Karen Pittman on How Her Black Identity Influences Her Roles

In season three of “The Morning Show,” a race scandal rocks UBA, the printed community that serves because the present’s backdrop. The storyline sees Karen Pittman’s Mia and Greta Lee’s Stella strikingly depict the realities of ladies of colour in largely white, company areas like community tv. “That’s me and Greta actually, in a real way,” Pittman tells POPSUGAR after talking on the 2024 Makers Conference on Feb. 28.

Through characters like Mia and Nya on “And Just Like That…,” Pittman brings unbelievable nuance to her portrayal of sturdy Black girls who navigate their race of their respective environments, which she opened up about in dialog with “Succession” actor J. Smith-Cameron. The two spoke on the three-day summit hosted by Makers, a community-focused media model owned by Yahoo that is targeted on accelerating fairness for girls within the office.

For Pittman, identity-driven storytelling is inherently intentional. “I think the storytellers and writers are always looking for ways to imbue your personal, authentic perspective, whatever you have been through in your life,” she says. But for the actor and activist, that authenticity is much less about sharing her lived experiences and extra about bringing advanced feelings to her characters. “I pride myself on having characters that don’t resemble me as an actor,” she explains. “I don’t see any of myself in Mia, and I hope to never see any of myself.”

Instead, she “influences the storytelling” by making certain there’s depth to her characters. “I remind [writers], ‘Let’s make sure we show the heart of this character instead of just showing she’s a strong woman.’ That can end up being a trope,” she says. She likes to create characters via their “emotional landscape” particularly. “Knowing what the heart of that woman is and being able to convey that to the camera visually is really where I feel like the greatest influence I have as an actor in any story. That is what makes an audience connect.”

With a high-powered, impartial TV producer like Mia, she’s targeted on channeling vulnerability, a top quality not typically related to Black girls on display. “The writers of [‘The Morning Show’] are always hoping to reflect back the strength and the nimbleness of African American women,” she says. “Sometimes that can be one-sided, so I’m always trying to infuse moments of fragility, softness, tenderness, and suppleness of what it means to be a woman in that job, in the same ways that you might see a white woman in those jobs.”

When it involves Nya, Miranda’s professor-turned-friend on “And Just Like That…,” it was necessary to Pittman — and creator Michael Patrick King — that she put on her hair in braids. As she places it, “I think it is important to reflect, especially on that platform, what it is to have an African American woman who completely accepts her naturalness, who isn’t trying to change or look different, who is embodying this construct of Blackness completely, and has decided that she’s going to live in a place of love and education — and to share that intelligence on the show.” Pittman additionally understands that Nya’s friendship with Miranda permits the chance to indicate viewers what it seems like for a lady of colour to construct a relationship with a white lady who might not know some other WOC. That’s particularly impactful in a sequence with a lot fanfare and generational recognition.

But whereas she’s capable of begin conversations about her characters in some methods, she additionally acknowledges the challenges that include being a Black lady within the appearing world. In her dialog with Smith-Cameron, Pittman shed gentle on Hollywood’s cultural reckoning in response to George Floyd’s homicide by police in 2020. While there was an preliminary shift within the business, she believes it is since reverted again to the established order.

“People are forgetful,” she tells POPSUGAR. “People forget, and as an actor, you don’t want to always have your finger on the pulse of culture trying to teach them or remind them, ‘Hey, we need to pump some life into this.’ My white colleagues don’t have to have these conversations.”

As with girls of colour in any subject, she’d wish to solely focus on the job at hand: appearing. “I would love to go into an experience where the only thing that I’m called to do is to bring the full breadth of my craft and not have to concern myself with anything else,” she says. But, as she reminds us, that is the truth for any othered individual in our society.

As Pittman underscored in her dialog with Smith-Cameron, “the system is broken,” and she or he is aware of it’s going to take time for the business to progress. But what she will do is collaborate with allies to advocate for the tales and characters they really feel are necessary. “I want to be a human that builds coalition, that keeps common ground,” she tells POPSUGAR. “One of the reasons I love portraying these characters is because they have their hand out for connection; they are reflecting back to the culture. There is space for all of us. Certainly in my career, as a mother, as a human being, that is the way I am in the world.”

She’s additionally looking forward to change. “If you’re an actor or if you’re an artist, you are an optimist and an activist,” she says. “And if you’re an activist or an optimist, you believe that humanity can do something different.”

Yerin Kim is the options editor at POPSUGAR, the place she helps form the imaginative and prescient for particular options and packages throughout the community. A graduate of Syracuse University’s Newhouse School, she has over 5 years of expertise within the popular culture and ladies’s life-style areas. She’s enthusiastic about spreading cultural sensitivity via the lenses of life-style, leisure, and magnificence.