Speaker 1: Let's talk a little bit about Washington Black. Washington Black,
Speaker 1: of course, is a series that debuted on Hulu earlier
Speaker 1: this week. I think it dropped like Wednesday, right, and
Speaker 1: adapted from ec Eddie you Gan's acclaimed novel, Washington Black
Speaker 1: is a richly imaginative, emotionally resented eight part mini series
Speaker 1: that blends historical fiction, adventure, romance, and speculative realism to
Speaker 1: tell a story rarely seen on screen. Charles Executive produced
Speaker 1: by Sterling K.
Speaker 2: Brown.
Speaker 1: The series transcends familion narratives of slavery by centering hope,
Speaker 1: connection and the trans transformative powerpart.
Speaker 2: Now, let me talk a little bit.
Speaker 1: About this, which I found to be fascinating because I
Speaker 1: watch a lot of stuff, and I'm not discounting anybody
Speaker 1: else's watch experience, but I'm telling you, I'll watch a
Speaker 1: lot of stories about enslaved people, and generally, whenever we
Speaker 1: tell these stories, no matter how hopefully they are, there's
Speaker 1: always subjugation, there's always pain, there's always disrespect, You're always
Speaker 1: being felt less than. And I'm talking about when I
Speaker 1: say we talking about the audience of people of color
Speaker 1: who have to sit through these stories, to sit through
Speaker 1: the pain and the trauma to get to the hope
Speaker 1: and the inspiration on.
Speaker 2: The other side. Well, guess what in this story with
Speaker 2: sans place trauma.
Speaker 1: Well, no, no, in this story that happens in the
Speaker 1: early part of the nineteenth century, Yes, he is an
Speaker 1: enslaved guy who's working in the sugarcane field somewhere over
Speaker 1: in the Barbados for a hateful plantation owner.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: The one thing that the movie doesn't show out outside
Speaker 1: of a couple of instances where people might get smacked
Speaker 1: or some stuff like that, there's nobody getting whipped. There's
Speaker 1: not an overabundance of trauma of you know, even though
Speaker 1: they're slaves. It reminded me ironically of a Dave Chappelle skit, Right,
Speaker 1: Dave Chappelle once set in his skit and I'm paraphrasing
Speaker 1: that black men don't ever have we don't ever have.
Speaker 2: The ability to just be and just dream.
Speaker 1: And exists, right, because you know, we always are dealing
Speaker 1: with with some sort of trauma. Well, this is a
Speaker 1: story that happens doing slavery. With the story of a
Speaker 1: kid who's young, he might be five or six, but
Speaker 1: he's you know, he's got a vivid imagination, and he's
Speaker 1: really really smart. And everybody in the community sees that
Speaker 1: this kid could be something special, and they protect him,
Speaker 1: nurture him, hide him, and do whatever they need to
Speaker 1: do to make sure that this kid can be allowed
Speaker 1: to be who he is, which is radically different than
Speaker 1: anything we've never.
Speaker 3: Watched that in terms of that kind of story, In.
Speaker 1: Terms of that kind of story, like, this kid was
Speaker 1: a dreamer who wanted to fly, right, and when when
Speaker 1: they said wanted to fly, he was an inventor who
Speaker 1: wanted to create a machine that could fly.
Speaker 2: Instead of somebody going, boy, just sit your butt in
Speaker 2: the corner, man, anybody got no time for that? Man.
Speaker 2: You coulda picked You coulda.
Speaker 1: Picked it better, chopped his sugar cane and stopped playing.
Speaker 2: He gets, he.
Speaker 1: Meets and and also I called it the Psalm twenty
Speaker 1: three six. Goodness and mercy followed this kid all his
Speaker 1: entire life, his entire life. It was it was fascinating
Speaker 1: to watch. I went, huh, I haven't seen this one before.
Speaker 1: So he you know, he even though that he's on
Speaker 1: a plantation with a hateful slave owner. The slave owner's
Speaker 1: brothers an abolitionists who understands the sees how special he is,
Speaker 1: and the slave master says, you go in on, you
Speaker 1: can take this kid, So him and the kid start
Speaker 1: all these adventures. Now, the thing is interesting about it,
Speaker 1: because I couldn't figure this out myself, is they only
Speaker 1: it's an eight part mini series, but Hulu only gave
Speaker 1: you four episodes to review. So this review that I
Speaker 1: wrote the first four episodes at the pictures non stop.
