Along the way, there are several musical numbers that directly address the United States fraught history with slavery.
The Roots star in (and wrote) a hilarious animated sequence titled Im Just a Slave.
KENYA BARRIS:Its interesting.
Kelsey McNeal/ABC
Its one of those things that people are going to love or hate.
Yeah, the episode talks about how talking about slavery makes white people uncomfortable, I get that.
At the same time, its not indicting of anything contemporary.
Kelsey McNeal/ABC
I think that was sort of the pitch to the online grid.
But I do think its a swing that Im really proud of.
What was the networks reaction when you pitched this?
They were very supportive of the script and the episode.
I think thats at the core of what made me want to do this.
Then, I had to sort of check myself and say, Why am I laughing at that?
Why is that some bullst?
Thats not necessarily true, and its not necessarily a message that I want to keep forwarding.
Has this episode changed how you approach Juneteenth?
Do you plan on celebrating it?
I will, actually.
There was an end to it and there was a face.
There has never been a prosecuted case of slavery.
Theres no criminality to it.
Theres a moralistic thing.
Lets not talk about it.
People just wish that we would stop talking about it, and thats not fair.
Like with most things, you cant just ignore it and hope that it goes away.
The pain is still there.
The episode has an interesting structure.
How did you decide how to incorporate music into the show?
We knew that we didnt want to do characters all of a sudden breaking out into song.
You didnt want someone to be walking around and all of a sudden, [hesings]Slavery!
We didnt think that was going to be the best way to handle it.
At that point, we laughed it off because we were still in that place.
Peter Saji, who wrote it, did an amazing job.
The Roots came in and did what I think was an amazing piece of animation and music for it.
Did this take longer to put together than a normal episode?
We only shot it in the same amount of time that we shoot a regular episode.
I worked on the music for a while.
We only had five days to shoot that episode.
Was there anyone that surprised you when you started working on it and staging it?
Hes a great actor, but he dances and sings, too?
He can just do everything.
Tracee [Ellis Ross], as well.
To be honest, all [of the] actors are just magic people and they can do anything.
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