is also fully foolish, and this year, we went to Australia. The foolishness went down under and the toilet water spun in the opposite direction, and it was still a mess.
Amena Brown:
Was. Was. I had never watched Australia before the pandemic, and I was like, "This is a lot of tea for one season. I'm sorry that I don't have... Are y'all boiling tea in a gumbo pot? This is a lot of tea right here. I don't know."
Kelundra Smith:
It was a good mess, and I appreciated every bit of it. The other thing I tend to do when I am really needing to escape reality, and what was getting me through, I go to British.
Amena Brown:
Okay.
Kelundra Smith:
Give me Call the Midwife, give me Belgravia, give me The Crown.
Amena Brown:
The Crown!
Kelundra Smith:
I'm going full BBC on you. We talk about escaping reality, I'm just like, "Nope! Going to a different country." The Crown, by the way, is just...
Amena Brown:
That's on my best. That's on my best list, I'm going to have to say. That's on my best list.
Kelundra Smith:
It shot-fired at the royal family every episode.
Amena Brown:
I'm like, "Y'all just going to keep doing seasons like this? Y'all going to keep firing shots every season?"
Kelundra Smith:
It's Peter Morgan. I don't know if Peter Morgan just has an agenda against the royal family, but I'm here for the shots fired every episode, every season. I think he has a particular disdain for Prince Philip, and I am here for all of it. I've never seen a dragging so thorough and so deep.
Amena Brown:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Because it's the BBC, because it's British like that, it's a slow dragging. Nothing's happening fast or quickly. It's a very thorough and slow dragging, and I am here for it. I'm not going to lie.
Kelundra Smith:
I'm here for all of it. That definitely helped. What I've been watching lately, and I swore off the Housewives years ago. All of them. The only franchise I was holding onto was New Jersey, because if we're going to go there, let's go to the people who fight at a christening. You know what I mean?
Amena Brown:
I'm here for it! Okay, mm-hmm (affirmative).
Kelundra Smith:
But the Potomac Housewives have got to be the funniest, most delusional. It gives me such joy. They know the role that they play, and they play it so well. Watching that reunion, I have never died inside so much in my life, but also been given life. It was crazy.
Amena Brown:
I have to say about Real Housewives of Potomac, to me, it was... Real Housewives of Atlanta was my real boyfriend, but when my real boyfriend go out of town, I guess I'll go on a date with Real Housewives of Potomac. That's how I felt about Potomac, honestly. If my man come back, then all of a sudden, I don't have time for Potomac anymore. I looked at Potomac like that every season until this one. When this season started, and then... I don't want to spoil it for y'all that's listening that haven't watched it, but I'm going to just tell you, it started and I was like, "Oh, okay. Oh, we... Oh, it's going to... Wow! Okay." A lot happened. Now, as of this recording, we're in the middle of the reunion episodes, and this last reunion episode, that might be the worst dragging in Real Housewives history. I don't even know what to say, Kelundra.
Kelundra Smith:
"Close your legs to married men," has nothing on whatever Monique did to Gizelle. I don't know why Monique came for Gizelle's throat so thoroughly and deeply. So much of reality television is scripted. There are very few shows that you watch where you're like, "This is raw and real." We know. We come to Iyanla: Fix My Life because we're like, "Okay, Mother Iyanla is going to give it to us straight," and my God, in this final season of Fix My Life, does she give it to us. I'm going to have to re-watch the season and unpack all over again, because it's just a lot. We'll go to Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath when we want realness in reality TV.
Amena Brown:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). That's a good show. Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Kelundra Smith:
But the Housewives, it's manufactured hype 95% of the time. But for some reason, I don't know that they fully knew what all was in Monique's receipt. I don't think that any of them are good enough actresses to have had... She took the oxygen out the room. That's all I can say. She did! I was like, "Okay."
