Vanity Fair|April 2018

With a breakout TV series, a historic Emmy, and a propulsive role in Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One, screenwriter-producer-actress Lena Waithe is re-writing the rules for the next generation

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In your life, if you’re lucky enough, you are born during a moment in time when the world is ready for the change you’re bringing. So all that’s left for you to do is your work. If you are a child named Lena Wait he, you find your passion on the television screen, or, as you call it, your Third Parent. Your mother, knowing that in front of the screen you’re safe from the streets of Chicago, allows you unlimited watching. The Cosby Show and A Different World bring you beautiful people, families you understand, and lots of laughter. And because when your grandmother watches with you she controls the remote, Iyou watch old reruns of The Jeffersons, Good Times, All in the Family, and realize as you watch these people that this is what you have—words and characters and story. These are the tools these shows are giving you. So you lean into the screen. Already you know there isn’t a mirror the television is holding up to you; there isn’t a child like you on the screen. Not in the 1990s. Not yet. So you find your strength and a deep belief in yourself in the streets and family dinners of Chicago—a place you call home, a long way from your grandmother’s own Arkansas. You’re clear-eyed and queer from the womb, born as part of a larger narrative—that of the Great Migration. Already, there is resistance running through your veins. Already, at seven, you know your own dream. So you gather a posse around you. And in your 20s, you move to California, thirsty, eager, ready. Slowly, the bigger world begins to see you.

We see you, Lena Waithe. We see you.

This story is from the April 2018 edition of Vanity Fair.

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This story is from the April 2018 edition of Vanity Fair.

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