Hey, wait, how is it I always forget? Oh okay, I got it. Hey, Hey, hey, hey, hey we're back. We're black. We're extra black today, We're brown. Ambition, ambition, ambition, ambition, ambition. I'm so excited today because we got some extra blackness in the stew. You know, I like to say the stew because it makes me feel young, and so we cannot wait to introduce you to I guess today, but I'm gonna let manager take over first of all, Mandy, how are you girl? Because your girls are popping?
Are they?
Oh?
Thank you? You know I how to get it together. I just woke up from my now twenty minutes ago. I'm not even gonna try to front mister Cherry. I am very pregnant and I take a lot of nabs now, but I'm so so excited to have you with us today. Ba fam. This is an opportunity that we have been
waiting for for a while. Not gonna lie. As soon as we started partnering with Dove back in February and I saw that this gentleman was a part of the Dove hair Care Influencer hair Care Partnership group, I was like, who can we get Matthew Cherry on the podcast. I mean, like, what's he up to? What's his contract? Say? Does he need to do? Like some podcast episodes. I'm so excited to have Matthew here. So if y'all are not familiar with Matthew Cherry, let me remind y'all this man used
to be an NFL player. Don't ask me what position. I'm sure it was very impressive. But for several years you were in the NFL and then pivoted into Hollywood. Right, So a little like Kobe Bryant, Flavor here pivoted into Hollywood, worked as a production assistant, so brought him all the way back. That's basically like being an intern, right, I mean, you really like paid your dues in the early days.
Right.
And then less than a decade later, was on stage at the Oscars accepting an award for his beautiful, beautiful film called Hair Love, which if you haven't seen it having got the book, don't follow him on insta been living under a hole. You have to have to check it out. It is so sweet. It really pictures a father and his daughter, you know, experiencing what it's like to embrace her hair texture and to make her feel beautiful and it was just lovely. But since then, Matthew
has been on a tear. I mean, you've directed so many episodes of my favorite shows on TV. I'm Playing It, Cool Abbot, Elementary, Blackish, The Wonder Years, plus the reboot of bel Air Saved by the Bell and Moore. You have been an Academy Sorry, You've been an executive producer for the film Black Clansman with Spike Lee, and you've also worked as an executive at Jordan Peele's production company, Monkey Pop Productions. So we are so so excited to
have you at the on the show. Matthew Cherry, thank you so much for joining us.
No, thanks for having me excited to talk to you.
I just wanted to say, like, everything he's done has been super black, which I love. I'm like, damn, we thought we were black over here. Everything is black black, the black black, black out of black black black.
So go ahead skip the part where he directed Michelle Williams one of her first music videos right when she went solo.
It was it was a little later on, but yeah, I did say yes for her being Kelly.
Yes, And you've worked with Jasmine Sullivan, Chloe cally Leyla Hathaway. Yeah, so everything not bad, But the career pivot from the NFL into entertainment was that planned? Did you know you wanted to be a filmmaker.
Yeah, you know, I am. It's interesting like growing up having the dream of trying to play professional sports. Like a lot of times you will meet a lot of guys who that's all they have when you ask them what they want to do. I only have a plan a, you know, I want to make it to the league. And for me, I don't know. I always had other interests, you know. I was always into entertainment. I'm from Chicago, so you know, the Midwest, at least back in the day,
didn't have like this thriving film industry. It kind of has now, like a lot of cities now have it, like Atlanta and North Carolina, et cetera. And I don't know, I just didn't know exactly what it was going to be, but I knew I had interest in it, you know. I was part of like the radio club in high school. I made her a radio TV broadcasts and media production. I interned at a lot of radio stations when I was in college. So ian z Zak and Cleveland, and
so I don't know. I thought it was going to be a little bit more on the music side or the radio side. But then you know, it was lucky enough to make it to the league as an underacted free agent and just kind of bounced around a lot. And I knew really early on in my rookie year, like, all right, you know, I may this may not work out for me in the same way that works out with a lot of people, because you know, it's less about ability. A lot of it is just like kind
of right place, right time. Some of it as politics, and you know a lot of guys have incredible ability, but for whatever reason, they end up on the wrong team and don't have like the ball rolling their quart or whatever. So you know, I didn't want to be one of those guys that was like ten years and I'm like playing you know, some overseas league and you know, just making like minimum wage basically still get knocked upside the head. And I gave myself like a three year plan.
I was like, if I can't like officially make it within this three years, I'm going to just retire early and I'm going to go to either LA or New York.
