Kenya Barris Quotes
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I don't necessarily believe that 'The Cosby Show' should disappear as a cultural reference, but it is. That's sad to me. I understand why. He was a man who possibly did some really bad things, and he should be punished beyond a doubt. But that show, and the impact it had not just on black culture, but culture, was amazing.
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I feel like money is an interesting thing when you don't come from it.
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When you're in the middle of it, when you're a kid growing up, you don't think, 'This is my first heartbreak.' You just think, 'My heart is broken.' But then as a parent, you look back, and you see your child go through his or her first heartbreak, and you're realizing, 'Oh my God, this is her first heartbreak.'
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I consider myself a disciple of Norman Lear. And one of the things he did was topic-driven humor.
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After the first couple of years of on 'Black-ish,' my wife and I actually broke up. We got back together, and it was this really, really difficult time for me.
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As a creative, you have to be your truest form. You can't worry about fitting into whatever boxes people want to put you in.
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I will be so happy when 'diversity' is not a word.
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'Black-ish' is a show that has spoken to all different types of people and brought them closer as a community, and I'm so proud of the series.
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Black, white, rich, poor - we galvanize through the hard times. We really see it happen in relationships. In the best and worst of those moments, you come together, and you look for your tribe.
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I set out to tell my story, which is based on my family. Dr. Cosby told his story in 'The Cosby Show.' The comparisons stop there in terms of my creation of the show. We just both happen to have black fathers at the center of it.
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ABC has a general policy that you can't show images of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11.
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Writers' rooms are terrifying. You take someone whose never done this before, and this is their life's dream that is about to happen or not about to happen - that is an amazing amount of pressure to have.
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What I did not want to be was a fad, because fads die. I had one of the George Michael Wham! neon-colored sweatshirts, and I thought it would never go out of style. Fads die.
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When I was growing up, I never saw couples fight on the family sitcoms I loved to watch. Subsequently, when tough times arose in my own relationship, I wasn't prepared and felt so isolated and alone. Marital issues weren't a part of the narrative that television told me was a 'working relationship.'
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I still believe a little bit that changing gender roles have hurt relationships.
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I tried to do Kwanzaa with my family and was like, 'This sucks. What am I doing this for?' For me, I felt like I was doing it because I was trying to live up to someone else's idea of what 'black' was.
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I'm doing another pilot about a black Democratic pundit who's married to a white Republican pundit. And the purpose of me wanting to do that show - and ABC sort of supported me in the way they did - is because I feel like, you know, the political system is like an old married couple.
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For me, it was important to keep my name in 'mainstream Hollywood.'
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For me, one of the big things I really worried about a lot was nuclear war growing up.
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I hear a creak in my house, and I'm calling the police immediately, but at the same time, I do know that when I call them, I'm going to make sure to say, 'I'm a black guy, and this is my house.'
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I really want to do what 'Veep' did. 'Veep,' in a very comical way, gave us a look inside the political machine, but I want to do it for the average American family.
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Actors are magical people. They can take words you wrote and say them in a way that, although you thought the line was good when you wrote it, it's fantastic when it comes out of their mouth.
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Laurence Fishburne - he's a great actor, but he dances and sings, too? He can just do everything.
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I've found that the more honest and true you are and can talk about a character and people's experiences, it's less ostracizing. It actually has the opposite effect than one would think. It makes the characters and the story more inclusive.