Fresh Air - A People's History Of Black Twitter

Episode Date: May 8, 2024

#BlackLivesMatter. #OscarsSoWhite. #ICantBreathe. Filmmaker Prentice Penny's docuseries about Black Twitter celebrates the voices and movements that impacted politics and culture. Penny was also the showrunner of the HBO series Insecure. Also, John Powers reviews the four-part series Shardlake, based on C.J. Sansom's first novel in a series about a crime-solving lawyer in 16th-century England.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR and the following message come from the Kauffman Foundation, providing access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, upward mobility, and economic prosperity, regardless of race, gender, or geography these hashtags is familiar to you. Me too. Black Lives Matter. Oscar So White. Black Girl Magic. I Can't Breathe. All of them took hold on the platform formerly known as Twitter. And to put a finer point on it, Black Twitter. Now, what exactly is Black Twitter?

There was a tweet at one point where they were like, where is Black Twitter? Like, is it like, they thought it was like a secret URL, we had different logins, or is it a location? Is it black.twitter.com? Like, is there a special tweet I send which opens a portal for us muggles to get into the special club? There's not an extra tab or there's not an email that you get where you want to sign up. It's just sort of there. And what you discover very quickly within the world of Black Twitter is that all of these combined regions, mentalities, political views, everything is sandwiched into one place. That's from the Hulu three-part documentary series Black Twitter, A People's History, which charts the voices and movements that made this element of Twitter an influential force in American politics

and culture. Our guest today is Prentice Penny, the director and executive producer of the series, which is released tomorrow. Penny based his docuseries on Jason Parham's 2021 articles about Black Twitter that were published in Wired magazine. Finney also served for all five seasons as the showrunner for HBO's Insecure with Issa Rae. He grew up in Los Angeles and has had a long career in Hollywood on television shows like Girlfriends, Scrubs, and Brooklyn Nine-Nine, where he served as both a writer and co-executive producer. And in 2020, he directed his first feature film for Netflix called Uncorked. Black Twitter is his first documentary. Prentice Penny, welcome to Fresh Air. Thank you. Happy to be here.

Okay, so let's start with the big question, the main question. Every conversation about Black Twitter is really often a debate about what it is and actually who is a part of it. So how do you define Black Twitter? I define Black Twitter, the best way I can describe it is it's like the back of the bus when you were in school. Yeah, and what was that like? You know, it's just people cutting up, having fun. No one is above being joked on. Things can get, you can debate, you can be bagging on each other. You could be debating your top five hip hop artists.

You could be talking about something kind of serious. It's all of those things. And it's just the sort of the conversation that's kind of that the teacher's not hearing too, right? So I think that's kind of the best way I would describe it. Oh, the conversation, yeah, that the teacher's not hearing too, right? So I think that's kind of the best way I would describe it. Oh, the conversation, yeah, that the teacher's not hearing. Because for a long time, it was a space that was all its own on Twitter. So it wasn't part of the mainstream conversation. You're taking it all the way back to its beginnings. Yeah, it's a bizarre thing to, you know, so much of Black culture typically, you know, going back to our

arrival in this country is we've had to obviously code switch. We've had to, you know, put the subtext in the text, you know, even in terms of the way slaves had to communicate. We had to say things and put things in songs that, you know, we didn't want the sort of the other powers that be to understand what we were talking about, right? So it's a really bizarre thing to be discussing things that are so communal in a very public platform. But that's just how we move. And that's sort of what Black Twitter is. It's like if you can kind of know, oh, I need to go in here, right?

That was kind of the way that it's like you have to know certain, again, what the sort of hashtags were, what the sort of conversation points were to kind of, so that was kind of the way that it's like you have to know certain, again, what the sort of hashtags were, what the sort of conversation points were to kind of – so that was kind of your entryway into, oh, now I'm around kind of the energy of Black Twitter. I love that analogy of Black Twitter being like the back of the bus. But what makes it like different from other online spaces like Facebook? Yeah, I think what made – you know, Twitter as a platform didn't really know what it was trying to be. It was like, it's a podcasting place. It's also like a messaging place. We had no idea what it was back to that time. Yeah. But also Twitter as a platform, all the people who created it didn't really know what it should be, you know, very

