Dear White People Creator On Season 2, Twitter Trolls, And That Cliffhanger

Justin Simien gets bored with little effort. As such, he's not interested in the obvious, which is what makes his critically acclaimed, criminally bingeable series Dear White People so thrilling. The sharp comedy never takes the easy route as it unpacks the lives of a crowd of diverse black students at the fictional Winchester University.


In its second season, Dear White People keeps it up and continues to surprise through straightforward, self-aware discourse on everything from Twitter trolls and black love to the racial history of Winchester. MTV News spoke to Simien about his approach to Season 2, his self-imposed rules for answering to internet dissenters, and what the finale's big cliffhanger means for Season 3.


MTV News: I wanted to begin this by telling you that I really missed Defamation this season.


Justin Simien: We have also much good stuff we desire to do! Prince O’ Pal-ities was something we attempted to do last season, and we didn't get a chance to, so I had to do it this season. We're an equal possibility shader, so I wanted to expand the universe.


MTV News: And it's just excellent satire.


Simien: It's fun to create them, also. It's really not even a dig on these shows because it's so fun to pretend like I'm writing and directing for them.


MTV News: So does that mean we can expect a new show-within-a-show in Season 3?


Simien: Maybe! At this point it's become expected of us, however I'm habitually looking for a way to push it. It also is that we're in this world where we're creating stories for the culture, and we're of course watching what's out there and are informed by it. It's all about how culture tells us who we are and who we aren't. I don't know how to do it without that. It's segment of the DNA of the show.


Simien on the set of Dear White People Season 2 with actress Ashley Blaine Featherson.


MTV News: Coming off the success of the initial season, what was your approach to Season 2?


Simien: I just really wanted to outdo ourselves. I felt like the reception for Season 1 was so excellent, plus it would have been really easy for us to rest on our laurels and churn out the same thing. Yet I get bored conveniently. I think I have ADD or something. Also, I felt like there was a sense of urgency to all these conversations that was unique to the time we were making the show. I just wanted to kick it up a notch on every level, from the title cards to the makeup to the kinds of stories we were telling. Along with because we introduced everybody in Season 1 it gave us the possibility to dive deeper into them.


With a couple of characters, like Lionel and Reggie, they had these moments last season that in most shows would have been the end of it. As soon as whenever a character comes out, they typically re suddenly fine. They're gay and excited and have a boyfriend. And if someone undergoes the sort of trauma that Reggie experiences in Season 1, they just sort of bounce back. Yet the truth of it is that you don't just move on. These are the beginnings of a complex, messy journey that the two of these have to continue.


MTV News: Was it a subconscious choice to have Sam get into fights with Twitter trolls in the initial episode, or did that come from a very personalized place on your part? It was like a very meta way to address the controversy of the initial season.


Simien: a bit of both. With the troll thing, it felt like such a possibility to unpack in a way that a lot of people can understand because we're all dealing with trolls. It's piece of the zeitgeist and the culture now. It's tough to be mobile online and not deal with this idea of fake people and bots and fake news. So it felt like not only was it something that was happening to me and happening to the personnel that was interesting, nevertheless it felt vital to talk about it.


It was also something that we may literally study first-hand. Each person is going through a version of that now, and piece of what this show tries to do is connect what we're all going through to these bigger issues and these deeper meanings.


MTV News: Do you have a line? Like, if somebody crosses it, you have got to call them out.


Simien: If I feel like somebody's purpose is to instigate or to try and get a reaction, then I just block them. If it's a conversation that I'm not particularly interested in, I'll mute them. If it's somebody who's genuinely asking questions — like there was a kid the other day who was new to the cultural conversation around the show and was like same old same old, "What if there was a Dear Black People? There could be riots in the streets." And I felt the need to respond to him, not as a clap-back yet as a proper point of discussion, because I felt like this person was proper. I like engaging with fans and people watching the show, no matter what their suggestions are.


I definitely have learned to get out of clap-back mode. As soon as you begin, it's really hard to stop. You get that dopamine rush from posting something and getting all of the likes and retweets, although it ends up being a big waste of time. Nobody's convinced of anything new. You feel a better, maybe a little bit more popular, however nothing was accomplished and maybe hours if not days of your life were spent arguing with someone who or might not be a person. It's a trap!


MTV News: Speaking of Sam, her arc really bookends this season in a really surprising way, which made me curious: do you suggest what the endgame is for all of those characters, or are you figuring it out along the way?