And try to figure out this entertainment thing. And I was lucky to meet this woman who was a part of this nonprofit organization called street Lights and so if street Lights their website is street lights dot org and they're a nonprofit that helped men and women of color get jobs as production assistants, mostly in commercials and music videos, and now it's kind of expanded to a lot of
other things. And that was just like my ticket. I knew I'd never been in la before, I didn't know anybody there, so I applied and you know, thankfully got in. And you know, like anything in this business, like you know, you do a good job on one job and then you know they'll go off to do other things and sometimes they'll bring you along, sometimes they won't, but you know,
one became two and I was lucky enough. My first show I p eight on His Girlfriends with Marv Brockakeel on their eighth season, and you know, just seeing like Debbie allen See and Marv Brockakeel, you know, I was Prentice Penny, who you know was the show runner for insic Heure was there. Kenya Barris, you know, was there as the junior level writer. Lean Away, Me and lean Away were like, she was a writer's assistant. I was
a PA. So it's just like one of those crazy things where just a lot of people kind of were in the same place at the same time because there were so few black shows at the time. You know, went from there and was.
Able to like really see who is doing what and what jobs seemed like they were appealing, and you know, I saw you know, Debbie Allens in the director's chair and I was like, man, you know, I want to learn more about that, and just kind of took a little bit more of an interest in it, and you know, was able to kind of pivot and do some music videos and some short films and you know, here I am today.
Wow, I feel like there needs to be a documentary on that final season of Girlfriends and everyone behind the scenes.
Yes, it feels like it's pretty creaty to me. Karen just who was a show r ner star. I mean it's like literally like half the industry came off with a Girlfriends.
Like for real, Wow, that's incredible. Like financially, how were you doing at that time? Because you're PAA, you come from an NFL, you're in LA like you're around all these successful people. Was it hard were you feeling like, damn, I'm kind of struggling, but I got to look like I'm making it.
That was like low key the story of my life, like being in these jobs where like everybody else was making crazy money and I wasn't. So it's like being adjacent to the flyings but not really being able to get it for myself. So, like my rookie year in the league, I was on the practice squad and after taxes it was like thirty five thousand dollars. It was like eighty thousand base salary, but they taxed you at the highest rate and you got agent fees, et cetera.
And you know, it was kind of similar money being a PA. Well, you know it's like back then, it's like, you know, you're just trying to make it. So you know, maybe you have a roommate, you know, your cars, you know kind of janky, so you know, you just kind of doing what you need to do to survive. But yeah, PA's really didn't make a lot of money. I think today they still kind of don't. Like, I know, if you do a commercial back then, at least you know,
like two hundred dollars a day. But you know, there are ways that you could kind of stretch it out, like if you drove the production truck and you were able to like pick up the equipment that gives you an extra day and then you have to return and so you know, they were like little creative ways you can kind of hustle around it. But TV was always kind of the most consistent, just because like the commercial world, you got to like it was just a consistent hustle.
Some months you may work fifteen days, another month you may only work three. So it was like very hustle driven, and I didn't really like that side of things, so I tried to get on the TV side and it was great. You know, like Girlfriends, you make it on in like August, and the show will go to like March or April, and you know, so it's like a pretty consistent gig.
We need to share that link with anyone who's interested. Street Light, you.
Said, street lights dot orget.
I love that you went through a nonprofit and it wasn't like, yeah, I just meant someone on the bench, and you know, as a Hollywood producer, oh.
No, no, yeah, yeah, some people have that story. I've always like taken the back door in a lot of ways, I feel like.
So, you know, the question many asked about how was financially then is really poignant for me because I remember being broken then not being broke, but having a hard time reconciling that I wasn't broken any or like did you have that like that transition? How did that feel
when you actually started to make money? Do you feel like financially secure now or are you still kind of like like because I'm still suffering from what I call post traumatic brokes, Like at any date, the people gonna come and get my things, you know, like have you suffered from that? And if so, how did you move past it? Or you know, how are you managing that now?