different than Facebook, right? Facebook was very clear of what it was trying to be. And I think what, because Twitter was so pliable, it allowed it to be a lot trying to be. And I think what, because Twitter was so pliable, it allowed it to be a lot of different things. And I think black culture is very good in America of having to make something out of nothing. And we're very good at repurposing and remixing things in different ways, right? You see that in our food, you see it in our fashion,

you certainly see it in the birth of hip hop, right? Which is like taking James Brown records, taking all these things and like rapping over the break beats, right? So we're always taking something and remixing it and repurposing it in different ways. And I think, you know, Twitter also, which I think was unique about the platform was, you know, Facebook was follow your friends, right? It was like you, your aunt, your friend from high school, you hadn't seen in a long time, your cousin, all that type of stuff, where, you know, Twitter was like, come meet strangers.

So that allows you to intermix with people you didn't necessarily know and grow a group and find a community less than find a person. So if you were like NBA Twitter person, you could meet a bunch of people that were just who messed with the NBA or you went to HBCUs or all these things. So they kind of started to build communities as a family differently than Facebook, which is like you literally can- With your family. With your family, yeah.

You know, there's something that Associate Professor Meredith Clark said in your documentary about the term Black community that I thought was really enlightening when I'm trying to wrap my head around what Black Twitter is. So she said, for so long when we use the term Black community, we're using it to describe Black life to non-Black audiences. But then we assigned it back to ourselves. And with that, then, Black Twitter is like a mirror to us. It is definitely showing all the facets of Black life, not just one particular idea of what Black life is. We were essentially able to see each other. Yeah. And I think what's interesting even now is I think we still wrestle with that, right? Of like, what is authentically Black? Who gets to decide who's saying what about the community because we're so protective of it, right? And I think we still wrestle with that, certainly externally, right? We don't want to be seen as a monolith. But then there's also this weird thing we do also, which is like,

well, why don't we all think the same about this subject matter, right? And so the story is chronological. You started with 2006, 2007, and the creation of hashtags. How did hashtags become really like a beacon for Black Twitter? Yeah, I mean, it was a way on the platform to sort of find things quickly. If you put this on there, you can find these quickly. And we use it as a different way. One, to sort of have a beacon to be like, there was a way to find us kind of. That's what I mean by like the ways into Black Twitter that were kind of how you find it.

Right. But you have to find it by knowing the words to get you in. It's almost like going to a speakeasy. It's like you got to know the secret word for the night to get in, right? And that one of the phrases that started it off, that kicked it off was, you know your Black win. Yeah. So that illuminated something pretty profound.

I think it was at Ashley Witherspoon. She's the person who created that hashtag, you know, your black win. And people just started sharing their lived experiences, which actually made me wonder, have I ever had a unique experience in my life? Because what it did, though, was open it up that you saw these little minute minutiae things that are in your day to day lifeday life other black people are also experiencing too did you have that experience too oh for sure i mean i remember when that hashtag hit and it's always funny when those types of things come up and there's ways in which

like the like the best one to me is like there's the there's the ones that are like of course like the the plastic on the couch or don't go into like the nice living room and stuff like that but But, you know, then there's like stuff that's even more specific, which is like the cookie tin, that Danish cookie tin. Right. Where all the sewing stuff is in. The silverware that your grandma used to. The silverware, like the packet drawer, that sort of like, you know. The condiment packet drawer. The condiment packet.

So there are all these sort of things that, again, we, and I think it's's because I mean, we can get into historically why we have so many similar experiences. But I just think it's because we're black in America and, you know, we all kind of have a similar starting point. Black culture, because we all started from our ancestry, at least black Americans, our ancestry being slavery, we all have a similar starting point. Now, we might have in the Great Migration State or gone, but the starting point of certain things are the same, whereas the starting places for other cultures, at least in America, is not the same. Black Twitter and Twitter more generally is credited with spawning several cultural and social justice movements, as well as the demise of some careers. So you all talk about TV personality and chef Paula Deen, who in 2013 posted a picture of her son in brown makeup as I Love Lucy

character Ricky Ricardo. Black Twitter went in on her. What did that particular moment represent? I think I remember that moment because I remember every black person at the time used to like mess with Paula Deen because it was like she cooked with a bunch of butter. Mess with meaning we liked her. Yeah, we liked her. Yeah, we like, you know, she she cooked food like, you know, different than sort of like a lot of the white women chefs on TV. Right. She was like a thicker white woman. She embraced butter. It was she like felt like she ate food, food, right? Not sort of like-

