Nikyatu Jusu is elevating the horror genre

Nikyatu Jusu, an assistant professor of directing and screenwriting in George Mason University’s College of Visual and Performing Arts, talks to Mason President Gregory Washington about her movie “Nanny,” which won the grand prize at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, and why the horror genre is not all “jump scares.” Just as often, she says, the monster is a commentary on human nature and the way we treat each other and ourselves. A fascinating conversation with this gritty street filmmaker who went from studying biomedical engineering to putting non-traditional protagonists into fantastical worlds.

 

 

Discover more: https://www.gmu.edu

Connect with George Mason University on social media:

• Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/georgemason
• Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/georgemasonu
• Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/georgemasonu
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/school/georg...

----more----

• Connect with President Gregory Washington on social media:
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GMUPres
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/GMUPres
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/presidentgr...
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregorywa...

#MasonNation #GMU #GeorgeMasonUniversity #Fusion #FusionEnergy #LearnFromLeaders #MasonScience #HonorsMason

Episode Transcript

(Narrator) (00:04):
Trailblazers and research innovators in technology and those who simply have a
good story all make up the fabric.That is George Mason University.
We're taking on the grand challenges thatface our students graduates in higher
education is our mission and our passionhosted by Mason President Gregory
Washington. This is theAccess to Excellence podcast.

(00:27):
(Gregory Washington) We like to talk here at GeorgeMason University about how
grit and audacity are twoof our core principles.
My guest today is thetrue epitome of that.
Nikyatu Jusu is an assistant professorof directing and screenwriting in
Mason's College of Visualand Performing Arts,
and is one of the industry'smost up and coming filmmakers.

(00:51):
Her debut film Nanny, whichyou can see on Amazon Prime,
is about a Senegalese woman working inNew York trying to raise money to bring
her son to America.
It was the first horror film andonly the second film directed by a
Black woman to win the grandprize at the 2022 Sundance Film
Festival.

(01:11):
She wants to establish herselfas a filmmaker who is centering
non-traditional protagonists in thesefantastical worlds because she believes in
creating things that we haven'tseen live in action. Nikyatu Jusu,
welcome to the show.
(Nikyatu Jusu) Oh, what an intro. Dr. Washington. That was amazing.
Thank you for having me.

(01:33):
(Gregory Washington) There's a lot to talk about. First ofall, I've seen the film. ,
Everybody out there who hasn't seenit. You should. It is a excellent film.
It really, thank you. That's anon-traditional film, right? Mm-hmm.
, it has a flow of thiswhole genre of these African movies. Mm.
Come because of Netflix and the like.
They've brought lots ofNigerian film here. Yeah.

(01:54):
But you can tell it has an Americantouch to it. Mm-hmm. ,
then it connects spiritualaspect, almost like Beloved.
(Nikyatu Jusu) Ooh.
(Gregory Washington) I don't know if that'snegative or positive.
(Nikyatu Jusu) No, that's very positive. Toni Morrisonobsessed. We need a remake of that film.
If anybody has to do it, I would loveto be the one to do it. There you go.

(02:14):
So that's such a compliment. Thank you.
This release date was January, 2022. Sothat means you shot during Covid, right?
Mm-hmm. .
So what was that like and howdid that complicate process?
Yeah. We shot Nanny on one ofmy sabbaticals. I'm almost,
I'm running out of sabbaticals atthe peak of Covid all over New York.
So we shot in Brooklyn, we shot in Harlem,

(02:34):
we shot in the city in Manhattanaround the Tribeca area.
And it was so challenging because westill didn't have a grasp on Covid.
And so everything waschanging in real time.
There were big gazillion dollarproductions that were getting shut down
next to me, you know? And we werea micro budget independent film,

(02:55):
just gritty shooting in the street.And we made it to the other side,
which is such a blessing.
We used to say that once you finishshooting the film last day of production,
you can celebrate.
But these days you can finish a film andit still gets buried in the industry.
And so I knew I wasn't in the clearyet. So we went right into editing.
I took maybe three days offfrom a 28 day averaging,

(03:17):
14 hour day shoots in the city atthe peak of summer peak of Covid,
directing under a mask all day.
And just sprinted into the editingprocess, post-production process,
sprinted into submitting our film to someof the top festivals as we were still
cutting the film and got intoSundance. And it's been history since.