Amena Brown:
Mm-mm (negative). I haven't seen something to make me feel that type of way watching Real Housewives since Phaedra. Phaedra is the last Real Housewife that had me in some moments. It was just quiet at the reunion. After she said something, everybody was just quiet. I was texting my friend like, "Did that just happen?" They were like, "Yeah, girl, that just happened." This is a top-five Real Housewives, over the whole franchise moment that happened here. Now, I'm like, "Maybe I'm going to have to date Atlanta and Potomac now, because I don't know how to be." Real Housewives been getting me through. Yes.
Kelundra Smith:
You know what's another good series? On the opposite end of Housewives that's also good to get you through that we had earlier in quarantine, Black Love.
Amena Brown:
Girl! Come on.
Kelundra Smith:
Black Love is such a beautiful series. For those who aren't familiar with it, it comes on OWN, and they follow black couples all around the country and they ask them... Every episode has a different topic. One of them might be making marriages last. One of them might be how your marriage changes during child-rearing. One might be, "How did you all first meet?" They just interview all these different couples of all different backgrounds, socioeconomic statuses, nationalities, sexual orientations, all of that. It is really, really just beautiful to watch. It's Tommy and Codie Oliver, who are a husband and wife team who produce it. If you want a good, feel-good 45 minutes, you will not be sorry if you watch Black Love. It's really good.
Amena Brown:
That's a good recommendation, because I do think a part of the way the pandemic has been stressful collectively for us, and then all of us had our own personal ways that was stressful. It is nice to go to a program and go, "Okay, I can enjoy the goodness of this," and that can be its own soothing feeling, or its own escape. I think that's a really good point, Kelundra.
Kelundra Smith:
Yeah. It was really, really a lovely one, in my opinion, to be able to go to when it's like, "Okay, I just need something that's all about goodness."
Amena Brown:
Please. Something.
Kelundra Smith:
It's just pure.
Amena Brown:
Something good, please. Help us. Did you have any shows that you've already watched through, but this year, you re-watched? I guess I should start by saying, are you a person who re-watches shows? Not everybody re-watches.
Kelundra Smith:
No. Once the relationship is over, I never go back. I have not done any re-watching, really, except for, like I said, the little bit of Girlfriends and the little bit of Parkers that I watch. Something that felt like a re-watch but wasn't was The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air Reunion special on HBO. That felt like a re-watch in some ways, because it was like, "I remember watching these episodes and having this feeling." But also then seeing Janet Hubert and Will Smith bury the hatchet as well was a... That was so complicated, and I still am unpacking feelings about that conversation. That felt, in some ways, like a re-watch, but I'm not really a re-watcher. I do have my shows that I can watch any time they're on, and Good Times and Family Matters are two of them for me.
Amena Brown:
That's a good choice. Both are good choices. We did need our feel-good sitcoms. I think one of mine that I found soothing, but I didn't know I would, is The Office. There was something about watching it that, if I was having trouble sleeping, it was so familiar to me or something that it was... It wasn't that it was boring. I love the show. It was just like, "You're all right. You've already watched this show." Don't know why, but it's a very soothing time.
Amena Brown:
We re-watched through The Fresh Prince before the reunion, and that was soothing, too, and interesting to go back now and watch as an adult. I think re-watching those shows that are 20 years or older and thinking, "Oh, when I was watching this before, I was looking at myself like I was Will, or I was Ashley." Now, I'm re-watching and I'm like, "Well, I understand why Uncle Phil said, 'Maybe if you had the [inaudible 00:54:34].'" Some of those things. But it was soothing to go back and be in this world where, "Here, we're teaching you lessons. Here, we have celebrities pop up on here, and you get to see that." There was something about that that got me through some parts of the pandemic, too, because after a while, I was like, "Lord, I can't watch Lovecraft Country back-to-back. I'll be scared and having nightmares. It's a wonderful show, but I'll be scared."