It was Southern, right? It was Southern. It was very much in that way. And I think that, so it felt like you could see yourself reflected in like the things she talks about, at least food wise and culturally. And that moment I think is so interesting

because typically black culture, and I think before social media, you might have those like kind of, outrage is the wrong thing, but frustration or anger. Someone does something. Yes. And you're kind of saying it to your girl, you're saying it to your friend, but you're saying it in barbershops, you're saying it at work, you're saying it just when y'all going out for drinks, but it doesn't have a lot of resonance. Maybe somebody writes an article and maybe, you know, yeah, and you share, but it also, the article also might just be an essence magazine or it might be in a black publication. So the

mainstream world at large, typically I would sort of say like white America isn't privy to how we feel about those things. And what you're saying is so important in that we're in a different time period where there's more silos and more guardrails to prevent folks from seeing that bigger picture. But at the time when Twitter was really burgeoning, you were able to see those conversations being had. Black Lives Matter was a hashtag that originally started on Facebook,

but then took hold on Twitter. Take us back to that time period and how that hashtag, it really became a real life social justice movement, the movement that we know today. Do you remember when you first interacted with it? You know, around Trayvon Ferguson time. 2012, 2013. Yeah, so that was then. 2012, 2013. everywhere, and certain groups of people being uncomfortable seeing it. And obviously, you see ways in which it got appropriated and misinterpreted and, you know, all kinds of crazy stuff. It's always interesting to me whenever you see anything with the word Black in it in America, because it's

even when we were talking about what the title of this doc is going to be, right? It becomes like, okay, well, the second you put Black in something, is it turning off people because they're going to be. Right. It becomes like, OK, well, the second you put black in something, is it turning off people because they're going to like hear it away, see it away? And obviously, Black Lives Matter as a hashtag did make people feel a way. Thinking back to that moment when Black Lives Matter as a hashtag took hold on Twitter, it also became a megaphone, especially for us to understand what was happening in other places throughout the country, like Ferguson. We know about Ferguson and we know about Michael Brown because of that hashtag on Twitter. How did that inform the mainstream media coverage of that

time period? Yeah. I mean, I think to that point, right, like, you know, Janetta Elsey, who was the first person to, you know, kind of be posting about it. About Ferguson. She flew there from where she was living. Yep. To cover it. And talking about it. And live tweeting it. Yeah. And live tweeting everything that was happening. And I think, you know, obviously, you know, what was happening in Ferguson isn't the first time that's happening in this country, right? There's a lot of that. But I think what Twitter allowed, which is kind of like, which we say in the doc, it's like a printing press and a TV studio on your phone.

You know, so much of, even when I started film school, right, like in the 90s, you know, like video didn't exist like that yet. Like you had to shoot on film, process on film. So the process of doing anything visual like that is so expensive, right? And so obviously, you know, black people don't own a bunch of television stations. We don't own a bunch of news cameras. We don't own a bunch of these things. So the idea that the technology could, where finance is not a hurdle to tell a different narrative, changes everything, right? So now what Janetta Elsey is doing can get just as many views as what CNN is doing. That's power. That's so powerful. How did that hashtag make the media have to contend with the way that it was covering? I think it had to hold those institutions accountable of, well, what are we putting out there? I think what happened on Black Twitter was we got to decide what the narrative was. So if CNN or Fox or whatever is showing us overturning a car or doing this, we're also going to show, hey that doesn't tell it. That doesn't tell the story they're excited about because, you know, we can get into all the all the minutia that they sell ads and that they they have a revenue stream that needs viewers, that they need viewership high, too.

Right. And so when your viewership needs to be high, you got to do whatever you got to do to grab viewers. Right. And so when human beings are monetized, you're incentivized to do things that feel sensational and splashy and not do things that feel like, you know, human interest pieces or tell a different narrative. And those narratives, right, you were able to see on Twitter. Exactly. Prentice, I want to talk for a moment about the impact that Black Twitter has had on what we pay attention to collectively and also spend money on. So in this clip I'm about to play, Amanda Seals, Kamau Bell, and Jemele Hill talk about how Black Twitter influenced television show ratings and content decisions. Let's listen. Well, the reality is that Black people historically support what they like and tell everybody.

