What do you hope Julianne walks away with from this process? 

I’m hoping that Julianne walks away from this happy – most importantly – happy with the film she made. And I hope it gives her a growing confidence to keep going. She has such a great voice, and I can’t wait to see what other stories she has to tell. 

Any thoughts you’d like to share with an aspiring filmmaker out there who may not know where to start?

To any aspiring filmmakers who may not know where to start, I’d say the thing is – to start. Use whatever you have in hand to do what you can. Write a script – you need nothing for that. Shoot an iPhone short. Use the resources you already have in hand – the friends you have who may be writers, the friends who are actors, the friends who are interested in being a cinematographer…. to help. But do something so that when opportunity strikes, you’re ready. You have a script. You have a short. You are growing as a result of doing. 

What was the moment you knew you wanted to make films? 

I’ve never really NOT wanted to be a filmmaker. When I was ten, I was writing and directing plays that I made my brothers act in. When I realized directing was a job. Like someone got paid to do it… and after seeing Do the Right Thing – realizing black people got paid to do it, I was hooked.

What is the most challenging part of the filmmaking process? 

The hardest part is always feeling like you don’t have enough time. Enough prep time, enough rehearsal time, enough time on set, enough time to sleep! You always feel behind. And you have to trust that doing the most you can in the time you have will be enough… because it has to.

Have you adapted your process at all during the pandemic?

Right now I’m filming a show during Covid and I have to remember that my FIRST job as a director is to create a safe environment. Julianne and I have talked about this. If people feel safe, if they know that you take their safety as seriously as you do your own, they are allowed to not worry about that and can give you their very best work because they feel safe. You have to almost think of it like filming stunts. That every detail that pertains to the safety of the actors has to be thought about and adapted to, so we can continue to do this work that we love.

How do you choose what stories you want to tell?  

This sounds trite – but the stories choose me. If it’s a script I haven’t written, like a Tall Girl, or a Little Fires Everywhere, it’s all about seeing if I can find my way into it. Am I still thinking about it an hour after I read it? Or if it’s something I have written – a lot of times an idea will come to me kind of all at once, and again, if I’m still thinking about it a couple of days later, and my brain is already starting to work on it, I know I just have to sit down and write it.

Sometimes a story comes from a lived experience – When I wrote and directed With This Ring – it was about a single, black woman’s experience. Now I’m writing a film about marriage! Julianne wrote this very funny, lovely script about her lived experience, and because she knows it inside and out, it’s incredibly organic and honest.