Justin Simien

Host David Kittredge welcomes award-winning writer-director Justin Simien (Dear White People, Bad Hair) to discuss his career as a trailblazing Black creative in Hollywood, balancing satire with heart, and how tackling racism across his film and television work has been "not so much prescient as it was a part of the present." Simien shares insight into how he has made space for himself as a Black gay man in the culture at-large, filming the first season of Dear White People against the shadow of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and how Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon helped to shape his sense of storytelling and aesthetics.