(03:39):
It is classified as a horrorfilm, right? Yes. But look,
I didn't see it that way. To me, ithad a lot to do with immigration.
Mm-hmm. ,
the cultural differencesbetween immigrants and how they're treated. Mm-hmm.
, not too longafter I saw that movie,
I was actually in New York City and Iwas in an uber headed to the airport and

(03:59):
it stopped right at a park. It wasin the middle of the day. Mm-hmm.
and inside the park there,
all of these young childrenplaying and all of them. I mean,
it had to be at least 25kids in this park. Right. Um,
all had nannies. Yeah.
Yeah.
And Crown Nannies. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
And I looked at it and Iimmediately thought about the food. Right. That's good.

(04:23):
So, so you have that immigrationpiece mm-hmm. .
And it was this deepspiritual piece in the end,
the entity that was supposedto be scary. Mm-hmm.
actually was more spiritual.
Yes. Yes. Dr. Watson.
And there was a benefit to the.
Protagonist, Aisha protagonist.
In the movie. Right. Yeah. And, and itwas a love story. Mm-hmm. ,

(04:45):
we had those pieces connected to it.
The one thing I did not getfrom that film was hard.
Was hard. First of all, thank you forseeing all the things that you saw.
I mean, everything you said in termsof spirituality and some of the themes,
this is a cross genre film,
meaning there are many genreskind of crammed into one film.

(05:05):
And most of the films that I havereverence for are non-American films.
Even though you saidthat, I have a lot of,
I think compared to seeing Africanfilms, it feels very American.
But if you watch a lot of South Koreanfilms or German films or Eastern
European films,
they get a lot more leeway to makefilms that are hard to pigeonhole into

(05:27):
one genre. And there is agenre called Elevated Horror.
There are many othereuphemisms for elevated horror,
but you're not gettingthose paint by the numbers.
Jump scares in elevatedhorror. It's always about something besides the monster.
Like the monster is usually somethingthat is commentary on human nature
and the ways that we treat each otherand the ways that we treat ourselves.

(05:49):
So I think about filmmakers likeAria Astor who made Hereditary.
I think about Rosemary's Baby, Ithink about Jordan. Peel's Get Out,
and we don't have those jump scares.Like you're not waiting to jump,
but you do feel a sense of dread,
a sense of tension thatkind of gradually rises.
And those are the types offilms that I really love.

(06:10):
The Wailing is a South Korean filmthat is considered elevated horror,
trained to, Busan is a zombie film.
South Korean film is a brilliantcommentary on humanity and who is
actually the monster.And so when I made Nanny,
I knew I was going to get pushback,
especially because we haven'tseen a protagonist like Aisha

(06:34):
in Elevated Horror. You know, we've seenThe Witch, which was a really subdued,
grounded, contained Americanelevated horror film.
And so there's a whole canon of workthat I think about when I think about the
way that I approached Nanny. And so allof these influences inform my approach.
So when Blumhouse was theone who purchased Nanny,

(06:55):
'cause we were one of the few films whopremiered at Sundance with no marketing,
no distribution, super small,gritty indie film. We were waiting,
even though we were in competition,
we were waiting to get purchased by astudio because we didn't have it at the
moment. So when Blumhouse was braveenough to take our film on, I was like,
oh God,
this is gonna attract all these likefilm bros who are expecting paint by the

(07:20):
numbers horror, which this film is not.
Is not, you know.
All my press run.
I was dealing with having to spenda lot of time talking through how
this is still within the horror canon,but fits into a more experimental,
grounded iteration of horror.
I just learned to have references up mysleeve because it see the pushback on,

(07:42):
and this is not from you, Dr. Washington,
but there was a lot of racialtension around our film.
'cause most of the reviewers who you'reexposed to when you reach a certain
quote unquote pedigree of filmmaking,
most film reviewers are whitemen still overwhelmingly.
And so engaging my film, theywere forced to engage it. One,
because we screened incompetition at Sundance, and two,

