While in college Tracy Oliver was interested in the performing arts, but she eventually realized she was often the “sassy, funny sidekick and not the lead.” This realization – along with advice from her mother – actually inspired her to start writing rather than wait for someone to cast her.

“I was really frustrated by the lack of control and being limited to what other people’s vision of me was, which I thought was bigger than where I was always placed,” said Oliver. “For me, what I always wanted that I never got to play, was something real. That sounds funny, but I was always a hyper-sexualized or hyper-sassy version of something. I couldn’t just be a normal black person,” she said of her acting days.

“I was attracted to realistic, mundane stuff. Just black friendships. Love stories. Things that were normal and not about trauma or race or had this greater meaning to it. I like normal stuff and I wish that was available for me.” Oliver was tired of being the “cigarette-smoking friend” or in the “slavery movie,” so she started to write about herself. “That, weirdly, was revolutionary to write about the normalcy of black life.”

As a writer, she’s now known for Survivor’s Remorse, Barbershop: The Next Cut, Girls Trip, Little, First Wives Club, and the upcoming series Harlem.

Black Normalcy

When we spoke with Eugene Ashe for Sylvie’s Love, he also said it was difficult to tell a black story not rooted in trauma. “It’s so hard,” Oliver elaborated. “And, I don’t know why that is, but studio execs and network execs often have this idea that being black isn’t enough, unless it’s riddled with pain or historical significance, or you have to be a super hero.”

She added, “Just telling a normal story, you often get the question, why does this matter or what’s the significance of it or why is it relevant?” Oliver said all stories are relevant, because sometimes audiences just want to see normal scenes on screen.

Tracy Oliver

“People want to laugh or fall in love, and what we forget is that in those time periods, there’s a tendency to only focus on the pain and trauma, but love and laughter got us through it. Those stories are definitely under-explored and we over-index the traumatic stuff. I think that’s to our detriment because it sends a message that we’re not like everybody else.”

She clarified, “[They act like] we don’t fall in love. We don’t dance. We don’t have heartbreak. We don’t have normal experiences and emotions, and that’s the hardest thing for me to do is push through the projects I do. They’re all very normal and that’s been a huge fight for me, just to write a movie like Girls Trip.”

Pitching Normalcy

With Girls Trip, Oliver said Bridesmaids helped set the tone, because at least there was a template for an ensemble of female leads in a raunchy comedy. But, when comparing Bridesmaids to Girls Trip, the response was essentially, “Well, those were white women.”

In Girls Trip, the plot followed four lifelong friends (Regina Hall, Jada Pinkett Smith, Queen Latifah, and Tiffany Haddish) who travel to New Orleans for the annual Essence Festival. Since the story featured four black women, the studio was hesitant that black women could be mainstream. 

“We were given to a very low budget on that movie, because it was a scary idea to experiment with black women in a big blockbuster kind of way.” To get the film made, all of the leads took massive pay cuts. Oliver didn’t reveal the exact budget, but IMDB estimates $19M and the wildly successful film ended up bringing in $150M gross worldwide.

“That was an experiment, but that has sort of become my template. We had to manage expectations because it was never treated like it was going to make $150M dollars. I thought it was going to do well. I thought I was writing something bigger, and be profitable, but I didn’t know it was going to reach those heights. “

Main Cast Of Girls Trip

“I just didn’t think it was as risky as everyone said it was. Since then, it’s become easier to pitch. I apply the same type of logic to other genres. Before Girls Trip or Get Out, you didn’t see these things, but let’s be the first group to do this.”

For the writer, the director, and the cast, Girls Trip was more about the movement, as a labor of love, than profits from the movie itself.

Moving Into Television

Since the success of Girls Trip, Oliver has taken on more responsibilities and often works to be the writer and producer on her projects. “The biggest lesson from Girls Trip, where I made so little off something that came from my head, was that the movie did well and I didn’t participate in that success.”

