Ep. 432: Screenwriter Rob Edwards Reflects on His Life Journey From "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" to "Captain America: Brave New World"

Rob Edwards is a thirty-year veteran of movies and television who wrote and produced shows including The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Full House, and In Living Color before writing two classic animated films for Walt Disney Feature Animation: the Academy Awards and Golden Globe nominated The Princess and The Frog, and the Academy Awards nominated Treasure Planet. His new project is the graphic novel Defiant: The Story of Robert Smalls.

Rob Edwards reflects on being creative for a living, the difference between tourists and pretenders and being a real professional, and how he feels obligated to both teach and entertain in his work. He also shares what it was like working on such iconic TV shows as Roc and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and managing the pressure and responsibility of being one of the few Black creative workers with his range and depth of experience in Hollywood.

Rob Edwards also does some sharing about his approach to writing the new Marvel film Captain America: Brave New World and how Anthony Mackie’s character “Sam Wilson” (who is now the new “Captain America”) reflects the much deeper history of the long Black Freedom Struggle and the pressure to always succeed in the face of the (near) impossible.

On this special Memorial Day episode of the podcast, Chauncey DeVega continues with his annual tradition of reading an account of the first such remembrance day that took place at the end of the Civil War when now free Black Americans buried Union Army war dead in Charleston, South Carolina and honored their sacrifice and victory over the Confederacy with a huge parade. Chauncey also reads an account written by a member of the United States Colored Troops about his experience(s) in the Civil War and doing battle against the forces of the Confederacy who were determined to keep Black people in bondage.

And Chauncey DeVega goes on a journey around his neighborhood and has a surreal series of experiences where he was lucky to not be shot by street pirates, learned from a wise honored elder on the bus, and then encountered a young man who claimed to be a time traveler.

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