(08:04):
we won the grand jury prize and wewere the first horror film to win it.
And so when you're thefirst horror film to win it,
you're going to be under a microscopein terms of are you truly a horror
filmmaker? Is your film truly ahorror film? What is a horror film?
It's a good dialogue to have.
For those of you out there who don't know,
I think we should talk a little bitabout your personal story. Okay. ,

(08:28):
it kind of border his mind a littlebit. You took a different path.
So you grew up in Atlanta.Mm-hmm. born.
Raised in Atlanta.
Daughter of Sierra Leoneand immigrants. Yep.
In a household you've described as oneof voracious reading. That being said,
you went to Duke University to studybiomedical engineering. Yes. Yes. .
When I saw that, I was like, yes. That'swhat I'm talking about. Right. .

(08:52):
I hate to see the field lose.
Oh listen, I have so muchreverence for engineers.
But as a humanist, yeah.Recognize your calling.
A lot of people don't realizethat in my own personal life,
English was one of my first loves.I came. Yeah. I love poetry.
And the old Canterbury Tales,, Edgar Allen Poe.

(09:12):
He was onto something, wasn'the? Edgar Allen Poe that he was,
all his stuff is hard, but it'sexistential and it's psychological.
And he's a good reference actually.
, I hear you. . Soat some point in time in your life,
you made the switch from biomedicalengineering. How did you get into film?
I've had a very lining trajectory.

(09:33):
So I pivoted sophomore year ofcollege. It didn't take me long.
I got to do for engineering.
And I think when you excel inhigh school in every subject,
it's hard to identify what your actualpassion is. This isn't a humble brag.
I'm here for a reason. I excelledacross the board in high school,
in school in general. And so I wasjust kind of going through the motions.

(09:55):
At some point I was like, okay,I'm good at all these things,
but what do I actually get excited about?And when you have immigrant parents,
as you mentioned, whether you're anIndian parent, an African parent,
an Asian parent,
I don't think that immigrants of blackand brown cultures compare notes enough.
Because education is key, right?

(10:16):
Education is always top ofthe totem pole priority.
And you better be getting a degree insomething where you're gonna make money on
the other side of this degree. Africanparents don't wanna hear about the arts,
they don't wanna hear aboutcreative writing. Good job.
You got an in creative writing. Buthow's that physics course doing?
That was intro to biology 1 0 1.
So I was pushed really hardby my immigrant parents.

(10:39):
And I appreciate that becauseI know it stems from love,
but it also stems from fear.
It stems from a fear of not knowing howtheir child's life is gonna turn out.
Mm-hmm. .
So I never took it as somethingthat was a slight on my humanity,
although at the time therewas a lot of pressure on me.
So sophomore year of Duke,
I stumbled into a screenwritingclass and it fulfilled an English

(11:02):
requisite. I mean, you mentionedEnglish, even in engineering,
you had to fulfill theEnglish requisite. That's.
Right. You had to get yourright general education grade.
And thank God, because I would've been
and because Iwould've been sitting in these engineering courses, like,
oh my God, I was already going through it.
So I stumbled into this screenwritingclass and really superficially,

(11:23):
I was like, oh,
this is one class where I get tobe around people who are athletes,
who might be cool,
who are not as intense as the engineeringstudents or the science students.
And so it was one partvanity, but other part,
I love reading and I love writing.And I fell in love, Dr. Washington.
It destabilized me so much thatI had to go back to my parents

(11:44):
and say, and mind you, this isafter I had done my research.
'cause if you're gonna come to yourparents and say that you're pivoting from
biomedical engineering.
Not just biomedical engineering, butbiomedical engineering at Duke. At Duke.
At Duke, which was courtof their Pinnacle program.
Listen, don't remind me, please. .Okay. Although it still worked out.
But I knew I had to plead my case.
So I had done research on what acomparable degree would be within film

(12:10):
literature and film is a Tide major.
'cause Duke didn't have a film major atthat time. Went to, my parents, said,
this is what I wanna do. I'm reallyin love with this. They supported me.
They asked a lot of questions,and I know my parents.
So I had already had all the receiptsfor what my pathway could look like.
And my dad was like,
if you're serious about pivotingyour sophomore year of undergrad,