Speaker 1: So I'm looking at the pictures and I'm trying to
Speaker 1: download the pictures and I'm like, and.
Speaker 2: What point of the story is this kid? Because this
Speaker 2: kid travels all around the world. Now we can't remember.
Speaker 1: This is the early nineteenth century, so it's not like,
Speaker 1: you know, there were plays and he can just jump on.
Speaker 2: No, this story happens.
Speaker 1: He's in the Arctic, like, oh, of course, eight l's
Speaker 1: He's in the Arctic, He's in Morocco, he's in Nova Scotia.
Speaker 2: This is this is truly.
Speaker 1: An international story that I think is so good.
Speaker 2: You literally should take the these eight.
Speaker 1: Episodes, put together a curriculum and just taking the schools
Speaker 1: and just show it the kids.
Speaker 2: Because by the eighth episode at the end, I was
Speaker 2: like that what's happening.
Speaker 1: It is deeply emotional. I thought Washington Black was brilliant.
Speaker 1: Washington Black is so brilliant, shan, Ain't you ready. The
Speaker 1: first four episodes I watched it, I said, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: give it.
Speaker 2: A B plus.
Speaker 1: By the time I got to the end of the
Speaker 1: eighth episode, the B plus got bumped up to an A.
Speaker 1: I was like, Wow, Washington Black, which is on Hulu
Speaker 1: right now, is frigging amazing.
Speaker 2: Executive produced by Shirt I mean Sterling K. Brown.
Speaker 1: There are and then you can go go to the
Speaker 1: film Gordon and just read the review. That's all I'll
Speaker 1: tell you. Because I poured some stuff into this review
Speaker 1: because I was feeling this show and I just kept
Speaker 1: on writing and couldn't stop writing. I was like, some
Speaker 1: more because there's now let me also say because one
Speaker 1: of the things, and there was one thing I had
Speaker 1: to add after the end, there's a there's a backstory
Speaker 1: for Sterling K.
Speaker 2: Brown's character that's in here.
Speaker 1: That is deeply touching. It is deeply touching and and
Speaker 1: and I'm not gonna spoil it. Just watch the mini
Speaker 1: series when you get to that. Remember I told you
Speaker 1: how deeply touching that that whole thing is and there
Speaker 1: are so many great moments of people who are kind. Dude,
Speaker 1: just don't have to be kind, who just kind to
Speaker 1: this kid. I don't know what it was about this character,
Speaker 1: but people just wanted to help this guy out because
Speaker 1: they kept looking at him, going, you know, he's the one,
Speaker 1: he's like neo, he can be somebody. So it is
Speaker 1: a very interesting mini series and for us, since we
Speaker 1: also run the Black Real Awards for Television, this will
Speaker 1: not last time you hear about Washington Black.
Speaker 2: I got a feeling that when.
Speaker 1: Nominations come for next year's Black Real Awards for Television,
Speaker 1: Washington Black is gonna.
Speaker 2: Be in the mix.
Speaker 3: That's a good if they don't forget Ernest Kingsley Junior.
Speaker 1: Yes, he was absolutely amazing man, and he was the
Speaker 1: young I'm sorry that was the older version of Washington Black.
Speaker 1: The younger version is played by Eddie Karanja.
Speaker 3: So yeah, really funny because you hear stories like in
Speaker 3: the hood where you got a football player, basketball player,
Speaker 3: and everybody protects him, make sure he makes it out.
Speaker 2: And becomes good.
Speaker 3: That was our generation. Yes, that's our generation. But to
Speaker 3: see this happening in the early nineteen no, this is
Speaker 3: the early eighteen hundred. Oh it's eighteen eighteen twenty something
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 2: Wow, I gotta see this. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, so Washington Black Man is on Hulu right now.
Speaker 1: Once you finished listening to this and you turn this
Speaker 1: podcast off, just go and check it out.
Speaker 2: I promise you grabbed the family.
Speaker 1: Matter of fact, I grabbed mine last night and I
Speaker 1: think we got through the first two episodes, so we
Speaker 1: still got six that we need to go through. So
Speaker 1: that is Washington black So any questions on