Terence Nance talks HBO’s “Random Acts of Flyness” being unapologetically black (WATCH)

Oct 15, 2018

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If you aren’t familiar with Terence Nance, he is a triple threat! Nance is the writer, director, executive producer (and star!) of HBO’s latest genre-bending series for the culture, ‘Random Acts of Flyness.’

During CultureCon in NYC, theGrio’s Natasha S. Alford chatted with him about his HBO “Random Acts” and his creative process. The series is nothing like we’ve seen before and can’t be boxed in. This is what Nance had to say about the show gaining a spot on HBO:

“I think HBO is definitely looking for work that pushes past what they’ve done before,” he says. “I think their brand is kind of always up the ante creatively… So I think that we have that in our favor going in because from our perspective, the show is not that crazy politically or anything.”

“It doesn’t embody anything that would be shocking to you or I,” he continues. “It sort of like feels shocking based on what we expect kind of like middle America to be responding to or not but at the end of the day, they may or may not watch it.”

“It’s sort of a conversation between you and I essentially. I think the truth of that conversation is evident in the show and somebody like HBO, they can read the truth is there and they want to put it on tv.”

The series touches on many themes from white supremacy to black culture and even including representation of Afro-Latinx characters– which Nance says he intentionally wanted to represent and show as a part of the black culture conversation.

“It goes back to authorship, we have [Afro-latinx] writers and directors on the show, he says in regards to the “Nuncaland” segment. Naima Ramos-Chapman is from Flatbush. It’s a representation of her world and then at the end of the day, there is more of them than us. There are more African descendant people who speak Spanish than there are African descendants who speak English. And if you include Portuguese in that then there is no competition…”

Nance adds, “I think that reality is something a lot of people aren’t aware of because as a people we don’t get to engage with media that espouses the African-ness.”

The series isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. “Random Acts of Flyness” received an early renewal for season two!

Check out the full interview for more and visit our YouTube channel for more exclusive coverage of CultureCon 2018, the go-to gathering of black creatives.