(12:33):
we need to sit down and think aboutgraduate school and what your terminal
degree looks like infilmmaking. And again,
this goes back to me being lucky andhaving, you had brilliant parents.
You had good parents.
I know. Believe me, before.
We go any further that youstarted off for the show,
started here talking about the actorand writer strikes that are going on and

(12:54):
. Yeah. And so you're amember of the Writer's Guild,
if I'm not mistaken.
I am. You must have seenmy tenure portfolio.
Hadn't seen your portfolioyet. not what's coming.
That's the only guild. Oddlyenough, people are like,
why are you not in theDirector's Guild? Because Right.
That's a whole other beast. So, butI'm in the Writer's Guild. Yeah.

(13:15):
That means you are technically onstrike right now. Is that accurate?
Absolutely. Yeah. Pens down, .
, pens down, pindown pins down. .
I see you. I see, I see you. Good .
So help us understand what'sthe real issue with Strike? Oh.

(13:37):
You know what? As soon as I finishedthe nanny tour, the strike started,
you know, so I'm educatingmyself because educating,
I just got my Writer's Guildstatus after Nanny Unions
have been a mystery to me.I'm in the Writer's Guild,
try to get into the Director's Guild.They're so protected for a reason.

(13:58):
Like the hoops to get intothe D G A are astronomical.
But I'm educating myself because I'mvery much in academia and I'm an indie
filmmaker in my brain.Even though after Nanny,
I've got studio projects on myslate. I'm still very much indie,
gritty street filmmaker. Andso I'm still educating myself.

(14:19):
But based on my circle,
I know so many people who moved to LAafter N Y U grad film and just started
their TV writing career ages ago.
Everybody wants a fair wage.
There's a lot of free labor that writersdo. Dr. Washington, take this meeting,
put together this presentation.Here's a novel, here's a short story,

(14:42):
here's a water painting. Howwould you adapt this to a script?
And so screenwriters are constantlyhaving to have meetings, break story,
put together presentations basedon their idea, a breaking story.
Then we receive notes.Mm-hmm. .
And so how much of thisare you getting paid for?
How much of this is quantified?
How much of this is labor that youhave enough protection around you to

(15:07):
make sure that you'regetting paid for your labor?
So the strike is really essentially aboutbeing paid a fair wage in an industry
that thrives based onwriter's work. I mean,
the springboard is thescreenplay, is the pilot.
Whatever you have on thepage is the blueprint.
Is the writer, because they're noton the screen. Mm-hmm. ,

(15:29):
they're not seen as much by the public.
It's not sexy, it's not visible.There's a reason writers don't have law.
If I had to put up a camera on mydaily life when I'm writing mm-hmm.
, nobody would wannawatch it. I'm literally, it's, it's.
Writing you and here do.
It's writing . You're in a roomif you're lucky, it's a safe space.
And you're processing notes andyou're interpreting what people just

(15:53):
sent you in terms of fixing problems.
But it's such a processof intellectual labor.
And a lot of it happensalone in isolation.
And so you turn over a draft and peoplejust kind of cut it apart, chop it up.
So I think a lot of people just don'tunderstand what the process of writing is.
So I'm excited that the strike isgarnering attention to how much of this

(16:16):
process is in the writer's hands beforewe start getting the sexy technology.
And we're on set with the A-listactors. Something has to be on the page.
Mm-hmm.
, speaking of which,
what I heard was that there'salso this concern about artificial
intelligence. Mm.
Yes.
That presents to writers. So I've workedin this space. Mm-hmm. ,

(16:38):
I can tell you a lot about it. I'vepublished papers in this space.
I would like to see those.
. They're real technicalnow. But the thing is,
I understand artificialintelligence reasonably well. Right.
Do you see it as a real danger?
So I don't know if you'refamiliar with Guillermo del Toro,
the Mexican filmmaker. He makesfantasy, but it has horror elements.

