In comedy, I often see so many weird race jokes, and it's like, there is no racial diversity in your show to even make those race jokes. The problem is that there is no one in the back to say, 'Hey, that race joke is not really appropriate.'
We live in this era where we really enjoy being offended, although only on the Internet. I don't know how beneficial it is. I wonder if we live in an age where we don't have power, yet somehow feel we have virtual power. But I feel like it's a distraction from real life.
I don't believe in comedy as a TV genre - I think there's drama that is funny. Because beyond the laughs, there has to be cost, and there has to be heart.
Growing up on our estate, we were all different colours, but we were all really poor. I never really realised that black was a problem for some people.
'Chewing Gum Dreams' should make you look twice at the girl shouting on the bus and not just cuss her off from your life.
When I grew up, my race was not a thing. My identity was in my class. It was not about colour on my estate.
When I think of the things that I want to write, I can never say them out loud because I know how crazy they sound. I know what things sound like when you haven't actually worked on the script, so I don't go around saying some of these ideas because they just sound awful.
I definitely believe in spirituality. I like to pray, but I'm not praying to something that I can define; I'm just speaking because I know it does have an effect.
I don't write with this thing in the back of my head about carrying the weight of young black women on my shoulders.
To suggest things may be going on in our brains that we aren't fully conscious of, that we unknowingly make classist, sexist and racist presumptions... Well, there just aren't many comfortable ways to take that. And in the face of discomfort comes the mask of defence.
There always seems to be an element of faith in my writing.
It was only when I went to sixth-form college that I encountered boys.
I've always liked using humor, but what I had to with 'Chewing Gum' was take out a lot of darkness so it would be a bit more feel-good.
I became a very passionate Christian when I was 17. I started writing and performing poetry at different venues across the U.K. I started performing from then, really.
'Chewing Gum' is the London that I know.
At college, I became friends with this girl who was a 'cool Christian.' They did street dance, then they prayed. It became my whole world. I had Christian friends. I went to Christian parties.
It strikes me as odd that we've made journeys with our social conditioning in certain areas, but not in others. The world is always changing; discoveries in technology and science relentlessly expose our dearest values as fictions.
When you've got African parents, you go to uni, do finance, and go into accounting. But I'm not good with systems. I dropped out in my final year of college to become a Christian poet. Then went back to do my A-levels and went to uni in Birmingham to do political science and theology. I lasted 12 weeks.
Socialisation is not optional. It's an inescapable contract, and our birth into the world is our signature of agreement. Norms and ideologies vary from society to society, and most of them weren't formed during our lifetimes but were handed down from one generation to the next.
The unpredictability of the weather, the increasing possibility of intelligence introducing a species more powerful than ours, the growing uncertainty that animals can or should be slaughtered for our pleasure, has led many of us to start asking more complex questions about what is and isn't normal.
