North by Northwestern

The two reunited Thursday night for a Contemporary Thought Speaker Series talk, co-sponsored by the Multi-Cultural Filmmakers Collective, the Northwestern University Women Filmmakers Alliance and Rainbow Alliance. The conversation, focusing on Waithe’s experience and moderated by Camblin, happened for a sold-out Ryan Auditorium.

In response to Camblin’s first question about how Waithe copes with failure, the Chicago native and Evanston Township High School graduate said, “God never promised me an easy life. If a hurdle comes, I will get it as an opportunity.”

This outlook has certainly worked for Waithe. After moving to California to pursue her dream of writing, she worked her way up from a job at Blockbuster to transcribing for The Real World to being a production assistant to Ava Duvernay, through constant hustle and support from her family back home. Little connections led to others, and soon she found herself in rooms where things happen.

Having written for Bones and Dear White People, Waithe credits casting director Allison Jones for getting her in front of the camera by connecting her to Master of None creator Aziz Ansari. The episode “Thanksgiving” in the show’s second season, co-starred and written with Ansari, tells a fictionalized version of Waithe’s own coming out experience, and won her the Emmy.

Though she doesn’t “wear ‘Queer Rep’ T-shirts” every day, Waithe is aware of her influence and responsibility as a representative for her community. Working with the Times Up Legal Defense Fund, she hopes to ensure that there is a wider range of voices behind the scenes in Hollywood.

“I think a big thing for me is to make sure there's a woman of color and a person who is a member of the LGBTQIA community in every writer's room,” Waithe said before the talk. “So that's the big thing I ultimately want to do, is to make sure these television writer's room look like the society that we live in.”

In the audience Q&A following the talk, Communication freshman Nolan Robinson asked for advice on how to handle being one of the only people of color in the room beyond college.

"She said I really have to be great, I have to be a Barack Obama, I have to be Denzel,” Robinson said. “I'm glad that she validated me and just pushed me to be better, pretty much just said that complacency isn't going to get you anywhere."

“Not everyone who does inspiring work is an inspiring person, but I really think she is,” Northwestern employee Rae Devrosse said. “Her mom and her aunt and her grandma have taken hits so she doesn't have to, and she's there taking hits so that others don't have to and that really, as a Black person, it's like, that's what we're all doing.”

“I can’t write everything,” Waithe said. But she can tell the bigwigs: “I know somebody who could.”