TMC
11-07-2023, 08:41 PM
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Screenwriter and producer Mara Brock Akil knew what was like to feel invisible. In 1999, she looked around Hollywood and saw an extinction underway: Black women, and their stories, being written out of primetime TV. At the time, the then 30-year-old was putting the finishing touches on her first network show, a sitcom for UPN called Girlfriends. A new millennium was on the horizon, and she wasn’t going to let the future begin without Black women front and center.
Screenwriter and producer Mara Brock Akil knew what was like to feel invisible. In 1999, she looked around Hollywood and saw an extinction underway: Black women, and their stories, being written out of primetime TV. At the time, the then 30-year-old was putting the finishing touches on her first network show, a sitcom for UPN called Girlfriends. A new millennium was on the horizon, and she wasn’t going to let the future begin without Black women front and center.