You know? You know, for me, really directing television has been like the biggest blessing and it's just ironic because I started as a BA, you know, watching directors kind of do it, and that has really been I think the main thing for me that has kind of allowed
me to feel financially secure. You know, I think for me being around it so much, you know, be that being a PA and you know, bring Tracy ls Ross from a trailer, you know, to the said or you know, like having to park their car or things like that. You know, I've always been around it, you know, even in the league, Like, man, you know you're pulling that parking lot. It's pretty crazy. So and I got like the worst car there. So you know, I've always been
around it. And so I've always like felt like, Okay, when this happens, I think I know how I'm gonna move. So I don't not necessarily think I had that same syndrome that you spoke of, but you know, it is a transition. It's just like, you know, taxes is the biggest thing, you know, like you know, and what I do. You know, a lot of times you just get paid whatever the rate is. You just get paid that straight up,
and they don't take taxes out. So you know, you work X amount of jobs, at the end of the year, you may end up with like this huge tax bill. So you have to be like very smart and strategic about like, all right, I'm gonna pay my stuff every quarterly just so that you know, at the end of the year and you know, I hit with like the
six figure kind of tax thing or whatever. So it's like been things like that that you have to kind of be mindful of, you know, getting your LLC set up and you know, making sure you have them like the right right offs. Yeah, just just things like that has been kind of new in that way, and you know you have to you go through your growing pains with it and kind of figure out what works best
for you. But yeah, it's just like and the cool thing, like with both the league and with film is like you have all these creative write offs, you know, like I know some of them kind of went away when some tax codes changed recently, but like you know, being an NFL player, you could buy a TV and buy the big entertainment system to be like, look, I need this to watch film, and that could be a big write off. You know. With film you go to the movies,
that's a rite off. So it's you can get creative with it, but you also have to be really smart because, like anything, they're like high piers in their low periods. Like right now they're talking about there's going to probably be another strike, you know, which is crazy because when I first moved to LA. Yeah, when I first go to LA, girlfriends went down because of the first writer
strike that that that was a part of. So you know, you got to be just really lean and creative with it to try to get through these rough months because I do think it's probably going to be down for at least three or four months, and you know, not a lot of people are going to be working.
So you went from yes, miss Ellis Ross, can I let's get you some coffee? To then miss Ellis Ross, could you do another take for me? Because you then directed her in Blackish? What was that like?
Man? It was really cool, like, yeah, you know, I've been a big fan of Tracy, Like I remember her being on the Lyricist Lounge show back in the day, and you know, you know, she's just been talented all her life, and yeah, it was it was a really surreal moment for real, like you know, and there are a few people like can you literally? Like I mentioned, he was a writer on Girlfriends you know back in the day too, So to kind of like a creator as Cross kind of in that way was really awesome.
And you know, she's really gracious and always has in and just a really great person. So it was smooth And did.
That come from the once you And first of all, like hair love, I want to talk about that because such a beautiful, such a beautiful short, but you had to have you raised money for that, Like you had to raise what three hundred thousand dollars?
Yeah, so to get that made. Yeah, so that wasn't necessarily our like initial goal. So I'll share my philosophy with kickstarter. So with raising money online, like you know, I think one the first thing is like you have to have a decent social media following if you're trying to raise like a significant amount of money, right, Like that was my third Kickstarter, So I'd done like a Kickstarter for my first movie, The Last Fall. I dine another one for my second movie, Nine Rides, and they
both were like a bit of a struggle. Did you raise fifteen thousand dollars? Like it was literally reaching out to people from Facebook that you maybe talk to in like twenty years, some high school and things, Hey check out this link. You know, I'm a filmmaker now, you know, see if you can throw twenty on it. And it was just like literally every person that don't to those first two, I feel like I knew them directly. And it was because I, you know, personally reached out to him.
Was the reason why we hit barely hit that goal. But for this one, it was you know, I know it was going to be animated, you know, I knew we're gonna need a lot a bigger budget just because I didn't really know how things were going to play out.
And so I think we set the budget of like seventy five thousand initially with the hope though that we would raise more, just because with Kickstarter, if you don't hit your number, then you don't get anything, but you can raise more than your initial goals.
So I didn't know that.
Yeah, yeah, I mean there's some like yeah, there's some like any Go Go and you know Seed and Spark, where you know you kind of get what you raised, but you know, it kind of incentivized you. Honestly, I actually prefer it that way because you know, you can't really slack with it. You know, if you know that you're just gonna raise what you get, you you may not post about it as urgently as you may, you know,
knowing that all it's now or nothing, you know. And so yeah, it was just like this this big hustle, and a lot of it was just kind of like growing the brand on social media, even like before the Kickstarter went, you know, just being more than just hopping on when you have a project to promote, you know, sharing your day, sharing advice, you know, just kind of being yourself. And obviously not social media isn't for everybody, and I think Twitter is taking a bit of a
darker turn kind of in recent years. But you know, back in the day, it was it was fun and you could be yourself and it wouldn't be a lot of drama or a lot of smoke, and you could just do it. And you know, I was able to raise my following up to a way bigger than I had in the first couple Kickstarter campaigns, so had a bigger support level. I think with the project, there were a couple of things that just were like sometimes you can't even predict what's going to happen. So Asty Harrison.
