Before she even knew what filmmaking was, Nina Lee knew she wanted to do it.
The award-winning director and writer still remembers her very first movie fondly, a horror film she made in high school called, The Music Box. Unfortunately, the world will never get to see it. Not because she doesn’t want us to, but because she’s lost the DVD.
“Our professor told us to put it on YouTube, but we didn’t do it because we had a "DVD," she says sarcastically. “That DVD is nowhere to be found.”
Unfortunately, The Music Box, isn’t the only Nina Lee original we will more than likely never get to experience. Her unreleased 2017 web series The Girls Room, went viral in 2020 after Lena Waithe announced a show with the same name and an oddly similar concept; causing a Twitter firestorm for The Chi creator.
However awkward the introduction, the public encounter eventually led to Waithe executive producing Nina Lee's latest work, Artistic; a phenomenal short film about a teenage girl with Down syndrome. The film stars former NFL standout Marshawn Lynch, and is Nina's directorial debut. It has appeared in over a dozen critically-acclaimed film festivals, and even picked up the Audience Choice Award at the Chicago International Film Festival.
Fresh off the festival circuit, Atlanta Decoded caught up with Nina to discuss her journey as a Black woman in film, shooting Artistic in the middle of a pandemic, and if she has any future plans for her version of The Girls Room.
You grew up here in Atlanta. What was your childhood like?
My upbringing was cool. I grew up in Smyrna to be exact. I’m an only child, but we always had family in and out of the house. I always loved filmmaking, even as a little kid, so that was a pretty big part of my upbringing…watching movies, writing movies, and making plays with my cousins. My mom was always really supportive of me wanting to be a filmmaker. She would drive me across town so I could attend a high school with a film magnet program.
Who exposed you to filmmaking as a child? How did you even know that was an option for you?
I don’t even know if I knew it was an option, or something I could really do with my life. It was just something that I did for fun. As I started getting older, I realized it was something I wanted to do forever.
When did you realize that?
Not until college.
Where’d you go to college?
I went to Spelman.
Nice. I know Spike Lee went to Morehouse, but what was the film community like at Spelman?
At Spelman it wasn’t as much of a thing. Actually, me and four other girls put together Spelman’s first student film festival, and now it’s actually really big. There’s a major and a minor in filmmaking now. They’re building some multimillion-dollar filmmaking studio. So it’s crazy how much change has happened in 12 years.
That's an amazing legacy to have left. Do you remember the first film you ever made?
Yeah, it was in high school. I went to North Springs. We made this scary movie called, The Music Box. I lost all of it. It's so sad.
It’s not on YouTube?
No. Our professor told us to put it on YouTube. YouTube had just become a thing, but we just didn’t do it because we had a “DVD." Now that DVD is nowhere to be found. Stupid!
I’ve noticed you’ve made a couple of appearances in your projects. Is acting something you also want to pursue in the future?
Yeah, I think I’ve acted in all my projects. I don’t really have enough time to pursue acting hardcore. So I think to get that passion off, I act in everything that I write. I’m never the main character, but I’ll play a sister or cousin or something.
So your latest project, Artistic, tells the story of a young girl with Down syndrome who befriends a neighborhood drug dealer. It’s incredible, and so well-done. When did you guys actually shoot it?
We shot in August of 2020.
What was that experience like…making a film in the midst of Covid?
It was so trash. I don’t even have a positive…haha.
Well, I guess the positive, was that I was able to get someone like Marshawn Lynch to be in it, and someone like Lena Waithe to produce it. Because they weren’t really working at the time, they had time to dedicate to my little indie short film.
But the actual filming was really hard. It was a lot of money, and a lot of protocols. We had to pay for Covid tests everyday. One Covid test actually came back positive. It turned out to be a false positive, but we still had to shut down shooting for a day, and it was only a four-day shoot. So yeah, it was hard.
How’d you end up connecting with Lena Waithe?
