Sean Collins-Smith

Here, the sun never shone. It was blotted out by an eternal fog, a white-grey sheet pulled over a town which had long ago flatlined, but whose body remained here, somehow forgotten and forever awaiting an autopsy.

"We always tell people to be authentic. That’s one of the biggest things that helped us connect with people ..."

The “in-between” can be a lonely place—growing up Black in the capital of the Confederacy can make it even lonelier.

Yet here she was, about to make the biggest pitch of her life: requesting a promotion to staff writer on the sixth and final season of a show some call the best on television.

“There’s a specific flavor of darkness that only comes from an inner scream ..."

That’s when she says she had her Slumdog Millionaire moment: the moment her training in the arts, animation, theater, film, and television all came together.

But instead of falling victim, she became independent, argumentative, curious, and precocious.

“It really did feel like, ‘We’ve never seen one of your kind before.’”