AfroPoP is a series by Black Public Media and WORLD that features stories of contemporary life of the African Diaspora. BGN got to interview directors Anisia Uzeyman and Saul Williams of Neptune Frost, which will be featured along with documentaries Mother Suriname and Mama Gloria.
This interview has been edited for time and clarity.
BGN: What is it like to have Neptune Frost paired with these films? Especially when it comes to similar conversations about Blackness, gender, global stories of people with descent from the African continent?
AU: It feels more than necessary and very prescient to have the opportunity to expose [these stories]. We find ourselves in kind of a desert of these stories shown in a truthful way. The opportunity to share something a little more closer to what it really is helps us escape fantasy and expectations of that fantasy in the Western imagination.
BGN: Could either of you talk about the importance of supporting the AfroPoP series? Particularly when it comes to PBS often being under threat?
SU: I think the most important position to have, especially when you’re under attack, is to remain principled.
AfroPoP is of importance on public television in the United States because people must have access to something wider than the American imagination. Much of the world is subject to the horrors and the violence. The actual violence that is born of the American imagination.
To have something like AfroPoP on public television, for regular people, that accesses awareness is crucial. It’s also crucial that in the face of these attacks that we maintain our game. We find our way to stay on our path of greater awareness.
BGN: Neptune Frost, Mother Suriname, and Mama Gloria do an incredible job of not erasing the violence Black people face while also not romanticizing or exploiting it.
AU: On a personal level, I have been in great difficulties to get my attention to fiction. Reality right now is a challenge to fiction.
Neptune Frost’s correlation with the moment and with violence, it’s pretty crazy. We made a choice to not show Black bodies in a way where we’re sacralizing. All the weapons and all of those things are symbols of violence.
BGN: I love that this fiction is in conversation with these nonfictional documentaries.
AU & SW: Yeah.
SW: It’s important work that AfroPoP is doing.
I mean, we’re talking about American public television. For African Americans to be reminded of their relationship to what’s happening in the world and on The Continent. Not simply saying “Oh, yes, we were taken from there,” but realizing and acknowledging that we are in the core of Empire. That our taxes, our education is pointing towards us excusing our behavior outside of [the U.S.]. As if that somehow leads us to live a better life inside of [the U.S.]. Much of the distress we see in the world is because of our greed.
We’re forced to accept these ideologies such as capitalism, never associating it with race. Not realizing that the only type of capitalism that exists is racial capitalism. Black and Indigenous people across the world suffer at the hands of American corporations and government. Whether in The Congo, anywhere on The Continent, in Haiti, in South America, in Asia.
AU: Two years ago, there were things in Neptune Frost that seemed a little abstract. Today, it’s so clear.
BGN: When it comes to the protagonist of Neptune Frost being a feminine intersex person advocating for fellow refugees, Mother Suriname featuring a biracial elder’s story living long enough to see Suriname’s independence, and Mama Gloria featuring a trans elder’s story and community leadership in the AfroPoP series, how do y’all see Black feminine leadership for our future?
SW: Dr. Ruth Gilmore Wilson defines racism as a group differentiated from vulnerability to premature death. When I think of groups that have been targeted–not just by the butt of a gun, but a butt of a joke – I think about the recent election cycle where our own people have been used as a fig leaf.
There is great danger in not critically thinking about the entire spectrum of what we are engaging with in Black feminine leadership. When I think of Black feminine leadership, I quoted Dr. Ruth Gilmore Wilson, an abolitionist. It is abolition I consider and think of when I think of Black feminine leadership. I think of those voices that were silenced, even by Democrats.
The systems are acting exactly how they were built. They’ve always targeted the same people.
Our understanding of humanity is used against us sometimes to fracture us. So we do not collectively engage with class struggle against the dominant forces.
The only thing being threatened are the rigid definitions you were given. There is a spectrum of expression and being that should be welcomed.
AU: What Palestine made me understand in this moment when it comes to premature death, is that the definition of victimhood has to be clarified. It is not a landmark. What defines a victim of a system is when the system itself targets them.
SW: Anti-trans mentality is colonial mentality. Spit out that poison! You are speaking as your colonial masters would have you speak. You are not in your body right now. You are operating from a place of privilege.
AU: We need to defend all lives.
BGN: Because we’re talking so much about advocacy and community and making sure we’re not continuing to uphold certain privileges of Empire, what led you to play a conservative pastor in Ryan Coogler’s Sinners?
SW: My first love is acting. When you play a role, you are part of an ensemble. There’s never a sense of “Oh, I only want to play characters who believe what I believe in.” You understand there’s a bigger picture and you play a role within that bigger picture.
I was exhilarated to be asked to play a role in that story. It was in a way that came close to home.
My father was a pastor. He was not conservative in [my character’s] regards. In relation to the arts, my father was very supportive of me in the arts. He himself had come from the arts. But I do have, as a result of growing up in the church, a wealth of knowledge and information of the time I’ve spent with preachers.
I never played a preacher before. It was a lot of fun for me to go into that; my father is from Brooklyn, and I grew up around Northern ministers, [in Sinners] it’s a different era, a different region. It was a lot of work to be done.
The energy on set really speaks to the reception by the public. We shot on an actual plantation, and the energy was very difficult. First time actually visiting a plantation. That was also very heavy.
Season 17 of AfroPoP: The Ultimate Cultural Exchange made its debut on WORLD Monday, June 9th, 2025. The season can also be streamed on the WORLD and Black Public Media YouTube channels.