I had a web series in 2017 called The Girls Room. Nothing really happened with it. We never even released an episode. We just released a bunch of teasers, but all the teasers we released would go viral. So it still kind of made its place in the world.
In 2020, Lena Waithe announced that she had a show coming out that was also called, The Girls Room. I didn’t really think that much about it, but the internet was like, “oh nah, you stole this show from Nina Lee.” But it turned out to be a blessing. I got to meet Lena, and I got to realize it was more of a “great minds” kind of thing.
In 2019, I had been looking for money to film Artistic, and I hadn’t raised a single dollar. So I had completely called the film off. Fast forward to March 2020, after the Girls Room thing happened, I ended up getting to meet with Lena. I showed her my deck for my short-film, and she said, “Cool, I’ll give you 50k.”
How’d you come up with the idea for, Artistic? What headspace were you in at the time?
I was substitute teaching, and I was kind of depressed. I didn’t like being a sub. I thought I would have a job in the industry. I also had an aunt that had relapsed on drugs during that time.
I decided to start subbing in special needs classrooms because the Cobb school district was having a hard time finding subs willing to go into those classes. I had nannied for special needs kids before, and my family had a foster child that had Cerebral Palsy; so special needs was never something that frightened me. They were always just people to me.
So once my students found out I was a writer and director, one of them asked me if I could write something for a kid like them.
I had always written funny stuff, but I wanted to try something serious because I was in such a “not funny” mood. I knew I wanted to do something around my aunt, but I also knew I never wanted to show a Black woman on drugs on-screen. So my story kind of came together from there.
The lead actress, Taylor Freeman, was amazing in this. How’d you end up meeting her?
She’s such a star. We had a casting director who was looking in LA and Atlanta for a teenage girl with Down syndrome, and we were really struggling. So I put something out on Twitter, and someone from a Down syndrome-mom Facebook group DM’d me. A couple of hours later, I had Taylor’s headshots.
She did an audition, and she was the only one we ever did. I was actually really happy that she was the only one, because I don’t know who could’ve been better than her. And I would’ve hated to have to turn other girls down. I was dreading having 20 girls with Down syndrome audition for this role. I didn’t want them to feel like this was their only shot.
So it just worked out really well. She was perfect. She had never acted before, but a week before, she told her mom that she wanted to act. Her mom said she wasn’t really sure if Taylor would ever actually get an opportunity, but a week later she was cast in a Lena Waithe executive-produced film starring Marshawn Lynch. So listen to your kids!
You actually personally requested Lynch for the drug-dealer role. He doesn’t have a huge acting background. What gave you the instinct that he was the guy to lead this film?
I just thought he was really cool, and I had seen him in commercials. For this character, I knew I wanted someone who had dreads, tattoos, gold teeth; but who also had a sensitive side. I remember not even telling anyone that I wanted Marshawn, but I spoke to two separate people who both said, “It would be so cool if you could get Marshawn Lynch for this.” So I said, that makes three of us. I’m gonna ask.
When you look back on the creation of the film, what’s the moment you admire most?
It’s more of a funny moment. Taylor was a diva, and I loved it. She was really professional. Marshawn didn’t really know his lines, so Taylor would feed him his lines before every scene. And then after we would cut, she would tell the audio guy that she needed water. And he would be like “I do audio Taylor.” And she’d say, “Dave…I said my water.” So it was really cool to see her be so comfortable being herself. It made me really excited.
Taylor actually goes to Clemson now. She’s one of the first students with Down syndrome to enroll in the school. She’s great.
So Artistic has been in quite a few film festivals. What have the reactions to the film been like?
The reactions have been really great. I think I got my worse reactions at Atlanta Film Festival, which was really surprising cause it’s like, damn, not in my home! But they liked it everywhere else.
As an artist, how do you deal with the negative feedback?
To me, I think the criticism is really important, even though it does hurt my feelings. I really just want to know how to become a better director moving forward. So some of it I didn’t agree with, but some of it I was like, “yeah, I wish I had done that.” So I think I kind of liked the criticism. As long as it’s not stupid.