Kelundra Smith:
Listen. The pickaninny episode, I'm still damaged. I'm done. I just still... It'll take me a while to recover. That's all I can say. It'll take me a while to recover from that episode.
Amena Brown:
Mm-mm (negative). I'm like, "Am I going to make it to season two?" When they put out Lovecraft Country season two, I'm like, "Am I going to make it?" I had to watch it in the daytime. In the daytime, with the lights on.
Kelundra Smith:
Oh, for sure.
Amena Brown:
I can't do this at night. This is the hour sending me. Even during the daytime, I still had nightmares a couple times. I was like, "I don't know. I'm going to have to shore myself up for season two." I'm going to have to, I don't know, read my Bible or something before it come out. I don't know. I got to think about that, Kelundra.
Amena Brown:
Okay, last thing I want to talk to you about is films that we ended up watching on television this year, which you and I were talking about this earlier. Normally, if you and I were talking on this episode and we weren't in a pandemic, we would've been talking about, "Oh, here are the movies we went to see in the theater, the theater-released films." Then, TV movie, air-quotes, was more like this thing on BET or TV One or Lifetime or Hallmark or whatever those look like. There was this demarcation before this year between those two things, and this year, we watched some of that start merging together. There were films I was hoping to see in a theater that then we couldn't, and now became things that we could just watch at home. Did you have any favorite movies that you ended up watching at home that became TV movies, in a way, but were not TV movies? That would normally mean traditionally.
Kelundra Smith:
I don't know that I watched a ton of movies that were released in theaters at home. I think the last movie... I saw two movies in theaters this year. The Photograph and Tenet.
Amena Brown:
The Photograph was good.
Kelundra Smith:
I took a risk to see Tenet.
Amena Brown:
I saw Tenet at the drive-in, so that was a movie theater-like experience. Yeah.
Kelundra Smith:
Yeah. But otherwise, I feel like a lot of them, I probably did, but I'm not sure that I knew that they were initially intended to be in theaters and not on the streaming service. Some movies that I watched that I can think of were... Okay, we know the Hamilton movie was originally supposed to be in theaters, but then they put it on Disney+.
Amena Brown:
Right. Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Kelundra Smith:
I saw Hamilton two years ago, and I will say the Hamilton movie is a really good production of a Broadway performance in movie form, but it's still something to me about that live theater experience that you can't quite recreate. The film does a good job of focusing your direction, because in Lin Manuel Miranda's musicals, there's always a lot going on. The film does a really good job of focusing your attention, but the audio delight of listening to it in person, you don't quite get when you watch it on Disney+. Another one. A movie I recently watched that I absolutely adored was The Forty-Year-Old Version with Radha Blank.
Amena Brown:
Come on! I love that movie!
Kelundra Smith:
Oh my God! She just won the Vanguard Award from Sundance.
Amena Brown:
So good.
Kelundra Smith:
That movie is so good.
Amena Brown:
Radha, you are also wanted on this podcast. I know you're listening. You are wanted. You're wanted for an interview. Okay, mm-hmm (affirmative).
Kelundra Smith:
Radha totally should sit down and talk to you, because you all have poetry and hip-hop in common. It would be such a great thing. Anyway, I'm advocating for that for you. Radha's going to come on.
Amena Brown:
Radha, you hear it. You hear it. Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Kelundra Smith:
The Forty-Year-Old Version, I think, did what... That movie Second Act with Jennifer Lopez and Leah Remini, they tried to do a romantic comedy about a woman of a certain age who falls in love with herself. I think that movie didn't quite get there. It didn't quite do it. But Radha Blank does it, and it's New York, it's hip-hop, it's gritty, but it's still funny, and it's her life. I thought it was just really beautiful and vulnerable. I loved that movie.
Amena Brown:
I loved it. I loved the black and white. I loved the commentary on art as an industry and those things that her character was experiencing. If y'all haven't seen it, you need to watch that Forty-Year-Old Version. It was so good. And Radha, we welcome you to the podcast anytime, okay?
