A People's History Of Black Twitter

NPR Sponsor

This message comes from NPR's sponsor. Be my guest with Ina Garden, a podcast from Food Network. Intimate and captivating conversations with new and old friends, Jennifer Garner, Frank Bruni, Emily Mortimer, and more. Listen to be my guest wherever you get your podcasts. This is FRESH AIR.

Tanya Mosley

I'm Tanya Mosley. No doubt at least one of 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 dot 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.

Tanya Mosley

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 in 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.

Tanya Mosley

That the teacher's not hearing. Cause 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 the office, obviously, codes which had to put the subtext in the text, even in terms of the way slaves had to communicate.

We had to say things and put things in songs that we didn't want the sort of the other powers that be to understand what we were talking about. 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, 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 it, 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. It's also. Yeah, we had no idea what it was to go back to that time period. But also Twitter as a platform, all the people who created it didn't really know what it should be.

Very different than Facebook. Right. Facebook was very clear of what it was trying to be. And I think 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, wrapping over the, like, 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, you're aunt, your friend from high school you hadn't seen in a long time, your cousin, all that type of stuff, whereas where, you know, Twitter was like, come meet strangers. Yeah.

So that allows you to intermix with people you didn't necessarily know and grow a group and find a community left and 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 connected with your family. With your family. Yeah.

Tanya Mosley

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. 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, you know, 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, there's a way on the platform to sort of find things quickly. If you put this on there, you can find these quickly. Right. And we used 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, 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 gotta know the secret word for the night to get in. And that one of the phrases that started it off, that kicked it off was, you know, you're black when. Yeah. So that.

Tanya Mosley

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 when I saw that? Because what it did, though, was open it up.

That you saw these little minute minutia things that are in your day to day life. Other black people are also experiencing, too, that 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 best one to me is like, there's the ones that are like, of course, like, the plastic on the couch or don't go into, like, the nice living room and stuff like that. But, you know, then there's, like, stuff that's even more specific, which is like the cookie tin, that danish cookie tin where all the sewing stuff is, silverware.

That your grandma used to, the silverware. Like the kids, a packet drawer, that sort of, like, you know, the condominium drawer, the condominium package. So there are all these sort of things that, again, we. And I think it'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, stayed 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.

Tanya Mosley

So you all. 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. Cause I remember every black person at the time used to mess with Paula Deen.

Cause it was like she cooked with a bunch of butter. Messed with. Meaning we liked her. Yeah, we liked her. Yeah, we liked.

She cooked food different than sort of like a lot of the white women chefs on tv. Right. She was like a thicker white woman. She embraced butterfly like, felt like she ate food. Food, right.

Not sort of like it was southern. 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, you know, culturally.

And that moment, I think, is so interesting because, you know, 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. Yes. 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 the article also might just be in 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 guard rails to prevent folks from seeing that bigger picture. But at the time when Twitter was really burgeoning, yeah, 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.

Tanya Mosley

Do you remember when you first interacted. With it, you know, around Trayvon Ferguson time, 2012, 2013? So that was. Yeah, so that was then. So, you know, it's tough when you're.

Especially when you're. I have kids, and I had kids then I have two boys. So obviously, Trayvon hit in a totally different way. But I just remember seeing it 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 kind 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 gonna be, right? It becomes like, okay, well, the second you put black in something, is it turning off people? Because they're gonna, like, hear it away, see it away? And obviously, Black lives Matter as a hashtag make people feel away. Thinking back to that moment when Black lives Matter is a hashtag, took hold on Twitter.

Tanya Mosley

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, Jennetta Elzey, who was the first person to, you know, kind of be posting about it. About Ferguson.

About Ferguson. That 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 in a tv studio, on your phone, you know, so much of.

Even when I started film school, right, like, in the nineties, 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, a lot of 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 Jennetta Elzey 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.

And if CNN or Fox or whatever is showing us, you know, overturning a car or doing this, we're also gonna show, hey, we were cleaning up the next day, but they're not gonna show that because that doesn't tell the story they're excited about because, you know, we can get into all the, all the minutiae that they sell ads and that 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 gotta do whatever you gotta 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 human interest pieces or tell a different narrative.

Right. And those narratives. Right. You were able to see on Twitter. Exactly.

Tanya Mosley

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 Jamel 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 CB's 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.