(16:59):
He's one of my mentors in myhead and gave a really glowing
review of nanny justinformally on his Twitter.
But he was part of this groupof writer directors that I
got to pop in and hear working filmmakers,
discuss the strike anddiscuss fears around ai.
And so I'm still educatingmyself on what that means,

(17:22):
just like I am educating myself aboutthe strike and exactly what people have
been navigating. Guillermo statedsomething that I agree with.
And as a filmmaker who's been in theindustry for a while, he's older than me,
he's wiser than me. He's one of thepeople who, when he speaks, I listen.
He feels like for motion picturein terms of directors directing

(17:44):
live action and movement, imagery thatmoves and imagery that you hear and feel.
There's a little ways off forAI to be a significant danger.
Those of us navigating thewritten word and static images,
photographers, graphic designers,
the immediacy of thethreat is more significant.

(18:04):
And what does it meanfor it to be a danger?
What does it mean for AI to be a threat?
Because we have differentiterations of ai. Now,
when you search for something on Google,
AI is already pulling from thealgorithm of your previous history.
We already are beingwatched and surveilled.
So me as an individual filmmaker,but also as an educator,

(18:25):
as a professor of filmmaking,
I'm curious about the ways that weharness these tools to our benefit.
How do I maximize my ability as a writer,
director in the realm of ai? How doI make myself even more competitive?
And I think that tinkering with chatG P T individually and doing a little

(18:45):
research,
I think there are ways to harness itto maximize your working capability.
Whether it's brainstorming or research.
There are ways to put in prompts thatreally respond to you in a meaningful way
that saves time when you'rewriting a script. That's.
Probably a good approach to take interms of understanding how the tools are
gonna be used. I don't know thefield that well, but I know the,

(19:08):
what's happening in the AI space.
And I don't think you have 10years and before you start. Right.
That makes sense.
But you're going to start tosee people utilizing tools,
not just chat G P T, they're awhole host of tools now. Mm-hmm.
that are out and available.
You're gonna see people usingtools to help you. You know,
you get to a sticking point in writing.

(19:29):
Right. And that's where I am.
Ideas. Right. Or you.
Like, how can we harness these toolsto make us more efficient? Right.
You can write something and then feed itto the AI and have it tell you what it
thinks of what you've written. Right.
And Dr. Washington,
I've had a lot of intense deadlinesat the peak of the strike.
'cause everybody wastrying to get work in,
and the execs wanted your work in asap.

(19:51):
And so I had time crunches and I was like,
how can I use this technology to makemy process more efficient? Mm-hmm.
.
And there was a moment where I neededprompts and it sent me a series of
responses. And one response, myinstinct told me this was incorrect.
So I googled it. I did research.It was a completely wrong answer.

(20:12):
Mm-hmm. likereferencing a whole different artist,
a whole different persongave the quote, like,
you would've embarrassed yourselfif you were on a panel and you just
regurgitated this information.And so I responded to AI in Chad,
G B T, and I said, this was wrong. Thisis actually, who said this? Immediately?
I got a prompt that was like,you're right. This was incorrect.

(20:32):
Apologies for misdirectingyou. And I'm like,
how many people are going to followup on responses they get and make sure
and confirm that they'retruthful? A lot of people aren't.
And when you hold the system accountable,
and I think this is my biomedicalengineering background,
because computers give youwhat humans put into them.

(20:53):
They do. But that is wherethe real change is happening.
In the early days of ai, you had allof this data mm-hmm. ,
that you put into the computer andit would then give you the data
back that you trained it on. Right.
And that was great becausethe more data you had,
the more knowledge the algorithmhad. Mm-hmm. .

(21:16):
Now the real big jump in benefit,
the real change that's happenedwith generative AI is that you can
train the algorithm on all thisdata, but then ask it to extrapolate.
And it does it reasonably well. Uh.
And reasonably is the word. Because.
If you went back and asked now, I.
Bet it has the right answer.

(21:37):
Has the right answer. And that's thething. And not only does that Yeah.
But every computer in the world world.
And this is why people are fighting,
because we need to quantify and monetize
how we're educating these systems tobe stronger and better to replace us
essentially.
I get it. And it's notjust talk about chatt pt.