Kelundra Smith:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). That was great. We had to honor hometown hero John Lewis and watch Good Trouble. I thought the Good Trouble documentary was so well done. The thing that I found most interesting, actually, and probably because of what I do, was John Lewis had an incredible art collection, and he had some big-name, heavy-hitting artists in his art collection. He had some Jacob Lawrence, some Elizabeth Catlett. If anybody can get me a view of John Lewis's art collection, I would love to do that. Just saying that on this podcast.
Amena Brown:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). We putting it out there on here. We know y'all listening. We putting it out there. Okay. Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Kelundra Smith:
I thought that the way in which they told his story from Troy, Alabama, growing up on a farm, raising chickens, to how he was just led by conviction. Not about ego, not about money, but just a sense of duty. I just thought that was really, really beautiful how they told that story in Good Trouble. I would say if you want to be inspired, you know what I mean, Good Trouble is just a good one.
Amena Brown:
Yes.
Kelundra Smith:
Other movies. I can't even talk about Tenet. I'm just going to glide over that. I'm going to have to watch it again. I don't know.
Amena Brown:
It was kind of a meta.
Kelundra Smith:
You know what? Let's talk about it.
Amena Brown:
It was meta. Yeah, it was a meta experience. It was like, "I'm watching the movie, I'm here in the present. Is he in the past? Is he in the present?" It was very meta. Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Kelundra Smith:
I think where Tenet... It was a good movie, but I think where it lost me in some way is that it made time and objects somehow obligated to each other.
Amena Brown:
That's interesting.
Kelundra Smith:
I think how you conceive of time will determine how you interpret that film.
Amena Brown:
Come on and speak to us as a critic today, Kelundra. Come on!
Kelundra Smith:
For me, I don't conceive of time as something that is a moving force that affects inanimate objects in the same way that it affects people. Christopher Nolan was challenging me on that, and I still don't know how I feel. I'm going to be honest.
Amena Brown:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). That might require a re-watch, because I was there like, "I feel things, but I'm not sure I understand what I saw, and that's hard for me to..." I did have those feelings. That might be deserving of a re-watch before I could definitively say how I felt about that.
Kelundra Smith:
Yeah. I am a lover of documentaries. I think the journalist in me just loves them, so I watch so many. Amazon Prime just houses so many obscure documentaries that... I don't know where they found them, I don't know who produced them and why, but there are so many that I feel like I just had playing in the background this year, that I watched, and I don't know why.
Amena Brown:
Well, it can be soothing, because if it's a documentary, it tends not to have a lot of ebbs and flows of volume. If I'm working, it's a steady kind of thing noise-wise, anyway.
Kelundra Smith:
I remember I was watching this one documentary that I think was called Most Likely to Succeed, and it was actually a pretty cool concept. They followed four students from different parts of the country who were voted most likely to succeed in their high school class, and they all graduated, I think, in 2007, which is the year I graduated from high school.
Amena Brown:
Yeah.
Kelundra Smith:
They followed them over the course of 10 years to see... It was two Black students and two white students. To see how race and socioeconomic circumstances impacted how they were able to be successful.
Amena Brown:
Got it.
Kelundra Smith:
The white students were able to get so much further, because they didn't necessarily have some of the economic and racial barriers. I thought that was a really interesting concept and worth watching.
Kelundra Smith:
There's another terrible documentary, but it's actually really fascinating and really good. It sticks with you. Called Perfect Size 14, about plus-size models all around the world. [crosstalk 01:04:31]-
Amena Brown:
Interesting.
Kelundra Smith:
... the experience that full-figured models have in the industry from editorial to runway, and I had never seen anything like that before. It was fascinating to follow these different women and see how particularly full-figured models are taken advantage of in the industry and aren't paid as well. It's crazy. There're just all kinds of obscure things like that, but I found myself falling into watching. I was just like, "Okay, we're here. We're doing it."