Tanya Mosley

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. Yeah. 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've 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, like, 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.

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 could be petty and. 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. The entire brand is on the line, of course. And it's also, like, not full 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 liked that. Cause I was like, I like that 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 before. Like, this is, like, real in, 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.

Tanya Mosley

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 Moseley, and this is fresh air. The following message comes from NPR sponsor Saatva. Founder and CEO Ron Rudson is on a mission to bring quality sleep to more people.

Health and wellness are so tied to quality sleep, and I'm trying to tell everyone, look, you have to treat sleep like an activity because I believe sleep is the most important thing in your life. To learn more, go to s aatva.com. NPR support for NPR and the following message come from Carvana on a mission to make car buying more convenient and affordable than ever before. In minutes, you can browse thousands of options under $20,000. Visit carvana.com dot or download the app today to get started.

NPR Sponsor

This message comes from NPR sponsor proven winners color choice shrubs, which believes plants and gardening are for everyone. With over 25 years of developing, trialing and testing some of the most recognized flowering shrubs and evergreens on the market, proven winners color choice makes it easy to transform dull landscapes into colorful, vital spaces for work and play, available in the distinctive white containers at garden centers nationwide. Or learn more@provenwinnerscolorchoice.com NPR the day's top. Headlines local stories from your community, your next podcast, binge. Listen.

You can have it all in one place, your pocket. Download the NPR app today.

This is Annemarie 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 dot, npr.org dot. 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 and Lena Waithe. Who is another creator. Yep. Who created the shy 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 book coming out, and she was at so Juan books, which is a bookstore that's no longer in Leimert park, sadly, in California, Los Angeles.

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. You didn't know each other, but we. Didn'T know each other. Cause, like, we're ten years apart age wise, so.

But I knew her brother, and we just knew all the same things in the same neighborhood. And then I knew what it was like to feel obviously, super awkward and obviously knowing what it was like to be insecure. I'm currently married and married to an Aka, like, the character Molly is sorority that Molly is. So I was kind of married to a Molly, and I worked at a nonprofit before I was a writer. So there were just lots of things I connected with, and I just.

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? Someone had asked, 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 this show. We just were making each other laugh, the moments we met each other, and it was just like. Yeah, that 15 minutes changed our life. Why? Also, I mean, we know because we knew from Issa how important LA was to her.

Tanya Mosley

But then 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, east 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 gonna 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 L. A, too, to talk about that beauty of L. A. That isn't just always, you know, beaches and the Hollywood Hills. I want to 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.

Tanya Mosley

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 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 with the mirror, sometimes, like, just outside of it.

Yeah. So we would be. There was always, like, a 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.

Tanya Mosley

Would you, like, kind of push or pull or. 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 all the lipsticks, like, montage, or even when she's 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 had 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. Cause it was just like, whatever we came up with in the moment. Okay, I wanna 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.

Tanya Mosley

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 them all, too.

I had to believe that it would work out for it to work.

Tanya Mosley

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 talk about, like, 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. It feels like that's who her soulmate is. And she's like, I just 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. Cause usually Issa, the person, as a writer, is ahead of the character. She's like, I'm not right. She's already forecasting.

Tanya Mosley

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, okay. And so then we just wrote to that.

But, yeah, it was so interesting hearing that scene. It's like we would. The east 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.

Tanya Mosley

And those who are super fans of insecure are gonna 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 in 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.

She got there ten years or so before me, but I think the character in the beginning of the show was always wanting to get rid of her insecurities. Right. I'm gonna 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 gonna get rid of them, so I have to learn how to be secure in my insecurities.

No, 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 gonna fully shake. I'm just gonna 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 establish black Twitter as an influential force in american politics and culture.

Tanya Mosley

Well continue our conversation after a short break. This is FRESH AIR. This message comes from NPR sponsor Intuit. Quickbooks small business masterminds have one thing in making their money work harder with a business bank account from QuickBooks, money that now earns 5% annual percentage yield. Making your money work as hard as you do, that's how you business differently.

Learn more@Quickbooks.com five APY banking services provided by green bank member FDIC only funds and envelopes earn APY. APY can change at any time. On Wildcard, the new podcast from NPR. You'Ll hear people like comedian Jenny Slate. Reflect on their lives.

