Write On with 'Black-ish' Showrunner Courtney Lilly

Coming off of an enormously successful eight-season run on ABC, Black-ish follows Andre 'Dre' Johnson (Anthony Anderson) as he tries to create a sense of cultural identity for the members of his family while raising his kids in a predominantly white, upper-middle-class neighborhood. Showrunner Courtney Lilly discusses the expectations of being a showrunner: "Your job when you're running a show is essentially accountability; that's it. Whether it's the story, whether it's the budget, whether it's casting, the buck needs to stop with you. And you say, 'Here's what we're doing, this is why you're paying me this money. This is my job, and this is how I know how to do it.'"

Courtney goes on to discuss his hope for similar shows to be made in the future and the impact the series has had on the world of television: “People have a lot going on, and they want to laugh, they want to get to know characters, and my hope is that… there’ll be a moment where everybody will recognize that [Black-ish is] actually just traditional in the way that people want to watch television, and we'll see more stuff like what we’re doing now.”

 

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