If there’s one person who truly understand the current TV landscape, it could be Lena Waithe. The multi-hyphenate writer, producer, and performer is juggling multiple projects, including Showtime’s The Chi, Amazon’s Them, and Netflix’s Master of None. But when co-creator Aziz Ansari approached Waithe about breaking the latter show’s four-year hiatus for a season focused on her character Denise, it placed the star in firmly new territory.
“This season of Master of None was exciting and interesting because I’d never done that before,” Waithe explained to Katey Rich during this week’s Little Gold Men podcast. “I’ve never been number one on the call sheet. I’ve never been that vulnerable on screen. And also I’ve never written anything that vulnerable or that emotional before and doing it with Aziz where I felt very comfortable.” Subtitled Moments in Love, the third season co-stars Naomi Ackie as Alicia, an interior designer who is married to Denise and eager to have a baby. Waithe also spoke about why it was important for the pair to depict an imperfect love story between two Black women, holed up in a picturesque country home.
Elsewhere on this week’s LGM, Rich, Joanna Robinson, Richard Lawson, and guest Hillary Busis reflect on the fumbled Oscar legacy of 1994’s Quiz. They also analyze the circumstances surrounding another Oscar date change and what to expect from the summer box office ahead. Plus, Zosia Mamet stops by to talk about her scene-stealing turn in The Flight Attendant.
Listen to the episode above, and find Little Gold Men on Apple Podcasts or anywhere else you get your podcasts. We’d also love to hear from you via text, which you can sign up for here.
Read a partial transcript of the Lena Waithe interview below.
So can you just tell me, at what point you guys sat down and said this season was going to exist and what the spark was to make it look like what it does?
It’s interesting because we never really sat down and had that conversation. I don’t think that’s ever how it works with our show. I think we talk, we have conversations, Aziz watches things. He’ll watch a French movie about a love story that will inspire him and he’ll say, “Huh, what if we do that with Denise?” And then he’ll send me the movie, which he did and—
What was the movie?
He sent me a couple of different movies—movies that I think very few people have heard of, or I can’t even remember the titles. It was just something about the way he was looking at…he was living in London and watching an old movie…he rarely watches current movies or English-speaking movies. So he’ll talk to me about things that I’m not super familiar with and he’ll just send me DVDs and I would pop them in and look at them.
And I think the thing that we noticed was that American love stories tend to be very straight forward oftentimes. It tends to wrap up with a nice bow and everybody lives happily ever after. And what we were discovering was that oftentimes, love stories can be messy and can have a lot of highs and lows and it can be a little dark with little moments of humor. I think that really spoke to him and it spoke to me. And this is about a couple of years ago that we started to send drafts back and forth. Then he started doing some research about infertility, IVF and queer couples. We both got educations about that because I haven’t gone through that personally, nor has he. But we started talking to doctors and women who have gone through that, who are a part of queer relationships and the lack of inclusivity, the language that needs to be updated. That was very fascinating to us as well.
So we just continued to have conversations and pretty soon we had a few scripts that we thought were really interesting and then COVID happened. But the way we had written it was that it was always just two people in the house and talking. So, after the dust settled and we were able to go film in London, we realized that this was a very COVID friendly set of scripts. It made us even more intimate and being in this bubble and it made it for a really…it was not easy filming during COVID and it’s been very difficult to navigate, but for the most part, it forced us to really lean into each other and to be honest, and to be vulnerable in a way that I’ve never really been on screen before. So I think ultimately, we got something really beautiful out of it.
Was there any hesitation to you either in returning to acting to this degree or returning to Denise? Because your life has changed, you’ve grown up, everyone has since the last time you played Denise. What did that feel like to go back?
It felt like going back to a high school reunion, and that I’m excited, but also I’m a different person and everything seems different now. But I think what for Aziz and myself, we don’t like repeating ourselves. We don’t. But Aziz and [co-creator] Alan [Yang] had always dreamed of Master of None to be this thing that evolves over time. So, season one is very different from season two and now season three is very different from those previous seasons. We wouldn’t have it any other way. We want people to always be guessing and we want to continue to stretch and grow as artists and I absolutely did this season. But also I had grown up, I’m not the same. I really felt like a kid when I was on season one. I think Aziz feels the same way. We were new and young and still trying to figure it out.
I feel like now, still young, but a little bit older, a little bit wiser, a little bit more mature as human beings, but also as artists. So I think that’s why it was also very exciting and thrilling for us to come back together and work together. But also too, you know me and Aziz are like siblings, so we’re both alphas, we both have our way of doing things. So I’m not his little sister anymore coming back. Coming back, I think, now I’m sort of his equal and we’re going to bicker about the creative choices. But there’s a level of trust that has to be there as well—he’s directing all of this. Even though I co-wrote everything, I have to really trust that he’s going to take it where it needs to go. And also, I have to trust him as a director because I am so literally and figuratively sometimes naked on screen. Whether I’m in a tub or I’m changing, I have to really trust him to handle this story with care and to handle my vulnerability with care as well. And I believe he did that with myself and Naomi.
Did it feel like a really different kind of acting than you had done on the show before? You had intimate and vulnerable scenes in previous seasons, but you have a 10-minute-long take of a conversation in bed. That is a really whole new level of acting that you’d have to do here.
Absolutely. No, it definitely forced me to grow a lot. And also, I’m very method because I’m not trained. So a lot of what you’re seeing are just real emotions coming up and me really reacting. Even though, yes, it’s written and I know what’s coming, I’m playing by ear as Aziz says. Because I also did ask Aziz, I was like, “I kind of wanted to work with a coach before this because there are some very dramatic scenes that I had to embark upon.” And Aziz said, “Look, there are two different kinds of positions. There are people that are classically-trained and those that learn how to play by ear.” And he said, “You play by ear and I want you to continue to do that in this season.” So what you’re seeing is just me being as honest and as vulnerable as I can possibly be on screen.
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