Amena Brown:
I got to see it now, because once I get involved, I'm like, "Well, now I got to find out what happens here. What's the answer?"
Kelundra Smith:
Right, exactly. It's like, "Well, I guess now, here we are. We're watching these obscure documentaries." I also love stand-up comedy.
Amena Brown:
Lot of good stand-up specials this year. Yes. So much good stand-up this year.
Kelundra Smith:
Who did you like? I'm curious.
Amena Brown:
Okay. Michelle Buteau is always going to be it with me.
Kelundra Smith:
She's hilarious.
Amena Brown:
She's always going to be it with me. I even watch movies where she's just in a supporting role, and I don't really care about those other people. I'm really watching for her. Michelle, you're welcome on the podcast any time. There's a comedian I follow on Twitter. It's @SamJay.
Kelundra Smith:
Oh, Sam Jay's 3:00 AM in the Morning, whatever the name of that special. Oh, so good.
Amena Brown:
Sam, you are also welcome on the podcast any time. Okay. There was some good funny out there, and we needed that at this time. Shout-out to all the comedians putting your specials out there. Needed.
Kelundra Smith:
Sam Jay's stand-up special might be, to me, one of the best of the year that Netflix has put out.
Amena Brown:
Yeah.
Kelundra Smith:
When I tell you I laughed deeply, the part of the special where they're getting on the plane to go to London, and then when the girlfriend leaves the door unlocked and she's in the shower.
Amena Brown:
Look.
Kelundra Smith:
I tell you, I have never laughed so hard. They really... She. Yes. Sam Jay. [crosstalk 01:06:53].
Amena Brown:
I'm just here. I'm here for Sam and Michelle. At any time, I'm here for them. Yes. Yes.
Kelundra Smith:
You know who's been getting me through? She's supposed to have a show coming out hopefully soon. Are you familiar with Ms. Pat the comedian?
Amena Brown:
Okay, let me tell you how I found out about Ms. Pat. I found out about Ms. Pat from this white man comedian's show about a cabin, where he was supposed to be doing his...
Kelundra Smith:
Oh, The Cabin! Yes!
Amena Brown:
It's a Netflix show. I can't remember his name to save my life. But he was supposed to be doing his holistic healing whatever in the cabin, but instead, he was inviting his comedian friends. All I remember about Ms. Pat is there's a scene with her and Kaley Cuoco, is that how you say it?
Kelundra Smith:
Cuoco. Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Amena Brown:
From How I Met Your Mother. Where Ms. Pat is decidedly like, "I don't know who you are because I don't watch that show, and I would never watch that show, so I'm never going to know how famous you are. I would never watch that." And watching Kaley pull her beanie down almost over her whole body because Ms. Pat was just like, "This is what it is, sweetie." That is my encounter with Ms. Pat. I don't even know what Ms. Pat's stand-up is like, okay?
Kelundra Smith:
Ms. Pat has an episode of The Degenerates on Netflix, but also, she has a podcast as well, and she has a book. She's supposed to have a show coming out with Lee Daniels next year for BET, I believe.
Amena Brown:
Wow.
Kelundra Smith:
That episode of... First of all, The Cabin in general was funny. To me, I liked every episode. When Donnell Rawlings and Bobby Lee were there, when Deon Cole and Anthony Anderson were there with Big Jay Oakerson. The whole series to me was just absurd, but the Ms. Pat episode where she walks up to him. I can't even repeat it. It's just...
Amena Brown:
Y'all just got to watch that right there. Ms. Pat had me... I felt simultaneously super uncomfortable and also like, "Yay!" All at the same time. I wouldn't want to be there and receive this from Ms. Pat. I do want to be there to watch her talk to other people, though. Yes. Sign us up. Whatever this show is, we want to see that, Ms. Pat. Yes.