So would you say Artistic is your favorite project to date?
I think The Girls Room is still my favorite.
Do you still want to put it out?
No. Never. There’s still a lot of hurt and pain for me around that project. But all in all, it’s still my favorite, and I hate things didn’t go the way we imagined. But it be like that.
The film industry is dominated by white men. What has your experience in the industry been like as a Black woman?
For me, I never know if the things that are happening to me, are happening because they’re just happening, or if they’re happening because I’m Black and also a woman. My experience so far has just affirmed to me why I need to tell the the stories of Black women. And not just tell the stories, but also make sure that I have Black women in the background helping me tell the stories.
The film industry is booming in Atlanta right now. Some say it’s the “new Hollywood.” As someone working in the industry, do you agree with that? Or would you rather be in LA?
I mean I’d rather be in Atlanta, not because of my career, but just because I like it here. I do think when it comes to directing and writing, all of those jobs are still getting selected from the LA talent pool. They come here with the director, writer, and lead actors already selected. So once they're here, they’re really just looking for PA’s and supporting characters. The really big positions are still coming from LA.
But I don’t think you have to up-and-move to LA to make things happen. I think you focus on what's available to you in Atlanta. Meet more people, and then if you want to go to LA, go. But at the end of the day, just do what feels right to you.
You worked at Netflix for some time. They’ve been in the news a lot lately for their recent layoffs. Do you know anyone who was affected, and how do you feel about the situation?
Yeah, it’s really devastating. I think I was the first freelancer that Strong Black Lead hired. I worked really hard, along with my team, to build it up to what it is. So I really hope they don’t do away with it, because it brought attention to Black actors, directors, set designers across Netflix, which is so important! We did a lot to make sure the people knew who they were, and knew their faces. So regardless of what happens, all I care about is that they keep it.
Do you have a project that you know you absolutely want to make in your career?
Yep. I’ve written a feature called Mary Maria. I’ve entered the script into a few festivals, and it gets really great reviews. I would have still been excited if it got bad ones, but it makes me really excited that it’s doing well in the circuits, just as a script.
It’s about a biracial girl who grew up in an Amish community, and during Rumspringa, she leaves her community for the first time. She’s introduced to Black people for the first time. She falls under their wings, and at the end of her Rumspringa, she has to decide if she wants to stay on the outside, or go back into her Amish community.
Sounds like a hit to me. I’ve never seen anything like that on screen. How did you even think of this story?
My grandmother use to drive to Amish country in Tennessee a lot to buy jams and stuff. I remember seeing them and thinking, that’s interesting…I wonder if there are Black Amish people? I just always thought about it. So I said well, I’m gonna write the story.
Generally, I try to stay away from biracial stories because I think there’s a lot of space for biracial actors in Hollywood right now; spaces that are kind of denied to Black women…but I just really like this story.
I have a lot of friends that are biracial, but they’re actually darker than me. I think that’s an interesting aspect to being biracial that you don’t always see…being biracial when you just look Black. So that’s how I envision this character. She’s brown skinned with coily hair.
Most people don’t get a chance to do what they love as a career. I know your journey hasn’t always been easy. Actually, you told me that a lot of your goals just started coming to fruition this year. So how does it feel to have now, come so far in this industry?
Yeah, it’s been a really hard journey. I’ve known since I was a kid that I only wanted to do filmmaking. Growing up, I thought because I knew so well that that’s what I wanted to do; I thought my journey would be easy. And it was just never easy for me. I’ve had to work so hard, just to get an inch ahead.
I read this quote on Twitter that said, “When God gives you a passion, He will open every door for you.” I think that’s true, but I think it sometimes takes a while for those doors to open. You have to knock on a lot of doors. Sometimes doors will open, and you'll realize what’s inside, isn’t for you, and then you have to go back out to knock on more doors. So I think it’s important to know that just because something is your passion, doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy. But it does mean that you have to stay persistent, because doing anything else just won’t bring you the same joy.
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