(21:57):
You can generate images now with Dolly.Yeah. The big issue was in extras.
That's what you know. Mm-hmm.
getting people'slikeness and duplicating it.
You could put it ontop of bodies anywhere.
It's intriguing. Dr.Washington, I love this stuff.
I'm obsessed with this stuff. Don't.
Forget your engineering background.You may have to. No, but.
That's what I'm saying.
Like I still have that engineeringscientific background that grounds me

(22:20):
in fiction. I'm still reallyinterested in this stuff.
I want to talk a little bitabout Nanny . It's,
it has such depth to it and so manylayers and levels. Right. Thank.
You.
What were you going through mentally?What were you thinking about?
How did you come up with this story,right? To layer it like you did,
how you developed Aisha'scharacter. Mm-hmm. .

(22:42):
Yeah. The audience does not wantto know what I was going through,
but definitely I pulled fromthe women in my family's story.
So born and raised in Atlanta,Sierra Leon, Leonian family.
Domestic work is a bigentry point for black women
immigrants, brown women, immigrants,but also black American women.

(23:05):
It's one of the jobs that is one of theoldest occupations that have been made
accessible to black and brown womenfrom the inception of this country.
Good and bad. It's somethingthat is old and ancient,
but is undervalued becauseblack and brown women's labor is
undervalued.
And how many of us really wanna thinkdeeply about the woman in our home who's

(23:28):
cooking our food and cleaning our mets,and essentially raising our children.
I don't have a nanny, but Ican imagine the fear of having,
if you're being honest with yourself,
like how are you treating this personwho has so much power in your domestic
space?
So it was on and off for eight-ishyears that I pursued this idea.
And whenever I tell my students at GeorgeMason and the Fabs program, I'm like,

(23:52):
it wasn't eight consecutive years. Itwas me taking a break on this project,
visiting another project that I feltlike maybe would get made sooner.
So stacking, stacking ideas.
Not being someone who'scensoring yourself.
Like if there's something thatdraws your attention as an artist,
create a folder in Google Drive,

(24:12):
throw some articles in thereand take a break from it.
But constantly nurture and pourwater and fertilizer into the
ideas that get you excitedabout being an artist.
Because more and more as wepursue this trajectory in an ever
increasingly destabilized,capitalistic system,
you have to really care about your ideas.

(24:33):
It's not enough to just feel likeI wanna be a part of the industry.
Is this an idea that you cansee through for five years?
Is it an idea that you can continuouslyspeak about in an excited way for three
consecutive years, regardlessof how the industry goes?
So it took a while. I started and stopped.
And now that I got thisentry point with Nanny,

(24:54):
I have other ideas that I abandonedand came back to and poured into enough
that are now exploding in different ways.
Like I did interviews where people werelike, breakout star breakout filmmaker.
I'm like, breakout only ifyou didn't know me already.
Because everyone who knows me knows thatI would chip away at different ideas
simultaneously to make sure that Ihad something that was ready to go.

(25:18):
And you were working on thisthing for a while, huh?
Long story short.
You were able to get some reallygood people. Mm-hmm. .
Amazing cast. I'm familiar and crew.
I'm familiar with Qua Wall's work. Oh.
He's gonna love to hear that.Dr. Washington. He's amazing.
So he was on power.
I liked that he was on the DonCornelius whole soul train thing.

(25:41):
I thought he did well. And.
Even though it was a short stint, you sawit. He garnered an audience. You know,
I think what people don't understandis that every job matters.
You garner a new audience whenyou take on a job like that.
Oh, that was so cool. And Anna Diox, sheplayed that part extraordinarily well.
Thank you. I was the quality of theindividuals, the actors in the film.

(26:04):
Thank you. Dr. Washington.
What made you add thespiritual part to it?
I love that you keepbringing up the spiritual.
I'm very spiritual and I find thatpeople either get it or they don't.
In terms of spirituality,
I come from a family of people whoare very immersed in Christianity,
organized religion, goto church every few days.

(26:26):
And I grew up in that andrejected Christianity. Uh, for me,
I was tapped into the universe.I was tapped into how I feel,
my gut, my instincts,
and just receivingmessages from the universe.
So my father transitioned from cancer atthe peak of my pre-production process.