She did the artwork for us, and I caught her maybe six months before her first book came out, Little Leaders. Yeah, she blew up. She blew up, Like you can't even like get on her schedule now because she's like so crazy. But we literally i'd literally caught her before she came out, and apparently our book publisher was a big fans of her.
I didn't even know this back in the day, so when we ended up doing the artwork and things, that's how That's how Penguin Random House reached out, because they're like, oh, you guys doing a picture, but for this, like we
would let to collab. So that was one thing. Another couple of things that happened is just that you know, Dove reached out and that was really cool, just because you know, I think for us it was a matter of, like, you share the story of what you want to do, you kind of do a personal video, and I think the artwork, I think the storyline about us wanting to do the story about a black father trying to do their daughter's hair for the first time, it just really
resonated and so really beyond any of the first two Kickstarter campaigns. Majority of the people that donated to this I didn't even know personally, Like I didn't even slide the link to them directly. It just kind of went a viral on its own. And I think, you know, you just can't predict those things, you know, like sometimes you're just in the right place, right time, And I
think that was one of them. And I think also the state of animation at that time was really important for the success of this too, because back then there was no Spider Verse, there was no you know, Mowana, there was no you know incanto, like brown, black and brown characters were damn near non existent in animated movies. It was you know, Princess and the Frog, it was around his movie home, it was Baby's kids, and then I think Prince of Egypt. Yeah, it was like princip was.
Literally like, first of all, Baby, it's like twenty five for any you got a big conic, yeah, iconic.
No, for sure. So there was just like a bit of a starving I think for our community to kind of see themselves in this animated form. And I think for.
Us, it's twenty twenty out in twenty twenty.
So the kickstarted with twenty seventeen.
Yeah, this is like a four or five year journey for you. Yeys, no three, I'm glad at math that's bad.
Well, and then the auscar has.
Happened in twenty twenty, right, Yeah till now. I that really with me because I feel like the beauty of your story is just like, you know, you do the work. You don't wait for the people with opportunity, you know, people with power to tap you on the shoulder, like, Oh, Matthew, we heard about you. You know this is incredible. You do the work, you put it out there.
Yeah, you don't wait, I mean I think that's just yeah. I think that's how you got to be in this game. You know, like there's so many reasons why people will tell you no, and like if you can prove the idea, then it just makes it that much easier for you know, I always share the story, like I don't know if it's real or not, but I attributed to Chris Rock and it's a story about I guess back when he
was a broke comedian. You know, he would his car it breakdown all the time, and he'd be on the side of the road trying to like put his thumb out, trying to get somebody to like pick him up so he can like take it to the shop or whatever. And nobody would stop when he had his thumb out, But when he would get behind his car and he'd actually start pushing it to try to get it to his destination, that's when people would pull over to try
to help him. And I just always attributed to like, you know, people want to help people that they see you're helping themselves, and you know, I think that's just how you got to in this new day and age of streaming and a thousand reasons why somebody will tell you no, like you have to put yourself in a position to help yourself so that people can hop in and help you get it over the line. Yeah.
No.
I have to say your kickstarted really inspired because I used to teach preschool for ten years and I struggled to find books with like and I taught at Newark, which is like, you know, black and be black black, and I struggled to find books with black babies and so so I teach fry that education. But I wrote a book called Happy Birthday Molly More, and I was like, she's gonna be black, She's going to have like four c CCC hair, you know. And I did a gig start.
I think I wanted to raise thirty five thousand. We raised seventy. But I remember being so thank you, so inspired by because I remember going to Target and being like, there's well, yeah, hair.
Love, you know.
And now when you go to Target, yes, I'm like, do they make books like a whole sexually? I'm like, do they big books, not even the whole go hold of target. Everybody is POC. Great, we have all this juicy goodness to Matthew, We're going to pause with the cause for quick breaks. We could pay these bills. We'll be right back and we're back in black and back in business. Let's keep chatting. As a director, how do you feel black representation has been, like has changed since you first came out.
Yeah, I think it's like been a really big shift in a lot of ways. You know, you know, it isn't it isn't right. It's like in front of the camera for show, like you know, I think there's been this really big push to you know, make sure you know. I think back in the day, it was like, all right, maybe we'll get one character in there, and it's like the black friend that like you never see their inner life and never meet the parents or any of that stuff.