So Black Twitter allowed for word-of-mouth marketing to happen with programming, which I think was something that nobody in marketing at NBC or ABC or CBS had ever considered as something they should be looking to do. We are creating a new era of Black media, and that has a lot to do with the connections that we made via Black Twitter. Quinta Brunson's career is in large part

because Black folks have sort of, like, decided it's your turn. Issa Rae, you know, that, like, Insecure became, like, appointment television for Black folks. And so that is what keeps the over-indexing happening that makes a show blow up because Black Twitter has also come to support it. As people say on Black Twitter, like, we watching this as a family or not?

That was a clip from the new Hulu documentary series Black Twitter directed by my guest today, Prentice Penny. I saw you smiling at certain parts of it. I mean, at its height, you were the showrunner for Insecure, which is a show that Black Twitter loved and live tweeted whenever it would drop, analyzed and debated it, too. How did that space influence your work? Yeah, I mean, I think that's when I think I fell in love with Black Twitter in a totally different way. Up until that point, you know, I'd been working in television. And even if I was tweeting about a show I was on, I'm not the face of it or in the forefront of it like that, right?

And Insecure was the first time that I was, obviously, along with Issa. And so, you know, we're live tweeting because obviously that's what people were doing. But people would be responding. And at first I would kind of give like a very like nice PC response. And somebody tweeted something. I don't remember what it was, but it has some spice on it.

And I was like, as I'm apt to do, what should I do? Should I respond? Were you offended by what they were saying or what was the spice? I don't remember what the spice was. It just was like something slick, you know. And I'm like, I'm quick with my tongue too, you know. I'm a comedy writer. I can be petty. And it wasn't anything like out of bounds.

It was just something real slick. And I was like, man, you know, if I was, when I was 16, I was obviously a huge Spike Lee fan and was a huge inspiration for me. And I was like, if I could have talked to Spike Lee and said something like, you know, how amazing would that have been? And what would I have wanted his response to me to be? Right. And I was like, yeah, I could give those answers or I could just be me on the platform because you're nervous. You're like, I don't want to offend. I don't want anybody to say the wrong thing. And the entire brand is on the line. Of course. And it's also like not fully my show either.

It's Issa. I don't want to do anything to damage what she's built at Issa's Reputation and what the show is doing. But then I was also like, yeah, but I'm a part of Black Twitter too. And I'm funny and slick. And so let me respond that way too. Like, again, funny, not out of bounds, just funny and slick. They just started laughing. I mean, doing like laugh emojis or whatever.

And they was like, oh, I like that or whatever. And that's when I also recognized too that they want the smoke too back. Then I started to realize they like that. Right. Because I was like, I like that. I mean, again, going back even in- How much of a gift was that for you as a creator?

Because, I mean, prior to that, that instant feedback, I mean, you're just getting feedback from ratings, you know, before. Like, this is like real, and you know, focus groups, but this is like real feedback that allows you to understand what is really hitting. Yeah. And I think, and really it's different, you know, it's like you get those things when you're out in the world and people go like, they know who you are. They might go like, oh, I love the show, blah, blah, blah. But this was like, even though we were writing the show and we know what's happening, we're kind of watching it for the first time, too. Our guest today is Prentice Penny, director of the new Hulu documentary series Black Twitter.

We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air. This is Anne-Marie Baldonado from Fresh Air, here to remind you about what you're missing if you aren't a Fresh Air Plus supporter. I wound up writing science fiction from the point of view of girls and women just because I was a girl and I am a woman. I wound up writing science fiction from the point of view of Black people because I am Black. That's author Octavia Butler. When she didn't see herself in the books she loved, Butler wrote her own stories in science fiction and fantasy.

Hear more from her interview in the latest Fresh Air Plus bonus episode and get all your Fresh Air episodes sponsor-free by joining for yourself at plus.npr.org. I want to talk a little bit more about your career before this documentary. So you were the showrunner of HBO's Insecure with Issa Rae. And there's this really cool story about how you got on the show.

