TV: How did you create the world of Lucille?ĪE: Lucille as a town was based on all these towns that Toni Morrison used to write in her books, where you have a town that is like a little world unto itself.

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I was like, y'all have some of the best drama I have ever read about! I was the kid who was reading the encyclopedia in high school because I wanted to figure out how every single Greek god was connected to everyone else. I'm not Catholic anymore, but there's just so much of it that I grew up with and I was very interested in mythology in general. But my grandmother's brother was the first brown priest in Malaysia and then he became the first brown bishop. I considered being a nun when I was a kid, and then they told me I couldn't wear nail polish, and I was like whoa, you have gone too far. My mom's family is so hardcore Catholic that my mom has aunts who are Carmelite nuns, still today. TV: What made you want to play with all these religious themes?ĪE: I was raised Catholic as f*ck. I was like, let me give Jam a life where that's not even a risk for her. I also wanted to write a book that wasn't about black trans people dying, because I feel like that's so much of when people pay attention to black trans women. This is the kind of future where she can be loved by someone who, perhaps, in a worse and different life, would have tried to hurt her. I wasn't trying to make a statement with their friendship in that way, but just when you asked that question I'm looking back and I'm just like, oh, this is a wholesome future. And I'm only realizing that no one's ever asked me about their friendship before, and I just kind of put them together 'cause they felt right, but just looking around at what's happening in the world today, it's like, the main people who are killing black trans women are black cis men. With Jam, what does it look like for a black trans girl to have this really wholesome, protective friendship with a black cis boy. exist now, but the world that they are living in is different.

In terms of the world that was built, that was more futuristic, so it's not actually what the world is like today. TV: When you were building out the friendship of Jam and Redemption, how did you want to portray that connection?ĪE: I wanted them to have a super wholesome friendship.

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