Tanya Mosley

What is something you think about very differently today than you did ten years ago? Dressing like, not salad dressing. I've always loved it, and I'll never stop dressing my body. That's all part of the new game show wild card only from NPR. Listen, wherever you get your podcasts.

NPR Sponsor

What's happening on NPR podcasts, more neighborhoods and more perspectives. The more of the world that you hear, the more you hear the world as it really is. NPR podcasts, more voices, all ears. Find NPR wherever you get your podcasts. 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 grown up in Alaska to compare. I didn't know anybody in the business. I didn't know any, you know, this is, you gotta 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?

Tanya Mosley

Where you might fit in. I'll never forget. It was, I was in high school. 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, Stacy 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 stuff.

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 arc of the covenant. It was like, oh. It was like, I was like, what is this? So I just like, begged my mom, 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.

Tanya Mosley

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 eleven.

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 gotta know, you gotta have the formal degrees, you gotta be able to move in that space, but then you gotta know how to hustle. You gotta know how to make a dollar when you gotta make a dollar, right?

You gotta know. 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's response 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.

Tanya Mosley

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, in 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 unapologetic. I think about my kids specifically.

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, 100%. But they're like, they're TikTok kids, but they're growing up. I call them the grandkids of black Twitter because they're growing up where 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. It's in the ether. 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. Pro palestinian protests have popped up on college campuses across the country. But from the eyes of students, what are we missing?

From the outset, these protests are painted as really violent when that couldn't be further from the truth. I'm Brittany Luce, host of NPR's it's been a minute, and I'm inviting you to hear from student journalists who see what the rest of us cannot on it's been a minute from NPR. There are a lot of issues on. Voters minds right now. Six big ones could help decide the guns, reproductive rights, immigration, the economy, healthcare and the wars overseas.

Tanya Mosley

On the consider this podcast from NPR. We will unpack the debates on these. Issues and what's at stake. You can listen to NPR's consider this wherever you get your podcasts, Summer is. For going to the movie theater because it's too hot to stay home.

It's for driving with the windows down, listening to your favorite music. It's for stretching out while you're on vacation to gobble up a tv show. For a guide to some of the tv, movies and music we are most excited about this summer, listen to the pop culture Happy hour podcast from NPR. 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 CJ Sansom, who recently died.

Tanya Mosley

Our critic at large, John Power 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 Mantell's trilogy about Henry's right hand man, Thomas Cromwell. Now comes the new Hulu mystery series Shardlake.

It's based on CJ Sansoms 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 Burak. 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 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 Barak? 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, um. I did not catch your name. It is Joan. Joan.

Thank you.

She is 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 byplay 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 Raden.

Keefe's book say nothing. Jack's extraversion pairs nicely with the tightly wound Shardleg, 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 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.

Tanya Mosley

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. 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, Ann Marie Baldonado, Theresa Madden, Thea Challoner, Susan Yakundi and Joel Wolfram. Our digital media producer is Molly CV Nesper and Roberta schorach directs the show with Terry Gross. I'm Tanya Moseley.

This message comes from NPR sponsor Progressive Insurance, where drivers who save by switching save nearly $750 on average. Get your quote@progressive.com and see if you could save progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates. National average twelve month savings of dollar 744 by new customers surveyed who saved with progressive between June 2022 and May 2023. Potential savings will vary. This message comes from NPR sponsor betterment, the emotional build of a will they won't they love story is never chill, but your investing portfolio should be.

NPR Sponsor

Betterment is the investing app that lets you be totally chill about your finances, their automated technology and tax smart tools. Are easy to set up, so you. Can focus on navigating any will. They won't. They love stories that come your way.

Betterment be invested and totally chill. Learn more@betterment.com. Investing involves risk. Performance is not guaranteed. Why is everyone so obsessed with traditional wives or trad wives?

On social media this week we're talking about the viral videos of women making marshmallows and mozzarella from scratch, and how behind the sheen of calm kitchens and cute fits, there's some interesting pessimism about our modern world. And that's worth digging into. Next time on it's been a minute from NPR.

A People's History Of Black Twitter

Primary Topic

Episode Summary

Main Takeaways

Episode Chapters

1. Introduction

2. Defining Black Twitter

3. Cultural Impact

4. Social Justice Movements

5. Influence on Media

Actionable Advice

About This Episode

People

Companies

Books

Guest Name(s):

Content Warnings:

Transcript