You basically wrote her. Yes, I wrote her a letter. My agent at the time had went to college with Issa. So, and Lena Waithe, who- Is another creator. Is another creator, yep, who created The Chi

and wrote Queen and Slim, was friends with Issa. And so I worked with Lena when she was an assistant on Girlfriends, the TV show that – Where you were a writer. Where I was a writer. And so I kind of had a few ways into meeting or connecting with her. And so my agent was like, you should write her a letter about why you – about what you connected with on it and why you think you'd be a good showrunner. And I did. And she read the letter and was like, we should meet. And so we met,

she had a, she had a book coming out and she was at S.O. Wan Books, which is a bookstore that's no longer in Leimert Park, sadly. In California, Los Angeles. Yes. And we met and in 15 minutes, we were like, we just, you know, you just have chemistry with people. What did you see in her vision that spoke to you? There were lots of things I connected with. One, I connected with that the character was from the very neighborhood I grew up in. Like when Issa and I met, we realized that we grew up a block over from each other. So I knew the Leimert part.

But you didn't know each other. But we didn't know each other because we're 10 years apart age-wise. So, but I knew her brother, and we, you know, just knew all the same things in the same neighborhood, you know. And then I knew what it was like to feel, obviously,

super awkward, and obviously, knowing what it was like to be insecure. I was, I'm currently married and married to an AKA, like the character Molly is. Yeah, the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. That Molly is. So I was kind of married to a Molly.

And I'd worked at a nonprofit before I was a writer. So there were just lots of things I connected with. And I had had an experience even recently, obviously at that time when I was working on shows like Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Happy Endings and Scrubs, where I was the only black writer in the room. So I understood that feeling of what Issa, the character, feels like working at the nonprofit We Got Y'all, where she's the only black person at the nonprofit. So I had had a – and even down to in the pilot, there's a character that asked Issa, the character, what does on fleek mean? And that had happened to me like a month prior. Someone had asked you, what was on fleek? What was on fleek when I was on a show?

And so even down to that, I was just like, and so I just felt I knew the world. I knew, I just felt, I just connected. I just knew it. And we just connected kind of immediately, not even really talking about the show. We just were making each other laugh the moments we met each other. And it was just like, yeah, that 15 minutes. It makes sense why also I mean, we know because we knew from Issa how important L.A. was to her. But then this this bit of information, I mean, it was just an infusion from collective knowledge. Yeah. I mean, again, not to keep bringing up Spike Lee. I'm sure Spike Lee will hear this

and be like, man, this dude really has infatuated with me. Have you all met each other yet? No, I've never met Spike. But, you know, Easton and I always talked about in the show that, you know, obviously on HBO, there was a TV show called Entourage that talked about, obviously, the life of being, you know, a movie star and going around Beverly Hills and Malibu and Hollywood. But we felt like you never really see black, a different black LA. It's either going to be the hood or you see Santa Monica, the beaches. You never see kind of the beauty of the black LA that we grew up with. Right.

And so we were like we wanted to do that in the same way that we felt like Woody Allen and Spike Lee had done for New York and Scorsese. We were like, how do we do that for our LA, right? And so that was really, again, a love letter to LA too, to talk about that beauty of LA that isn't just always beaches and Hollywood Hills. I wanna play a clip from the first season of Insecure. And in it, Issa is doing one of her famous in the mirror raps to herself.

Let's listen. Do you want your man or not? Do you know your plans or not? You gonna go back home or not? You gonna claim your throne or not? Is you Khaleesi or that other s*** name I don't remember? That was Issa Rae in episode two

of season one of HBO's Insecure, which our guest today, Prentice Penny, was a showrunner for, and you would actually direct her through the mirror? Well, sometimes through the mirror, sometimes just outside of it, yeah. So we would be, there was always kind of like a two-way mirror, there was a hole in the wall, and that's where the mirror sometimes like just outside of it yeah so we would be there was always like

kind of like a two way mirror there was a hole in the wall and that's where the mirror was and sometimes so we could pull the mirror out or put the camera in so when she's looking right to camera

like it's like it's the mirror and so you would help her with her freestyle what kind of stuff would you like kind of push or pull

well I didn't help with the raps the raps were all her I let the raps be but all of the like improv comedy stuff of like when she's like talking to the mirror like in the pilot when she's doing like all the lipsticks uh like montage or even when she's like about to go home to Lawrence I think it's episode three and she's like she's having an argument with herself