(26:48):
He was going through it. I was writing,
we were in the process of securingfinancing and I was navigating grief.
So this is part of what I pouredinto Nanny once we were greenlit.
I think that sometimes if you'rereally tapped into the universe
and spirituality,
you receive these signs that keep yougoing even when you think that you don't

(27:08):
have anything left.
So I hear you now, you could tell me ifthis is wrong, but I'm hearing ,
you're gonna do MGMs Night of theLiving Dead Sequel. Is that, that's.
What they say. . So again,
going back to stacking projects,
that's one of the projects that I'mnot writing as a writer director.
It's one of the few, most of theprojects that I have on my slate,

(27:31):
I'm writing and directing. Andthere's a whole other screenwriter,
Latoya Morgan who wrote for theWalking Dead series is writing
that. So everyone is respectingeach other. I'm not checking on her.
She's not checking on me. I don't knowif she's writing. I'm sure she's not.
'cause she's in the W G A.
She's in the writer's Gail too.

(27:51):
Oh, Latoya is very much, she'smore in it than I am. I slid in,
'cause I'm a filmmaker,
but she's been in rooms likewriter's rooms for series.
So she's paid her dues.
So this one is kind of on theback burner until the strikes
are resolved. Is that.
Everything is, until thestrikes are resolved, everything is on the back burner.

(28:15):
If you're in solidarity with theworkers, which I am, you know,
it's easy for me, but I,
I'm also not someone who has a filmthat needs marketing right now.
So there are a lot of small, independentfilmmakers, marginalized filmmakers,
who can't promote the work thatthey worked hard on right now.
'cause the rules are not justwriting the rules are like promotion.

(28:38):
You can't promote your project,you can't do press, you can't,
there are a lot of parameters thata lot of the public doesn't know.
So had I been on this side of thingsafter killing myself to make my first
feature, I don't know how I would feel.
So I have a lot of compassionfor filmmakers who I know who toughed it out and

(28:58):
can't promote the work that they madein the past two years because of the
strike.
So now if you have this amazing serieson Amazon and you can't promote it,
who's gonna see it? You know? And sothese companies can still go back and say,
we're not making diverse work. Itdoesn't turn over money. It is tricky.
I understand. And nanny,
one of the most powerful moments in thefilm is when the lead character Aisha

(29:22):
is asked is Rage your Superpower. Mm-hmm.
Now name from somewhere didn't, you wrote that.
So tell me about that question. Is thata question you've ask yourself? I wanna.
Ask you Dr. Washington,
'cause you're one of the few peoplewho's asking me this question who I can
return the question like,
what was it about that moment thatmade you feel like it resonated

(29:44):
or made you feel curious about it?
Because the fact that youidentified it is a big deal for me.
A whole dynamic in the film. Okay.
You have this young woman with thispower that she doesn't quite realize she
has. Right. She,
she's clearly more intelligentthan the family that

(30:04):
she is supporting. Mm-hmm.. And that was clear to me,
even the young child thatshe was caretaking Rose.
Yeah.
That Rose was tear that Africanfood up. , you know?
You know, she.
Loved it.
Oh she did. Right. And therewas a power that Aisha had that,
like I said, I don't know ifshe really realized it. You're.

(30:26):
Right, everything you've said is accurate.
I took it that she had a right to beangry at her circumstance was clearly a
victim of the zip code lottery. Ifyou Right. For lack of a better way.
I like that Zip code lottery.
And,
and she was struggling with how she wasgoing to use the way she was feeling.
And so that wasn't heronly superpower. Right.

(30:47):
The thing that amazed me is whywould rage be the one thing? Hmm.
That was intelligence.Mm-hmm. , she was clearly attractive. Right.
Yeah. Woman Anna, the job is gorgeous.
When I saw her real, I was like,
I mean I'm a Libra and Libras lovebeauty and as a filmmaker who's a Libra,
I'm always gonna cast. Somepeople I think are gorgeous.

(31:09):
Why that superpower? Because she had all,
I thought she had this way ofcommunicating. Right? Right.
She could engage with this young childin ways that the child's mother could
not. Right. Yeah.
I love that. Dr. Washington.
Like you gave me a lot of backstoryand the moments you've identified,
you are my target audience. I justnavigated a lot over the course of Nanny.

