A new MAX animated series based on the short film Hair Love (2019) directed by Bruce W. Smith, looks into the world of young millennial parents (played by Kid Cudi and Issa Rae) attempting to raise their beautiful daughter Zuri as they juggle their careers, marriage, social issues, and multi-generational dynamics striving for a better life. YOUNG LOVE will premiere Sept. 20th, 2023 exclusively on MAX.
We were excited to be able to sit down with Matthew A. Cherry (Series Creator) and Mark Davis (Supervising Director) to discuss their new series Young Love for MAX back in July at SDCC23. Now that the premiere is right around the corner, I’m happy to share our conversation!
What can you share about the series and what are you most excited for the audience to see?
Mark: “I’m super excited for the fans to see a completely different show,[and] something they’re not used to. The vibe of the show is completely unique, but it’s super cool, hip, and its a lot of fun with a lot of heart.“
Matt: “Young love is based off of our Oscar winning animated short Hair Love. The short didn’t have any dialogue, so there were a lot of backstory things that we already knew in the short film, but expanding that into a series was really challenging, just because the short has a hundred million views on YouTube and the book has sold almost 2 million copies. We have a big following, and you want to make sure that you’re serving it [by] putting enough stuff there that can get a new audience too. For us, our show’s different, in what Mark said, in that most animated series that are family based. Typically, the parents are established in their 40s or 50s like in Bob’s Burgers or The Simpsons. For us, our family is in their 20s, they’re coming off a health scare, and they haven’t achieved their dreams yet, so they’re still figuring it out. On top of that, they also have a young daughter that they have to try to raise. So, we felt that even in that, there was a great jumping off point into bringing it into a series. It’s also a multi-generational show. They have to end up living in Angela mom’s brownstone and the grandparents are right above them, and then they’re living right below them. You have five different characters, [and] they all deal with a problem in a different way coming from their own experience, [but] also from different personalities. There’s a lot of conflict in it, but it’s also really funny. It’s also very relatable. We all can relate to being in our mid twenties and not having it all figured out. It’s got that energy.“
Do you feel any pressure or a greater responsibility to the deeper conversations around the series’ topics?
Matt: “Oh. Damn, what did we do?! [laughs]”
Mark: “As long as you’re in it in the moment. Being a storyteller is very insulating. A lot of times you’re making something in a dark room, and you hope that people dig it. The great thing about having the short that came before this, is that we already worked out a lot of this stuff. The main inspiration for the short film was making sure that young kids who don’t have representation in animation have a character like Zuri who’s proud of their hair. As we were making it, seeing all these stories coming out of kids being told they can’t graduate if they have locs like we have or all these other different things. So, we already oddly have been apart of the social conversation with The Crown Act and other things. We just show these characters kind of living their lives. Cool things about it is, the way they are naturally helps [it] become a different conversation just because there aren’t a lot of shows out there that look like ours!”
Matt: “Just wanted to make sure it was authentic to us, [and] that we made something that we would want to watch. Being a father, Mathew’s a new father; we want our kids to watch certain things, but we want to be entertained as well. Really finding that fine line, making sure the tone is just hitting, keeping it entertaining, and still cool.“
A strength of Hair Love (2019) shows how we have a lot of work to do with our initial ideals of love, and instilling self esteem in our children. How do you think we should encourage our little girls to look at themselves, and do adults need to work on themselves before they build somebody up?
Matt: “I just feel like a big part of the short is making sure he listens. A big part of that was him just trying to hurry up, get her out of the house, and put the hat on her. He wasn’t really like taking a second to listen to why she really wanted to have her hair done. I think that’s the big lesson that all adults have to work out constantly. Your kids are constantly evolving. You may have two kids that grow up in the same house, but they’re different! You have to be very open to learning and evolving and growing. You can’t just expect them to be the only person to learn something.“
Mark: “That’s well said, and your question is exactly the conversation we were having when we were developing the show. Being that they’re still young in their mid 20s, they need to figure out themselves. But, they don’t have time to figure out themselves, because they still have to raise Zuri. That’s something we want to highlight in the show, because we haven’t seen that before. It’s a universal thing, being so young and trying to work things out, and work through it. Sometimes you have successes, and sometimes you have losses, but you continue fight and take steps forward. That’s like the main theme of the show.“
Matt: “That one step is like, one step forward, two steps back.”
How far do you envision the show developing?
Matt: “[laughs] Well the first season has 12 episodes so we’re excited about that. The cool thing about this, like most shows, you really don’t know if you’ll get renewed unless it comes out and does well. We’ve already been thinking about ideas. There’s a few things that make it’s way into the first season that will probably carry over, but that’s the great thing about these family shows, you can add new characters if you need to. We have like 5 or six main characters that we definitely try to do our best job in establishing. The series takes place about a couple months after the events of the short film. They’re coming back after this health scare, the mom is getting back into the workforce, [while] also trying to find her place at home now [after] missing a decent amount of time with her daughter. Dad took some time off, so now he’s trying to get back into work as a music producer. There’s a lot of places where we can go with it, and I think people will really enjoy how we set it up in the first season.”
From the exclusive clip shown at SDCC23, the mother is seemingly having some difficulties, and wants to do Zuri’s hair, but there’s some pushback because she has so much experience with her father. Is that sort of a theme or through line for the season?”
Mark: “Yeah it is. The events [of the series] take place six months after the health scare. The clip that you saw was Angela doing Zuri’s hair for the first time being back, and she’s just out of her rhythm. That specifically, is a microcosm of the themes that we deal with. Angela trying to find her zone but Stephen trying find his zone. Now that he has a little bit of time [because] Angela can help raise Zuri with him, he has more time to pour into his music career.“
—————
YOUNG LOVE will premiere Sept. 20th, 2023 exclusively on MAX.