Tracy Oliver details how the $137 million-grossing comedy about black women bonding is (ever so slightly) moving the needle on Hollywood reception of people-of-color projects.
- Talks about how early in her career when she'd try to sell a spec script, she was told that it's niche and nobody would buy it. The feedback she got was "We love this script. It's really well written, but the characters are black, so we can't do anything with it." Tracy says that what she wrote wasn't niche as her sensibilities have always been broad and commercial because of the Julia Roberts and Sandra Bullock movies she grew up loving.
- Studio people reading her stuff would often say "Oh, wow, these characters could be white women." She'd say "Well, we're all human beings, so you can have a script that is culturally specific but is still universally relatable enough to appeal beyond people of color." Tracy tried to remind the executives that if she could relate to Julia Roberts as a young black girl growing up in South Carolina, then other people could relate to a woman of color. She said she wasn't going to change the characters to white people, because if she didn't write who she was and the women she knew, who would?
- Girls Trip was not expected to be a big hit. While the producer Will Packer, the director Malcolm D. Lee, Kenya Barris who co-wrote and Tracy were working on it, they thought there was an audience for it, but that outlook wasn't shared beyond the core group.
- The success of Girls Trip changed a lot for Tracy. She's been wanting to do a Girls Trip-esque TV show for a long time, and just a couple years ago, she was told there's no audience for that. Now that idea is seen as a possible TV series.
- Tracy says that there's still a fight every time she tries anything new. She loves horror and seeing Jordan Peele make Get Out was inspiring to her. So she tried selling an idea to Warner Bros. about a Girls Trip-esque horror movie with comedic elements. Her pitch was about women of color at a hip-hop concert who are being hunted down one by one throughout the night. Niija Kuykendall, the Warner Bros. executive who is a black woman, bought it in the room. But other studio executives seemed confused. One asked, "But do black people like horror?" and "But what about women? Do black women like horror? I just don't see how this makes any sense." She believes "not getting it comes from living in a bubble. Not a racial bubble, but a Hollywood bubble."
- Tracy has a lot of conversations with friends (mostly people of color) who share crazy executive stories. Some examples:
1. "Great pitch, but we've already got the black experience covered here."
2. "Instead of surgeons, can they be gospel artists or hip-hop dancers?"
3. "I know it's a show about women, but what about the men? We want to make sure they can see themselves in this."
4. "Can the character be biracial so we can bring in some white people?" And:
5. "Do women even like horror movies? My wife hates them."
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