“Moving forward, I was going to have equity in my imagination. I want to have some type of ownership or backend in the stuff that comes out of my head. I think writers are so undervalued. People are starting to get that now, but it just doesn’t feel fair that a movie can not exist unless you write it, but you miss the backend.”

For new projects, she wants to be a producer on projects where she’s also the writer. “I know my value, so I’m not going to do the hard work without some kind of incentive based on success.”

To further shift this power dynamic, Oliver has also moved into television where writers historically have more power. “I would still say I love movies, ultimately, and that’s my heart, but there is something incredibly powerful about show running and seeing your creation from beginning to post-production. You don’t have that opportunity in features.”

“For movies, you normally go to the theater and see a rough cut, and you hope they honored what you wrote, that it translated, that the director elevated what you did. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don’t. But, in TV, you can participate in casting, in wardrobe, in music, and I found it really fun and it brought me back to my theater days.”

First Wives Club

After this successful film, Oliver was asked to work on the reboot for First Wives Club. The original movie starred Goldie Hawn, Diane Keaton, and Bette Midler, but the new version would focus on a series for modern black women.

“The pilot turned into a straight series order. I don’t want to say it was easy, but it was a drama-free experience.” The new series stars Jill Scott, Michelle Buteau, and RonReaco Lee. “It all kind of came together and nine months alter, we were in New York shooting it.” For Oliver, and many black creatives, it can be difficult to find IP for black voices.

Main Cast of First Wives Club. Photo by Crystal Power/BET

“The Sun Is also a Star is a YA novel and I was recently approached to do a new Clueless for this generation,” she said. “I do like playing with IP, but I also really like original stuff, so I try not to only do IP. Some of the best projects are original ideas.”

“For First Wives Club, I knew it was going to be about women of color, but you can’t just change the race and keep everything else the same, because now that they’re black women, it means something different. They’re not the same. There’s still a commonality, but the life experience is different. You have to write with that specificity.”

She joked, “I won’t name them, but I’ve seen projects that just change the race but do not address what that means and you feel it. The character doesn’t feel like a fully realized human being because they’re not specific, they’re not authentic. They don’t address the world in a different way.”

The original movie, about divorced women in the 90s, were also not the same. “In that movie, all of them are beholden to men and today, women make money, women are bosses, so you can’t directly copy that. To do it well, you have to apply the time period, the culture, ages, all of that stuff.”

The Writing Process

“It’s a nightmare,” joked Oliver about her busy schedule, currently hopping between First Wives Club, Savannah, and Harlem. “In the world of COVID, its been a crazy amount of Zooms and what’s been lost is just sitting face to face, having fun breaking stories.”

“It’s turned into too much alone time for me. That’s been the downside. You also have to remember all these characters and storylines, bouncing from project to project. It’s hard to keep it all in your head. Moving forward, I may strategize differently with how to schedule these things.”

“A lot of writers find themselves with scheduling nightmares, because when you’re writing something, you hope it goes to production, but you don’t know.” She said this leads to writing multiple projects at once, but then when one hits, another could hit four months later and you’re overbooked.

“It’s like high school. Someone appears popular and everyone wants this person. If one project gains heat, it reignites another. It’s great on one hand, but then you have two projects going at the same time. That’s the dance I’ve been in for the past couple of years. I’ve been lucky and blessed, but also stressed out running two things at once.”

For her writer’s room collaborations, Oliver looks for writers who have unique points-of-view, because the best shows have characters with different perspectives. “I don’t need ten of me, so I look at who’s interesting and then just, don’t be an asshole. I can pick up on that very quickly. Nobody wants that.”

Likewise, she said that the writing is still the most important thing, despite how seemingly important PR has become. “I’ve talked to so many writers who are getting headshots, growing followers, but not learning the basics of constructing a script. You might get a job off hype, but you’re not going to keep it that way. Learn your craft.”

“If you’re an introvert like me, care about the craft, don’t worry about the events and social things. Be the person who knows the craft. Turn in good drafts on time. Those people stay employed. I definitely want to shout-out to the introverts.”

This interview has been condensed. Listen to the full audio version here.