Speaker 1: Oh Lad with mo Okay.
Speaker 2: Six. The Amazon Prime video series Classified follows fifteen year
Speaker 2: old Oakland student Ella, who's arrested at a protest and
Speaker 2: facing serious jail time. Ella avoids incarceration thanks to her stepmother,
Speaker 2: who you'll meet in just a moment, who's well connected.
Speaker 2: The catches that ell of Us moved to South Africa
Speaker 2: for the rest of the school year, but beneath that,
Speaker 2: there's a story of international intrigue. In fact, Spycraft Entertainment,
Speaker 2: a global production company run by former senior intelligence officers,
Speaker 2: co producers and consults on the series.
Speaker 3: Live in Oakland, protesters are calling for change.
Speaker 2: He messed up, El, he messed up real bad.
Speaker 3: I don't know what strings your father had to pull
Speaker 3: to get you out of here.
Speaker 1: Come here, Welcome to South Africa. Left to the back,
Speaker 1: left to the right, Step to the stage.
Speaker 3: You're excited about school tomorrow.
Speaker 2: Enjoy your first day this year.
Speaker 1: He is for the rest of your likes. This is
Speaker 1: where kids of politicians, pop stars, and diplomats and their children.
Speaker 1: I've been assigned as your orientation guy.
Speaker 3: Nice try do Try. That was pretty dope.
Speaker 1: The new kid from San Francisco, right, I think You're
Speaker 1: pretty badass. Did you kids?
Speaker 3: Tell me?
Speaker 1: What's up with all the security?
Speaker 3: This is your personal emergency code.
Speaker 1: Memorize it please? What did you say your mom does again?
Speaker 3: I'm the CIA station chief for South Africa.
Speaker 1: Very funny, all that rightiness, Laca.
Speaker 3: You know, but it doesn't that presidential inauguration was their target.
Speaker 3: We believe that boy's dad might be able to lead
Speaker 3: us and you.
Speaker 1: Can help Ella.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 1: They'll go go.
Speaker 2: There'll be difficult things that you have to do, dangerous man.
Speaker 1: Going home.
Speaker 2: It's not an option.
Speaker 1: I want my life fat what's going on with Tiana?
Speaker 3: This is your new life?
Speaker 1: Are you gonna love this place? Can just feel it?
Speaker 2: And Classified is now available on Amazon Prime and Tonight.
Speaker 2: Comedian actor and series creator Khaki so Ladiha and co
Speaker 2: star Christine Horn both joined me to preview it. Welcome friends,
Speaker 2: Thank you for coming on tonight.
Speaker 1: Thank thank you for having us.
Speaker 2: Coky, so let me start with you. There's something about
Speaker 2: coming of age on and off the screen, same but different.
Speaker 2: We've all been sixteen, but not sixteen at this time
Speaker 2: in this world, and the world always shifts. What is
Speaker 2: it about just trying to tell a coming of age
Speaker 2: story through adult eyes.
Speaker 1: For me that as you say, coming of age and
Speaker 1: for me coming of age zone as a kind of
Speaker 1: constrapping kind of forever as under construction as people where
Speaker 1: we kind of later in the construction. If you are
Speaker 1: walls when you're in your forties, you're like a higher
Speaker 1: war that you know at fifteen year old is like
Speaker 1: the beginning foundations. You know, I always find that so fascinating.
Speaker 1: And what do us then kind of to add that
Speaker 1: that grand that complication was doing that through this kind
Speaker 1: of twisted world of espionage, you know, not like being
Speaker 1: a spy James Bond, but like like real espionage where
Speaker 1: you're gonna have to betray your friends. You're gonna have
Speaker 1: to pretend to be something you're not. You're gonna be
Speaker 1: told by grown ups who are supposed to tell you otherwise.
Speaker 1: They're gonna tell you there lie. They're gonna tell you
Speaker 1: to do all sorts of things that are wrong, if
Speaker 1: you know, in favor of God and country or whatever
Speaker 1: it is that they will give you as their reasons.
Speaker 2: Christie, listening to Cocky Soo's answer, you know, there is
Speaker 2: history that shows us every generation has its time of
Speaker 2: protest and invariably, the older generation never approves of how
Speaker 2: the younger generation chooses to protest, and using Coky Soo's
Speaker 2: answer as a jumping off point, this story may be fictional,
Speaker 2: but the generational dynamics still ring true, do they not?
Speaker 3: Absolutely? I mean, at the height of any revolution as
Speaker 3: young people, and because they have less to lose, right,
Speaker 3: there's less on the line for them.
Speaker 1: So that's what I love about this story.
Speaker 3: We follow Ella who is very fiery and fed up,
Speaker 3: and she has her strong beliefs and she's not afraid
Speaker 3: to go for what she believes, and even though there
Speaker 3: are you know, you know, repercussions on the other side
Speaker 3: of that, and so I think the audience will be
Speaker 3: able to connect with that, whether that was once them
Speaker 3: or that is them currently. But then getting to see
Speaker 3: and watch Ella unfold and come into herself as she
Speaker 3: is forced to live in a new place that is
Speaker 3: unfamiliar to her, a place that she has probably made,
Speaker 3: has some stereotypes in her mind and preconceived notions, and
Speaker 3: all of that gets shattered and we go on this
Speaker 3: wild journey with her as she discovered South Africa.
Speaker 2: Kaki, So let's talk about some of those preconceived notions
Speaker 2: and stereotypes. You're speaking to an American audience, largely one
Speaker 2: probably unfamiliar with the South Africa of the twenty first century.
Speaker 2: How would you characterize the country now post apartheid.
