Prentice Penny is not any outsider to Black Twitter. Ever since the 2016 launch of Issa Rae’s star-turning HBO collection “Insecure,” for which he was the showrunner, Penny has been an energetic participant on the platform now generally known as X.
In that regard, he’s personally invested in documenting the social media phenomenon in the three-part Hulu docuseries “Black Twitter: A People’s History,” as director and producer.
This documentary, he mentioned, feels vital.
“I think we need this now more than ever when I see our history being changed, our books being banned,” he informed NBC News throughout a promotional occasion in Atlanta. “I think sometimes we think about it just for today, but that’s not where time is going to end, right? What is the story of Black Twitter going to be in 50 years or 100 years, right? Will the platform even be here?”
“The idea that Black Twitter can totally be erased, and become another oral tradition of ours, to me, is sad,” he mentioned, persevering with. “So to be able to tell our story while it’s happening is just important.”
Modeled after Wired staffer Jason Parham’s 2021 three-part series “A People’s History of Black Twitter,” which begins in 2008, the docuseries additionally takes an oral historical past strategy, even that includes many of the people included in the written collection. Several distinguished figures from the platform additionally examine in throughout the doc by Disney’s Onyx Collective.
They embody Luvvie Ajayi, Jemele Hill, Van Lathan, Amanda Seales, April Reign of #OscarsSoWhite, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Wesley Lowery, Emmy-winning producer, host and comic W. Kamau Bell, bestselling writer Roxane Gay, trans activist Raquel Willis and a quantity of former Black staffers for the platform together with God-is Rivera, who as soon as served as international director of tradition and neighborhood there, amongst many others.
Mirroring the spirit of Black Twitter, the docuseries, which Penny characterizes as “a love letter,” takes a seemingly lighthearted strategy that, like Black Twitter itself, digs and hits a lot deeper. Memes, gifs, simulations of tweeting, and different intelligent instruments of engagement are utilized as the docuseries sweeps by large subjects starting from Black identification, misogynoir, President Barack Obama’s 2008 election, the aftermath of Michael Brown’s taking pictures in Ferguson, Missouri, LGBTQIA points, the rise of Donald Trump, George Floyd’s homicide, Covid and the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Groups of people are additionally corralled collectively on-screen to evoke Black Twitter’s kickback or neighborhood vibe.
“Once we figured out it was a coming-of-age story, then it was like, OK, what do we have that’s telling that thread? So sometimes it would be a tweet, sometimes it would be OK, is it better to hear this from an interview subject, or is it better to hear it in a group setting, or is it better to hear from a news piece?” Penny mentioned.
Filming, nevertheless, did change as soon as billionaire Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022 and later modified the title to X. It was a plot twist, Penny admitted, they didn’t see coming. “Elon coming in, I would say, is horrible for the platform,” Penny mentioned. But the sale and Twitter’s/X’s total tonal shift crystallized why this docuseries was vital.
“It was like, ‘Well, this is why, because these things could be here today and gone tomorrow.’”
There was early criticism of the doc following the its SXSW Festival premiere in March, together with questions on who this collection was being produced for, and the concern that superstar voices can be prioritized over on a regular basis customers. But it didn’t trouble Penny.
“Black people, we got lots of opinions about this, so a lot of it has been super supportive and a lot of it’s been skeptical,” he mentioned. “I understand why people are skeptical about anything about our culture, because so much of our culture typically in the past has been taken from us and we don’t get to tell those stories.”
That may be why this second, he mentioned, is one of the finest ever for Black creatives on this enterprise. “Right now is such a beautiful time in Black entertainment, because when I was coming up, all you could point to was Spike Lee,” he mentioned. “But now you can point to Issa Rae or Lena Waithe or a myriad of other folks like Shonda Rhimes who people know, and we’re able to tell and dictate our stories.”
Whether he’ll proceed this story on Black Twitter is as much as Black Twitter. “I want to see how this hits and we’ll go from there,” he mentioned.
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