kind of predicting what her man's gonna say like all of that stuff we would just be we have what was on the script and then I would just be throwing her stuff and she'd be throwing stuff too. But we would just, it was just fun because it was just like whatever we came up with in the moment. Okay. I want to play another clip from the last episode of season five of Insecure. And in this clip, Issa talks to Lawrence, her on again, off again boyfriend, and she's talking about what's been holding her back in life. Let's listen. I keep thinking about all it took to get here, you know, doubting myself, going back and forth about what I wanted, being scared to waste my time and look stupid in case none of it worked out. And then I realized

that it was all in my head. You know, no one was doubting me except for me and Kelly. And sometimes I'm all too. But I had to believe that it would work out for it to work. That was a clip from the last season of Insecure starring Issa Rae, where her character is talking with Lawrence about what's been holding her back in life as she moves to the next chapter in her life? That scene was interesting. Typically, Issa and I would meet before a season would start, and we'd talk about what is the theme of this season, right? We'd say, okay, well, we're building a house. This season has to build on the brick of the previous brick, right? And when we started season five, it was the first time Issa and I didn't necessarily agree on if she should be with Lawrence or not.

It was the first time that I saw Issa the person have to go on her own journey to finally end up with Issa the character. So we sat down and I was like, we were talking about should she end up with Lawrence? And we were kind of not sure. And I was like, I think she should. We, you know, it feels like that's who her soulmate is. And she's like, I just feel like Issa would be like a dumb chick staying with this guy. I just think it's dumb. And I was like, then I said, well, why is it dumb? And I think because our age difference, you know, I was like, well, you know, sometimes in life, the things you want don't come to you exactly how you want,

but if you want them overall, that supersedes the way it specifically has to look. And she was like, I just think it's stupid. There's all these guys out here in LA. Why does she have to be with him? And so then she was like, I don't think want her to be with him. And so throughout the season, though, as we kept writing the season and she would be in little scene moments with Jay and this.

And by the end, she got around to being like, yeah, life isn't always like that. It doesn't always match. It doesn't always look like the picture, but if you get what you want from it, is that okay? And that's kind of what she eventually got to. So it was the first time the character and that person went on the same, because usually Issa, the person as a writer is ahead of the

character. She's like, I'm not. Right. She's already forecasting. She knows. But this was the first time that the both of them went on the same journey. And I remember when she was like, yeah, I think they should be together. And I was like, wow, OK. And so then we just wrote to that. But yeah, it was so interesting hearing that scene. It's like we would, each of the person was saying similar things in this season just about her and the character. That is so interesting. Thank you for that backstory. And those who are super fans of Insecure are going to love hearing that little bit of detail because that whole speech for me, it really encapsulated the energy that is Issa Rae.

What she's saying there is her whole ethos. It's what she talks about throughout life and every interview. And I'm also wondering how much of it is you too. You all being so similar. I mean, having this sense of self and like I'm coming into who I am and like standing really strong in it. Yeah, I think I'm there. I mean, look, we all have our insecurities and that never leaves us. But the one thing we talked about in the show, and this is where I do feel like Issa and I are at as people, you know, she got there 10 years or so before me. But I think the character in the beginning of the show was always, like, wanting to get rid of her insecurities, right? I'm going to be – she'd always be trying to reinvent herself.

This season I'm new, this me. Which is kind of human. Which is so human, right? But what we said, the arc of the character has to learn to be, I'm never going to get rid of them. So I have to learn how to be secure in my insecurities. Now, that's a part of me. And it's a part of me that sometimes may rear its head more than others. But it's not anything I'm ever going to fully shake.

I'm just going to get better at actually dealing with the root of it. Let's take a short break. If you're just joining us, our guest today is Prentice Penny, director of the new Hulu documentary, Black Twitter, a people's history, which delves into the social justice movements, the voices, and the memes that established Black Twitter as an influential force in American politics and culture. We'll continue our conversation after a short break. This is Fresh Air. You grew up in Los Angeles. Yes.

You grew up, Hollywood was right there. What did Hollywood mean to you as a kid? Oh, it might as well, I might as well have grown up in Alaska to compare. I didn't know anybody in the business. I didn't know any, you know, this is, you've got to remember, this is, you know, pre-internet. You had to go to the, you had to go to the library to learn about stuff. When did you start to conceptualize this was who you might be, where you might fit in? I'll never forget. It was I was in high school.