Simien: I certainly know where they're going. Whether or not they wind up there in the series, that's up for debate. Although I definitely have a sense what every one of the characters is becoming and what they're capable of being — and the show is an exploration all of the things that get in the way of that. Yet I also attempt to keep things a little bit loose because you never know where you may find some inspiration. At the end of the initial season, While I had finished writing the show, I had an idea of where I wanted to go plot-wise, although the full troll thing opened up this whole new avenue of study that I couldn't have predicted. You must be very prepared, nevertheless you can't be so sure that you're not open to more interesting ideas.


MTV News: The episode in which Sam goes house with Joelle and Coco for her father's funeral was really touching along with a frank exploration of Sam's own guilt. It was so emotionally raw. What inspired that?


Simien: So several of us in the room have lost parents, and this really started as a very personalized story for Yvette Lee Bowser, who wrote the episode and is our perfect showrunner. Yvette, who's the product of white mother as well as a black father, had a lot to mention about the ways in which this idea of race can cut between family member ties and why death brings all of that into clarity and focus. It felt like an interesting thing for Sam to go through, yet more importantly, it felt like something that we because the room, nevertheless especially Yvette, could bring some personalized stuff that hadn't had an outlet nevertheless. That's the opening thing I ask the writers: "What stories haven't you told although That's a big segment of our process.


MTV News: There were a lot of bold filmmaking choices this season. As an example, "Chapter VIII" was an entire episode serious about one scene between Gabe and Sam. It was really intimate, almost like theater. What was it like directing that episode?


Simien: It was one of my main go to experiences as a director for now. There's no plot to distract you from the conversation and from the story. It was such a pleasure. We shot it over three days, which is very short for us, nevertheless these actors are real actors. They love the craft, and I'm a director who loves to work with actors. I also come from a theater background, just like the writer Jack Moore. We grew up on plays and finding ways to tell human stories in a sole setting.


So I thought it was a critical episode, however also on a personalized level, it was a welcome challenge. I really admire directors like Sidney Lumet and Mike Nichols, who didn't need to be anywhere however in a room with some really excellent actors to do some really wonderful filmmaking. This was my chance to try that.


MTV News: It reaffirmed for me that Logan Browning is the perfect crier on TV.


Simien: she is a cute person plus a good actor and, man, we're so frickin' honored to have her.


MTV News: At what point did you realize that Joelle and Reggie were going to be an item in Season 2?


Simien: From the starting. I thought that in a global where we have different kinds of relationships on the show, there really wasn't a positive black couple that you wanted to root for. I won't mention that they're the Dwayne and Whitley — because that was a really slow burn — yet they're just two people you aspire to be able to see with each other. It was an itch that the audience really needed to scratch.


MTV News: The season ends on a very interesting note, as Sam and Lionel uncover the Categorize of X, or as Sam called it, "some Harry Potter shit." It seems like Season 3 will dive into more of the mythology of Armstrong-Parker Residence. What can you mention about that?


Simien: It's categorize kind of a American tradition to go underground and attempt to manipulate and motivate the culture through anonymity. There really are so several secret societies that date back to the founding of the nation that live on in Ivy League tradition. I don't know if it's the Illuminati, although the idea that these folks are connected through a network underneath this so-called hierarchy of America is a typical theme, and I thought it could be interesting to explore the history of that for black folks.


We're in this moment where it's all about resistance, yet it's really the persisters who have moved the needle. I'm definitely very interested in seeing a what an actual civil rights corporation that is moving the needle would look like in the 21st century. You think of Martin Luther King Jr. And Malcolm X, nevertheless nobody every really gets into the weeds of how those movements work, and I think it could interesting to be able to see a modern-day model of what civil rights might look like. So I'll mention that, yet that's all I'll mention.


MTV News: Giancarlo Esposito showing up at end because the narrator in the flesh was a brilliant way to end it.


Simien: In a lot of ways, that moment is asking us to imagine the source. We're routinely being narrated to through imagery and commercials and pop culture, and we very rarely stop to think about where these messages are coming from, who's saying them, and what their motivations might be. Bringing the narrator into the narrative is a way of saying that. This voice that you were thinking was the voice of God is actually just a human being who may have motivations and things on his mind that he hasn't told you. And, like I mentioned, I get bored conveniently, so there was no way we were going to have a device like a narrator and not find a way to subvert it.