They just are there to service, like the main character who was in the POC. But now you're really seeing this push to really just have diverse casts all around, you know, like you know, multiple black characters kind of in an ensemble cast. You know, you know brown you know brown representation, you know, agent representation, just you're you're
seeing it really across the board. But with that said, still behind the camera, you know, people would like to think that it's really changed a lot, but it really hasn't. You know. There are always studies that come out, and probably in TV is where it's been the biggest boom for diversity, just because literally thousands of TV shows, so they kind of have to you know, like you can't. Back in the day, they were like, you know, maybe a couple of hundred. Now they're thousands, so you kind
of have to reach the net a little wider. But you know, in film, it's still very much the same as it kind of it's always been. You know, it's really hard for you know, black and brown directors to
get opportunities. You know, I think I saw a study that UCLA did where they were talking about which streaming apparently numbers have gotten more diverse because again, thousands of opportunities, right, But when it comes to theatrical the numbers are still very much like seventy seven percent white white men that are directing most of the movies that go to have
theatrical releases. So you know, there's still a lot of work to be done, and that was one of the cool things about being an executive at Monkey Paul, which is Jordan Pil's company, like being able to be on the other side of things and you know, trying to you know, beat the drum for other black creators to
kind of get in there to have their opportunities. But you know, we need more of us not only behind the camera, but also in the boardrooms also at the production companies, you know, because this to get a project moved forward, it has to go to so many layers. You know, you have to get it through you know,
some low level executing. You got to take it to the higher ups and they got to take it to their board and then you know, so to get a project through like five different layers of trying to move it forward, and then you know you have the super Black project and now you get to the top and it's like no black people on this approval board, you know. And that's why a lot of movies have a hard time moving forward, just because they can't see If they can't see themselves as a hero, they don't want to
move help over forward. And the crazy thing is like we have been conditioned. We we black audiences. We only we have to see the humanity and other characters because all our life, you know, it's like, shit, we weren't a pretty women. We weren't in Princess Bride, you know what I mean? Like we have to kind of find the ways to find empathy in characters. And I think people are filming some kind of way because now they're having to find empathy in our characters and they're not used to it.
I mean, you know, you think about movies like to see Ryan Koogler. For example, my husband and I just saw Creed three, Yeah, director by Michael B. Jordan's starring Michael B.
Jordan.
I was like, this is with Jonathan Majors. I mean, just an incredibly from Newark.
I'm saying brick City, Okay, yeah, he wants to like say Benedict's High School. He's I live in New York, yeah and so and so Yeah, he's born and raised in Newark.
And you sort of and you think about Ryan Kugler getting his start, yeah with fruit Vale, but then also Black Panther. And when Black Panther came out, people were like, is this the moment it is if this film did
phenomenally well. But then you sort of saw this tapering off, like there wasn't this huge, you know, renaissance, And I feel like even the names you still see doing black film, like Spike Lee's been around forever, you know, but like, are there any other than yourself, new exciting black filmmakers or projects that you're like, this is you know, this person probably wouldn't have made it ten years ago, but they're making it now.
Oh yeah, I mean shit, I mean damn near, damn near everybody you know, damn near, Ryan included. You know, it's like it's just thankfully because people are taking more risk, especially in the independent space. You know, Ryan had to be indie. You know, he did a movie for less than a million dollars, you know, got it, got it into Sunday. And so Aby Rockwell, whose movie one thousand and one just came out starring Tianna Taylor. You know,
she just did the Sundance move as well. It's coming out with the It just came out a couple of weeks ago. Through Focused Features. Yeah, I can list of you know, a hundred different names of people that you know are deserving and thankfully have finally gotten their opportunity. But there's also a lot that haven't gotten that opportunity.
You know, back in the day, it really felt like, at least into twenty tens, when I was transitioning from being into directing, always kind of felt like there could only be one black director per year, so you know, and if you weren't that one, that was kind of the crown was put upon your head. Like you know, it's like back to score one. You know, you do a movie and all right, it didn't hit, So now what you know, and you got to like try to find money or think of another idea to try to
get back at it again. So you know, I think whenever we get into a place where opportunities are just like abundant and you know, we don't have these kind of dips and these highs and these I think that's really when we're gonna see that true parody that's going to happen. But you know, I think now we're going to see a big bubble bursting in the streaming industry just because like everybody has been this big arms race of people trying to like put money in and they're
not really getting their money back. So you know, I think it's going to become even harder for black and brown creators to get their voices out there, because you know, the belts are about to get.
Tighter, for sure, and we're probably gonna be the first to oh for sure. Always kicked off the schedule, the plan.