It was it was I was 15 and I was telling people I want to make movies and stuff like that. And I'll never forget. God bless Stacey Piles from my high school. So there was, you know, when you go to like the counselor board, that's like outside the counselor's office, they got like a cork board or have like, pull this off. It's like a college thing. Oh yeah, it's like to go to something. Yeah, to go to stuff. And apparently my school had something where USC had a summer. University of Southern California. University of Southern California had a summer workshop for high school students that were interested in studying film.

And she took it off and I remember she came down the hallway and she was like, here, I saw this on the board and it was like somebody giving me, like, I don't know, the Ark of the Covenant. It was like, I was like, what is this? So I just begged my mom to please sign me up Covenant. It was like, oh. It was like, I was like, what is this? So I just like begged my mom to like, please sign me up for this. Please, please, please.

And I went to the summer workshop. It was 1990. And I stayed on campus for two weeks. And you're like learning how to write scripts. And you're like. Life changing. Yeah, it was. I left there being like, this is all I want to do for the rest of my life.

Your dad owned a furniture business. Yes. That was started by your grandfather. Yes. And your mother, Brenda Penny, is a superior court judge. Yes, she is. Those are some pretty hefty careers. Yes.

Did you ever consider following in either one of their footsteps? No, no. You know, it's interesting. My father's side is much more entrepreneurial. They're from Oklahoma. On my dad's side, his mother was one of 11. So one would come out here from Oklahoma, open up a tire shop. One would come out here, work for him, open up another tire shop. And that's just kind of how that family did it, right? My mom's side is from Chicago. They're much more formally educated, like secondary degrees.

But what I learned from both was that you got to know, you got to have the formal degrees. You got to be able to move in that space. But then you got to know how to hustle. You got to know how to make a dollar when you got to make a dollar, right? And being a salesman, I think, has really helped me because when I am pitching something or working on something, I've watched my father have to sell. And you get to see how somebody responds to somebody else's response. If you're just joining us, I'm speaking with Prentice Penny, the director of the Hulu docuseries Black Twitter, A People's History. All right, Prentice, so there has been an exodus of Twitter and people are going to other platforms.

What is lost if Black Twitter ceases to exist? And how do you envision it maybe even presenting itself elsewhere? Is it a moment in time that is gone forever? Or does it live on in another iteration, another space that we can't even think of yet? It's interesting. Like the numbers are down, but we're still on the platform in numbers. But I like to think of it as like, and we get to this point in the doc where it's like the power was never in the platform.

The power of all of this has always been us. The energy of Black Twitter to me is the most important thing, right? Which is the energy of holding things accountable, moving unapologetically. I think about like my kids specifically, like my kids are 16 and I have 14 year old twins and they've never been on Twitter or X. They're on other platforms and they don't see that as a voice or a place that they would even be on. It's evolved into other places. A hundred percent. But they're like, you know, they're TikTok kids, but they're growing up, I call them like the grandkids of Black Twitter because they're growing up where like Black Lives Matter isn't a weird thing. And they've just

always heard it. They've always heard Black Girl Magic. They've always seen protests mobilize on this thing. So they're never going to be on the Black Twitter that we grew up in, but they're the beneficiaries of the energy of Black Twitter, right? So I'm curious how my grandkids will move. They're never going to know it, but they're going to be thinking and moving the way Black Twitter thinks and moves. Black Twitter is like past a platform anymore. Elon can own the space. We run it. But our energy is like, it's almost unplugged now. It's like just in the universe. Yeah, it's in the ether. Prentice Penny, it has been such a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you so much.

Thank you for having me. Prentice Penny is the director of the new Hulu docuseries called Black Twitter, A People's History. This is Fresh Air. In the new mystery series show Shard Lake, a London barrister and King Henry VIII's England finds himself investigating a murder in a monastery that the Crown hopes to shut down. The four-part series, which streams on Hulu, is based on a 2003 novel by C.J. Sansom, who recently died. Our critic-at-large John Powers says that while the action takes place nearly 500 years ago, it feels strikingly contemporary.

