This post contains spoilers for Dear White People Season 2.[hhmc]
Justin Simien would like to clarify something about Dear White People Season 1—a joke in which Joelle tells her lighter skinned friend, Sam, that shes not “Rashida Jones biracial,” but “Tracee Ellis Ross biracial.” “People think of you as black,” Joelle explained. The show, and Simien, got some criticism from viewers who took the line as a statement that one of these women is “blacker” than the other.
“But what Im commenting on is the fact that society has deemed that one of these people is blacker than the other,” Simien said during a recent interview. “In my opinion, Joelle is kind of in the wrong for saying that—but the reason shes saying that is because she is being affected by colorism,” or a prejudice against people of the same race based solely on skin color, “in a way that is oblivious to Sam.” Season 2 explores the topic in more depth, providing even more context for how colorism has defined Sam and Joelles relationship—as well as others—from the beginning.
Just as the first season of Dear White People enriched the world first introduced in Simiens eponymous 2014 film, in its second season, Dear White People has further found its groove—filling in the gaps and deepening the shallower aspects of its already notable first season. Its as emotionally resonant as it is funny, and as sharp as it is stylish. Its as adept at absorbing and quietly reflecting our media landscape and habits as it is at lampooning them. Thanks to its increased attention to its characters inner lives, Dear White People Season 2 delivers simultaneous meditation and catharsis, at a time when both are direly needed. It also delivers a series of truly unexpected plot twists that not only surprise, but also complicate the narrative.
Perhaps best of all, Season 2 shades in some of Season 1s more two-dimensional characters and adds more nuance even to well-established characters like Sam. That extra attention is especially welcome when it comes to Joelle, played by Ashley Blaine Featherson. By dialing up Joelles presence throughout the season, Dear White People can explore Sams blind spots: “It was always my goal to give her her own episode and explore her experience as a dark-skinned version, frankly, of Sam,” Simien said. “Theyre best friends, but theyre having different black experiences. And also, I just think Ashley is so frickin talented; shes so easy to write for.”
Telling that story, however, required careful consideration. As Simien notes, the shows conversation about colorism and how it affects peoples self-perception is indirect rather than overt, which was intentional. By letting it unspool in the background of larger stories—a quiet but recognizable hum that alters several characters interactions—Simien could keep the topic present without it becoming overwhelming. “Were set up in this system to talk about race in very black and white binary terms, but it's actually a lot more complicated than that,” he said. “I wanted to get into the complexity of Joelle being Sams friend, and also being a darker-skinned girl, without it being preachy or dogmatic. . . Theres a tension there thats kind of imposed upon them, that I just wanted to just show.”
The tension between self perception, societal expectations, and personal relationships manifests, in some form, as part of just about every story this season. Even the plot twists ask viewers to question conventional wisdom, adding layers of meaning to an already nuanced story. Take, for instance, one of the biggest shocks of the season: the revelation that @AltIvyW, a vitriolic and racist Twitter troll who pulls Sam into a seemingly endless online feud, is actually Silvio—the independent student paper editor who kissed Lionel at the end of Season 1.
For a while this season, Lionel tries to date Silvio before realizing it wont work out—but it isnt until much later that he learns about his former editors online alter-ego. Silvio, who once described himself as “a Mexican-Italian gay verse-top otter pup,” is the last person viewers may have expected to be a regressive troll—which was Simiens point.
“I thought that was a more interesting story than putting a white person at the center,” Simien explained. Silvio turned out to be a perfect fit for the role—even as the writers went back and considered all that viewers would have learned about him in Season 1. “I knew that from the beginning that @AltIvy was somebody that weve met,” Simien said. “When we said it, it just made sense. And we went back and we watched the first season and it was like, Oh my God, it still makes sense. . . . I wanted you to ponder, what does it mean when its not so easy to pinpoint who the villain is, and theres lots of straw men in between you and who actually started this whole problem?”
Even more impressive than the Silvio reveal is another that comes later—when Sam faces off against Ricki Carter, a shrewdly self-aware conservative pundit played by, drumroll, Tessa Thompson, who played the original Sam White in Simiens Dear White People film. In a chilling moment, Ricki—while revealing that she knows shes playing a right-wing caricature, purely to advance her own career—looks Sam in the eye, telling her, “The only difference between you and me is time”—both an ominous thought for Sam and a brilliant meta joke. As surprising as it was to find out Silvios true nature, this face-off brings with it an even more harrowing implication: even Sam, whom viewers likely think they knew better than anyone, has the potential to become someone unrecognizable, unknowable.
In many ways, the story behind Ricki and Sams face-off—and the worrisome hint that theyre not as different as Sam would probably like them to be—comes from the same inspiration that led Simien to choose Silvio as @AltIvyW: “I wanted to get into twisting the screw and complicating it,” Simien said. He was fascinated by how economically struggling people get swept up by racist messaging that really only helps the rich—and even more fascinated by how people of color and other marginalized groups can get ensnared by that same movement. “I wanted to have an alt right character, and I thought, Wouldnt it be interesting if that character was a person of color?” Simien said. “Not like a blowhard that was easily dismantled, but somebody who actually kind of made some sense, and made you wonder, How did they get there?” Enter Thompson.
Ricki Carter, Simien said, embodies the question thats quietly been built into the series all along. Shes what Sam could become if she gets lost in her own rhetoric—a person who, though ideologically opposed to Sam, has completely lost sight of where her persona ends and she, as a real person, begins.
“We've always thought of Sam as teetering on the edge between being completely lost in her persona and finding a balance; thats kind of her struggle throughout the movie and the series,” Simien said. The question for Sam, now and in the future, continues to be the same: “How do you both fight against oppression but not get so sucked into that fight that all you are is the fight?” Its a question that will likely take her years to answer, if she ever finds one at all—but if Dear White People can keep up this streak, her journey will be beautifully rendered along the way.
Get Vanity Fairs HWD NewsletterSign up for essential industry and award news from Hollywood.Laura BradleyLaura Bradley is a Hollywood writer for VanityFair.com.
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