Let's make a let's talk about it, you know, since me and these girls are packing and our locks are popping, so like we would love to like like once, you're because when I went natural, Oh my gosh, I remember my mother distinctly said both of my parents are Nigerian. And the first thing she said to me that think was my dad. He said, so you never plan on marriage?
Oh yeah, that's crazy.
What does that mean?
Well, that's because back then, like and it's so crazy because they grew up up in a time when I remember my mom had an afro win right, you know, and then it just became like, you know, natural hair was very unfashionable and it was very unprofessional, you know, and so me going natural was like this political statement. It was just because for me, I didn't like the way the perm made my scout feel. It wasn't I wasn't trying to be political. I was just like, why
can't I wear from? And so so I'm curious about like what has your hair journey been like, Like, you know, what was your hair like in middle school? How long have you had locked and what's your journey been like?
You know, you know, I've always had my hair pretty low, I guess, like kind of growing up, you know, to being an athlete and honestly just me and honest not really knowing a lot about the natural hair movement kind of growing up. You know, my mom she used to she worked in a corporate settings, so she would always had to either straighten her hair, you know, throw a throw a more quote unquote professional you know, wig on or something. And so I know it's also a little
different for guys. I feel like, you know, being an athlete, like nobody ever really came at me for like my hair or my hair texture. But you know, my sister, you know, I always I always know that she felt like maybe she didn't feel like dogs. I probably gotta talk to her about this back when she was younger, but you know, she always used to have to wear her hair straightened, you know, because that was kind of
what was the norm I guess back then. And I think and that's also a bit of the reason why for me, we really wanted to do it animated and with a young kid as a protagonist, just because I think a lot of kids natural hair journey starts, not even natural hair journey, but hair journeys in general start
when they're children. And so when you grow up and you watch these cartoons and you know, you watch these images of kind of who the heroes and these stories and what are the things that I want to be, you know a lot of times that's like that's a
big influence. Like I'll never forget when Frozen came out, you know, seeing you know, little black girls run around with the blonde straight wigs and things trying to like beat these characters, and it just was like damn, you know, like I really wish there was characters that looked like them, that had their type of hair, so they felt like they could be the hero in their own story and not feel like they have to kind of conform to what other people are trying to say that they need
to look like. And so yeah, for me, like being an athlete, being an athlete, being in film, I've never been told like, can't wear your hair like that cares une professional, you know what I mean. Like both of those industries are very embracing of Like, you know, if I was in any other profession that was more quote unquote corporate, for sure, probably had to have some hard conversations. And that's a big reason why too. Like I'm so happy that the Crown Act has become a lot more popular,
and it's like passing in more states. Still hasn't been passed on a federal level, but very important. And I just think, you know, at the end of the day, you got to just let people be who they want to be. Like they want to wear their hair straight, they want to wear it short, they don't want to have hair at all. Like it's all good and there's no reason why we need to be policing how people's hair grows out of their head. It's like it is none of your business.
Really, I mean you honestly, like you've become an icon for black hair hair equality. I feel like ever since doing Hair Love was that was that part of the intention behind the film? Were you I know you're a dad now, right, were you dad at the time? Did you think about your daughter?
No? No, I wasn't.
Okay, I wasn't.
But you know, I'm really big on empathy and like seeing a battle that I knew I was going to be fighting hopefully in the future, you know what I mean, Like the idea that I mean, there's always a story, you know, like kids being kicked out of school because their hair is a certain way, or being told they can't work in a certain place because the hair looks like this. It's just it was the stupidest thing to me.
I think kind of the activism part of it all definitely was like very organic like that when never was really the intention going in. I think the activism was supposed to be more so just like look at this little girl who loves herself, she loves her hair, she has four sea hair like. She is a character that
hopefully little girls can and want to be like. But you know, things kind of took off in a different way with this, with this project, so you know, it never has a short film, had a book, want an Oscar, got a TV show about to come, and a hair product like it's just been pretty wild.
I love that. I love that. I was going to ask you about that. So you've been a major part of Dove's hair Love collection inspired by your film, which is awesome, Like, and so I know that their dad's out there? Who are like, because how old is your your.
She turned six months tomorrow.
Actually cool, she's a new baby.
Oh yeah, you'll be.
There maybe as a little boy.
But I was kind of I thought I might have heard a little something are you at home right now?
Yeah? She probably cried in the background because.
My mommy ears are just like somebody get that baby?
So like what knowing that? What you know now about like you know kind of like as you been like steeped into like the haircure journey and like you said, how different it was for your daughter, for your sister, like any like what are you anticipating? Do you have any advice for new dads? It's like, how do I start to instill man that you're here?