We live in discordant times. This may be why the turbulent reign of King Henry VIII has enjoyed a revival over the last few years. We've had the gleefully trashy TV series The Tudors, the Tony-winning Broadway musical Six, and at the high end of achievement, Hilary Mantel's trilogy about Henry's right-hand man, Thomas Cromwell. Now comes the new Hulu mystery series Shardlake. It's based on C.J. Sansom's first novel in a series

about a crime-solving lawyer in 16th century England. Now, as a rule, I hate historical mysteries, and I feared that Shardlake would serve up the Tudor era's usual cavalcade of castles, codpieces, clopping horses, and quasi-Shakespearean lingo. Prithee, stop, sirrah! But to my surprise, this odd, beautifully acted show pulled me in. Arthur Hughes stars as Matthew Shardlake, a bitingly intense London barrister known for his brains

and for the badly curved spine that leads the world to undervalue him. One who sees his value is the king's minister, Thomas Cromwell, played by a domineering Sean Bean, a dangerous man who's busy stripping the assets of the Catholic Church and claiming them for the crown. As the action begins, Cromwell has just had his envoy murdered in a coastal monastery. He sends Shardlake to find the killer, and in the process, to find evidence of monkish malfeasance that will justify seizing the monastery's holdings.

To keep Shardlake on his toes, he sends along one of his henchmen, brash, impulsive Jack Barak. That's Anthony Boyle, who plays John Wilkes Booth in the current series Manhunt. Because the monastery is filled with Catholic monks who hate the Protestant king, things are tricky there from the get-go. Not only do Shardlake and Jack keep being lied to, but the murders are just beginning. As they investigate, both grow smitten with a servant, played by Ruby Ashburn's circus, and they start to develop one of those classic detective story partnerships

between a brilliant misfit and an earthier ordinary guy. Naturally, they'd started out as loggerheads. Here, early on, the two are talking over lunch when Shardlake's housekeeper comes in, and Jack eyes her up. Why exactly are you here, Master Barrett? Why exactly do I need you? Well, I assume Lord Cromwell does not wish to lose another lawyer. Ah, you are to protect me. I am capable of protecting myself. You are? Hurrah! Milady, I did not catch your name.

It is Joan. Joan. Thank you. She's married. I'm not surprised. She's married. I am not surprised. She's a very well-built woman. I do not like you. Admittedly, I do not know you, but my first impressions are rarely incorrect.

Is it me or my attire you do not like? If you are here to spy, then say it. Now, I don't want to oversell Shardlake. As a historical show, it lacks the sweeping grandeur of Shogun, another period drama that reminds us that Protestants and Catholics were once at each other's throats. Nor does it approach Mantle's richly vibrant vision of Henry VIII's England, with its divisions and hatreds and social climbing. Yet it has a strong historical atmosphere, especially in showing how Shardlake and Jack find themselves squeezed

by powerful forces around them. Both believe they're doing the right thing in helping Cromwell seize Catholic wealth, thinking it should go to England's countless poor people. At the same time, they come to realize that in Cromwell, they're working for an utterly ruthless politician, one who may have played a key role in setting up Anne Boleyn, whose beheading figures into the plot here. The show's finest moments lie in the bi-play between its lead actors,

played by two of Britain's rising stars. As the cocky Jack, a lad risen from the streets and terrified of sinking back, Boyle deftly straddles the line between likable and not. You see why he's been cast to star as a charismatic IRA leader in the upcoming TV adaptation of Patrick Radden Keefe's book, Say Nothing. Jack's extroversion pairs nicely with the tightly wound Shardlake, whose smile is almost a wince. Hughes was the first actor with a disability

to ever play Richard III for the Royal Shakespeare Company. He was born with a disfigured right arm, and he doubtless understands Shardlake's pride in the face of what some consider his physical imperfection. I'm known for my gait, Shardlake says. It is I, and I embrace it. Such self-assertion is profoundly modern, and for all its Tudor trappings, Shardlake says. It is I, and I embrace it. Such self-assertion is profoundly modern, and for all its Tudor trappings, Shardlake is filled with present-day resonances, not least in its portrait of Cromwell, who claims to speak for the people, but actually works on behalf of the elite. The truth must be what we want it to be, Cromwell declares. And though Shardlake knows this is untrue,

he also knows that saying so can get a man killed. John Powers reviewed the new series Shardlake. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, we remember artist Frank Stella, who first gained recognition for his black paintings in the 1950s and was considered one of the fathers of the minimalist art movement of the 1960s. He died Saturday at the age of 87. I hope you can join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Amy Salad, Phyllis Myers, Sam Brigger, Lauren Krenzel, Anne-Marie Baldonado, Teresa Madden, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, and Joel Wolfram.

Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper, and Roberta Shorrock directs the show. With Terry Gross, I'm Tanya Moosley.