(31:31):
I navigated people who were like, oh,this sucked. It was boring, it was weird.
I didn't get it. And I'm like, that'sfine. You're not my target audience.
Rage is something that we allhave to harness good and bad.
Especially if you are navigating asociety where you see very clearly
all the inequities and youget frustrated for everyone.

(31:54):
I'm one of those people who evenas a kid would just hone in on
weird moments and spaces that I was inand wanted to root for the underdog,
you know?
And wanted to just always think abouthow we can make a more equitable society.
I pull from Tony Morrison, you mentionedBeloved. I pull from Sadia Hartman,
I pull from Usman, Sam, Ben. I pullfrom so many people, so many artists,

(32:18):
thinkers, writers, filmmakers,painters, James Baldwin.
All of them navigated rageat having seen and understood
the inequities that we're navigating.
But having to just fall in line andread from this script in academia.
We talked about my trajectory.I went to Duke undergrad.

(32:38):
I went straight to N Y U grad film,which is a whole story in itself.
Like I didn't take a break. Ihaven't taken a break from academia.
I graduated from N Y U, I made filmsand now I'm teaching. You know,
I've been teaching while I'vebeen a student for a long time.
And so I've never had aclinical distance from academia.
I've always been immersedin it in every facet.

(33:01):
And so I'm able to use the languageI need to use to articulate
the inequities that I seeso clearly all the time.
I ask question, what is it like to beassociated with an iconic film
forever? Right. You look,you won the big prize.
I did, didn't.
I? You did. So what is thatlike? Do you walk in places?

(33:23):
Oh, please, .
No, no, no. I I'm not talking about, I'mnot talking about everyday fans. Right.
I'm talking about peoplewho are in the space. Mm.
No movies and the alike and.
Like other filmmakers.
They come up to you and there arepeople who are making millions in this
business.
Quietly. The smart onesare quiet about it.

(33:44):
They don't have that award.
Oh yeah.
They don't have that banner.
Listen, I did an interview with the theSpirit Awards, uh, film Independent.
I won someone to watch.
It was a big award that I won inMarch of this year in LA at an
event where I saw a lister. Likepeople you only see on the screen,
I'm in the room.
My table's next to anyone you can thinkof in this space and didn't think I

(34:08):
was gonna win. It was me and two otherreally brilliant filmmakers. And I won.
And I did an interviewbackstage afterwards and they were like, how has it been?
Da da da. And I mentioned howlonely this trajectory is.
It's actually immensely lonely forthe reasons that you just listed.
People are not coming up to you. You wouldthink you'll be at the Oscars, right?

(34:31):
Or the Governor's Ball orwhatever. The Spirit Awards.
And you're in this roomof people who get it,
who get what you'renavigating career wise.
'cause they're actors andthey're dps and they're editors,
but everyone is so in their own bubble.
Especially if you're a minoritizedperson in these spaces.
I don't think it's the most organicspace where people are finding community.

(34:54):
Most of my community that lingers arenot my film school people because it
becomes hyper competitive.
It's kind of like law in the sense ofonly a few of you graduat and will go to
the top law firms. Right.
Only a few of you who graduate from filmschool at a top tier film school will
continue to make films.
Some of you will have to figure out aliving that is sustainable and filmmaking

(35:17):
is not always sustainable. Soit's actually really isolating.
That's really interesting.I never thought that.
Yeah, it's really alienating andeverything hinges on financing, right?
Like you need money tomake a film .
You have to really be hyper cautiousabout the way that you present in public.
No, I hear you. Well,this is a fascinating conversation. This was so rich.

(35:39):
Thank you. I can't wait to see what'snext for you. Have my eyes .
Me too. I'd like tothank my guest, natu jsu,
the professor of directingand screenwriting,
and George Mason's University's Collegeof Visual and Performing Arts and
Director of Nanny, which you canall see right now on Amazon Prime.

(36:00):
I am Mason President GregoryWashington saying, until next time,
stay safe. Mason. Mason.
If you like what youheard on this podcast,
go to podcast.gmu.edu formore of Gregory Washington's
conversations with thethought leaders, experts,
and educators who take onthe grand challenges facing our students graduates and

(36:23):
higher education. That's podcast.gmu.edu.