Is beautiful? You know. I think the two things of advice I would say is listen, you know what I mean, Like, you know, a big part of our short was this idea of like parents taking the time to not get out of their own head and actually listen to their kids and what they want. So that's a big one. And then also, you know, just the information is out there.
You know, if you want to learn how to do hair, you know, there's all kinds of vlogs on YouTube and you know, websites and groups and all kinds of things that you can be a part of to try to figure it out. You know, I think for me, doing hair is less about just the act itself. It's more about just getting that personal time, you know, with your loved one and kind of showing them how much you care. And I think that's really also it's also a really
amazing way to buyd I think with your kids. You know, it's just YouTube in a room and you got this goal and you're trying to figure it out. You know, I think it's a real awesome way to kind of show how much you love a person. And you know, it's one of the things where you do it and you know other people were able to kind of see that love as they walk through that day, you know, with that hairstyle that you were able to put together.
So you know, definitely, you know, our little one right now, she's probably gonna be a late bloomer when it comes to you know, having a you know, a full head of hair. That's you know, right right now, it's a little low, but you know, I'm looking forward to, you know, when it starts a sprout, like a like a wead. I'm sure it's coming soon.
Yeah, I mean, I feel like I feel like kids today has such an incredible opportunity because with the Hey, with the the hair care line at Target, and all these stories that I go to for my son, I'm like, take a flavor, any flavor. It's so many options. I feel like in our childhood, at least for me. We talked about this before, but it was not exactly an experience where I felt my mother's love. It was or like, is my mom gonna put me up for adoption? My mom's white, like is she going to send me back
after this? Because she really doesn't seem to like this. But no, it's it's incredible. And even just the like your acknowledgment, like you're understanding that this will be something that I'm going to, you know, intentionally think of in a positive way, is already I feel like such a great example for dads, you know, or for any any man who's caring for a little girl, you know, with natural hair.
Yeah, I mean, I think it's like this idea that I think back in twenty seventeen, twenty twenty, you know, when when when the project was a little newer, Like, you know, the idea of a dad doing the daughter's hair was this kind of new, newer idea and like obviously people have done it, you know, back in the day, but you know, trying to bring it to a bigger
audience of things. You know, dads always get credit and pass on the back for doing the most basic things, you know what I think saying that, I mean, you know, it's like you're be a parent, you know, And I think the normalizing of you know, fathers doing this and then not being some anomaly that you know, we need to bake this big fuss about. It's like all right, you know, like my wife's at work early and I'm here,
so I'm gonna do the hair. Like it's not some big thing that needs to be this big deal or anything. So I think also just the normalizing of it was really important too, so that you know, the pats aren't so big when.
It happens you want to go viral. Matthew just posted the video of you brushing daughter's little fear.
Viral.
You will be you went a war.
I love I love I love the dads that babysit their own baby, you know, like oh do you need money for that is?
How has that transition? Go ahead?
No, no, go go ahead, go ahead.
I wanted to ask you because you are busy doing a bunch of different projects. I'm sure. How has that transition been? Figuring out the schedule with a newborn at home?
Oh yeah, that's crazy. You know, was tired all the time. But you know it's great though. It's just it's something that you know has to be figured out. You know. We were lucky enough to be able to get a little nanny situation, so that kind of helps us because my wife has to go into work and a lot of times I have to try to like work either from home or have to go somewhere on set somewhere
to be working too. So to kind of have somebody who can be holding it down and kind of like know what we want them to do has been like super super important. You know. Have we not been in this position and living in la where we don't have family, probably would live back in Chicago or on the East Coast somewhere, so we would have had family close by to be able to do a similar thing.
Just final question for me, like what is your hair care routine? You have talks now, Yeah, so what do you do to maintain them? Keep them?
Help listen. I don't have much of a routine at all. Just you know, I'm in I'm in like filmmaker mode. So you know, I just wake up. You know, I got my little lock sock that I put on to kind of protected at night, or you know, you get the silk pillow case, and you know, I just I just go through the day just doing my thing. And you know, every three or four weeks, I get up with my hairstylists who retwists me. But yeah, I don't have like this big routine, you know, especially now that like,
I don't really have a lot going on. I'm just at home. So you know, obviously when it was like you're hitting up war shows and things, You're you're way on it a lot more. But yeah, I'm always been pretty low key with things. So yeah, it's not this big thing.
Yeah that's what I love about locks because people always like, oh my gosh, I'm like, honestly, I don't do anything. Like when I had a fro oh yeah, there was so much work. I don't know how you do a mandy like with your hair for because just the level of product. You can't just leave the house when you have a frow. The pig pick path to destroy my life. Now, I'm just like, I literally woke up like this. I was like, oh, this is my sleep.