Kelundra Smith:
Also, like I said, we could talk forever, but a couple of other things I have to mention now that I'm sitting here and my memory's jogging. Latinx television was getting me through for a good chunk. Okay, we had some Latin television getting me through for a chunk of quarantine. Gentefied, The Expanding Universe of Ashley Garcia, Vida, On My Block.
Amena Brown:
I love Vida. That was one of my favorites, too. Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Kelundra Smith:
Yeah. Vida's fantastic. But those shows were also getting me through at some point. I was in the Latin mix.
Amena Brown:
Yes, honey. Yes, please. Needed. Mm-hmm (affirmative). I still got to watch Selena. Selena just came out. I haven't even had a chance to watch that. And One Day at a Time, I think, is on its last season right now. Yes. Mm-hmm (affirmative). All the support.
Kelundra Smith:
And Queen of the South.
Amena Brown:
Okay, I think I got into the first season of Queen of the South, because I love a crime show. I love a little organized crime in my life. On television, not my real life. On television and in the movies, I love organized crime. Let me watch that. I want to see what's happening. I think I did watch the first season of Queen of the South, and I was like, "Yes! I love it!" I got to clue back into that one. I think Netflix kept recommending it to me, and I was like, "Why do they keep recommending this to me?" Then, I finally watched it, and I was like, "Yeah, that is me. Thank you. Mm-hmm (affirmative). It fits right in with my watching tendencies. Thank you, Netflix. Mm-hmm (affirmative)."
Amena Brown:
Kelundra, I thank you for sharing with us your writerly origins, for sharing with us Interface so that people can go back and know that not only are you a theater critic, are you a writer, are you a storyteller, you are also a playwright and a producer, and the people can go there and they can see those things. Thank you for illuminating for us some of the good things TV did for us this year. I hope y'all heard some shows maybe you didn't get a chance to watch. I know some of y'all going to be trying to stay away from your families this holiday. Watch TV. You can do that. Find you a little show. You will have all of the info so that you can also be Kelundra's friend and follow all of the writing that she's doing. You can find all of that in the show notes. Kelundra, thank you for joining me.
Kelundra Smith:
Thank you so much for having me. It's really been a blessing and an honor. I'm happy for you, I'm proud of you, and I'm just so glad you asked me to be on. I'm excited.
Amena Brown:
Y'all. I could talk to Kelundra for hours. We actually talked even longer than we did here in the episode, so if you want to hear a bonus episode of all the shows we forgot to talk about, you can check out my Patreon at patreon.com/amenabrown. You can follow Kelundra and learn more about her work @anotherpieceofkay on Instagram and @pieceofkay on Twitter, and make sure you check out her website, kelundra.com. Of course, you can find all these links and more nuggets from our conversation in the show notes at amenabrown.com/herwithamenabrown, and you can follow me on Instagram and Twitter @amenabee.
Amena Brown:
This year has been a mix of so many things. Grief, joy, anxiety, learning to rest, rage, and gratitude. One of the cool things that came out of this year for me is being one of the faces of the new Olay MAX campaign. I'm not a model, y'all, so I was nervous when I went to film my first photo and video shoot for Olay. It was all masks and social distancing, and it was my second time in my whole career working with a director.
Amena Brown:
For today's Give Her A Crown, I want to shout out director Christelle De Castro. Christelle not only directed the Olay spots, but she has since worked with Megan Thee Stallion, Rickey Thompson, Paris Hilton, and brands such as Swarovski and Coach and many more. Christelle is not only a phenomenal director, but she was wonderful to work with. She put me at ease and helped bring out the best in me for the shoot, and that is what great directors do. For your vision, for your creativity, for being such a wonderful human, Christelle De Castro, Give Her A Crown.
Amena Brown:
HER with Amena Brown is produced by Matt Owen for Sol Graffiti Productions as a part of the Seneca Women Podcast Network in partnership with iHeartRadio. Thanks for listening, and don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review the podcast.