Speaker 1: You know, we talk about the universality of like human life.
Speaker 1: You know, you land anywhere in the world today, if
Speaker 1: you were to Uber on your phone, you're gonna call it.
Speaker 1: If you're looking for a coffee shop, there's gonna be this.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a grand globalization that's happening thanks to
Speaker 1: American corporations. So the world is very much the same.
Speaker 1: Like whether it's good or bad, I don't know, but
Speaker 1: there's a kind of universality or genericness that's that didn't
Speaker 1: happen because of globalization, and I think that, you know,
Speaker 1: with a show like this, you get to show that.
Speaker 1: And obviously there's always unique things South Africa coming out
Speaker 1: of a part that being in this new place now
Speaker 1: where black people have a lot more mobility, a lot
Speaker 1: more freedoms, and having this American African American character who
Speaker 1: has an idea of blackness coming into this place and
Speaker 1: seeing how that gets subverted or how, you know, seeing
Speaker 1: the blackness through different eyes, and I think for like
Speaker 1: a global diaspora audience, this becomes like a point of
Speaker 1: cool conversation about identity, about ru Yah and so on,
Speaker 1: and how we fit in the world, especially from the
Speaker 1: perspective of a sixteen.
Speaker 2: Year old Christine classified as we're talking about maybe a
Speaker 2: coming of age story on the surface, but we've been
Speaker 2: hinting at it and jumping around talking about it from
Speaker 2: a distance. It's an international spy thriller. Without giving it
Speaker 2: all away. You as Ella's stepmother, Diane knows some pretty
Speaker 2: powerful people around the globe. How does Ella's life change
Speaker 2: in the series beyond just her physical address?
Speaker 1: Great question.
Speaker 3: Well, Ella's life changes because she soon finds out that
Speaker 3: I'm the CIA station chief, and which means, yes, I
Speaker 3: am intertwined with some very powerful people and some unscrupulous
Speaker 3: people as well. And Ella wants something and I want something,
Speaker 3: and so I use that to my advantage and I
Speaker 3: make her work for me.
Speaker 1: And so she ends up going to a school.
Speaker 3: And this isn't giving too much away, but you'll see
Speaker 3: she ends up going to a school where diplomats go
Speaker 3: and they send their kids to, and the wealthy students
Speaker 3: go there and so there's lots of connections that I
Speaker 3: require her make so that she can get what she
Speaker 3: wants and I can get what I want.
Speaker 2: Congress, So am my introduction. I talked about how Spycraft Entertainment,
Speaker 2: a global production company run by former senior intelligence officers.
Speaker 2: One of the co producers a classified How did that
Speaker 2: process work as far as having a script and telling
Speaker 2: a story but also making sure it was authentic on
Speaker 2: many levels.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's kind of the original talent. They
Speaker 1: came and said, look, this is how we lived, this
Speaker 1: is what we used to We use our children as
Speaker 1: these tools national security, and so we were very judgmental, like, well,
Speaker 1: how did you do your kids? You know, this is
Speaker 1: how you know, this is how you secure the country,
Speaker 1: this is how you secure the world, and so. But
Speaker 1: there's obviously the real life stories and there's like fiction,
Speaker 1: there's how do you make this compelling screen? Because the
Speaker 1: real spy whenever you research spycraft and being spies, it's
Speaker 1: always so boy, it's always so anti James Bond, right, Like,
Speaker 1: real spies will tell you about how spying is boring
Speaker 1: and it's time consuming. You know, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: waiting and there's no sexy James bondiness that's happening. So
Speaker 1: Lutra is great that like there was something that I
Speaker 1: needed to be ever to tap into because of this
Speaker 1: kind of grounded young adult drama and this kind of
Speaker 1: family drama that's happening. But we also wanted the excitement,
Speaker 1: that kind of danger, that betrayal of the intrigue and
Speaker 1: so on. So in the middle of there, we would
Speaker 1: write script send it to them. They'd go, this, wouldn't
Speaker 1: They were really kind of concerned with the initiated, you know,
Speaker 1: they wouldn't use an ambulance a secret car. That's what
Speaker 1: happens in the movies. You know that when you have
Speaker 1: the secret ambulance with like the communications in the back
Speaker 1: like we see it in the movies. They're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: an ambulance because people would expect an ambulance to help
Speaker 1: them if any accident happened, so they would use a
Speaker 1: different type of card. We're like, oh, but this type
Speaker 1: of stuff happens, and of course it happens, yes, but
Speaker 1: not an ambulance, you know. So there was always these
Speaker 1: types of little stories, little things, and some parts of
Speaker 1: way we would both agree, but it's more exciting if
Speaker 1: it's an ambulance, or it's more exciting if we catch
Speaker 1: as fire and they're like, yeah, we'll let it's lie,
Speaker 1: you know. But generally we try as much as possible
Speaker 1: to make it authentic and as grounded as possible. That
Speaker 1: was kind of the running thread was that this has
Speaker 1: to feel real, this has to be we gott watch
Speaker 1: this and go, oh man, that that kid is as fire.
Speaker 1: When you you imagine Ella as a three year old,
Speaker 1: you know that's gonna be so messed up. She's gonna
Speaker 1: be really it's not a lot of cigarettes and being
Speaker 1: a badass.
Speaker 2: Well, I can't wait. We're gonna be checking it out.
Speaker 2: Classified now available on Amazon Prime Video. I want to
Speaker 2: think my guests Kagi so Ladija and also co star
Speaker 2: Christine Horn. Congratulations. Can't wait to see all of it.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you sir, Thank you for having us.
Speaker 1: And also Amazon FREEV if you don't have a subscription
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