It still looks cute.
Yeah, I know. We should get paid for our time, for the additional hair hairtime. I wanted to know, Matthew, what are you working on now? What should people know about you? What do you have coming up next? Is an annoying question.
Oh no, no, not at all. No. We so we turned a hair Love into a TV series. So we've been working on it for almost three years now, so it's going to be coming out this fall on HBO Max. The new name of it is young Love, so not hair Love because we had this really creative way of thinking about it. So the dad his name is Stephen Love, and the mom her name is Angela and Young so
you put it together young Love. So it's really fun and it's kind of a show that one thing and one thing I noticed about animated series were that a lot of times you never really saw from the millennial perspective. So like a lot of times the dad's the parents were already established. They're like in their career, they're making money, Like, you know, money was never an issue and their dream
was already quote unquote fulfilled. Right for us, we wanted to do this show where it's kind of like you have this young, unmarried couple who as a young child, but they still love each other. They're figuring things out. They live with her grandparents. They live with her parents, so Zuri's grandparents, and they haven't really achieved their career dreams or gold yet, so they're still trying to figure that out. They're still trying to raise his young daughter.
And it's set on the West Side of Chicago, so it's like, uh, you know, very very black neighborhood and environment, and you know, obviously there are a lot of challenges that have come with it. Angela's a hairstylist, Steven is a producers and Zuri is just her same like confident, energetic self and you know, hilarity ensued. So really excited about it and that'll be coming out this fall. So yeah, that's kind of the.
Big one voice iss Zuri.
Man, we haven't announced everybody yet, but if she'sus.
You you haven't no, Yeah, what about this yet? I want to know?
Yeah, yeah, we haven't announced hery, we haven't announced our cash yet, but she's this young girl who just kind of represents Zuri in real life too.
Will we be hearing any voices who were at that that girlfriend set back in two thousand and seven?
Eight?
Will there be any familiar voices in the show?
You know, a couple, a couple, but yes, I could say.
Man's trying to she's trying to.
You study radio, I study print, baby.
So this is honestly this is an adult show, or this is like.
His family, his family, like you know, would say, like, you know, Blackish without the money is like a good cop, you.
Know, the proud family lives and inter generational. Yeah, yeah, very very situation. Yeah, very intergenerational. And yeah, you know, I can't even say their middle class, like they don't have a class. They're trying to figure out their financial situation to even get to a So, yeah, it's gonna be fun.
And Chicago will be a character too. You get to see like sometimes you don't get to know where that they just live in, like you know, you don't really get to know that.
No, no, no, no, Chicago is very much a character too, and you know kind of like what we wanted to do with, you know, young black representation and animation. Like you know, Chicago gets a horrible rap in mainstream media, and just like one of the Showcase, just like that a Midwestern city where they you kind of able to actually see the people that live there as opposed to like the headlines and the spicy takes that people try to put out there to croud their own agenda.
So yeah, it's gonna be fun and you get to bring it home. Yeah it's your home city. Oh yeah, Chicago, Oh yeah, awesome. Well, Matthew Cherry, thank you so so much for sharing a little bit about your story and joining Brown Ambition and just for personifying Brown ambition.
I appreciate you.
And where can the people find you if they want to follow you?
And just you know, you're just on social you know, Matthew. Matthew A. Cherry is kind of my handle on everything, and yeah I'm around. Just hit me up.
And as a big sister to a little brother who is working full time and raising money for films in Atlanta right now, I just want to say he's geeked that I'm going to talk. I will no, but I feel like your your story is so inspirational to anyone who's like, oh maybe I can do this thing. Yeah, So thank you so much for that.
Yeah, I feel like everybody has a story, you know, just got to get it out of you.
Awesome.
We're happy that you came b a fan. Make sure you follow Matthew A. Cherry on all the socials, and make sure you support young Love because you know, I just I just love having Brown and Vision folks on here.
Get your HBO Max logins in shape, find out who you can borrow from.
No doubt. Yeah, we will hope to have more information out about Assume, like the release date and trailers and all that.
Oh I can't wait to see the trailers.
Okay, awesome, all right until next week, guys, Thank you Brownovision family.
Appreciate Hey, ba.
Fam, We could not do this show without your support or the support of our team behind the scenes. The Brown and Vision podcast is produced by Imani Crosby and Dennis Stanplinsky is our in house tech guru. I am your co host Mandy Woodrif Santos, and we will see y'all next week, BA Fam.